How a former Trump official Dr. Paul Elias Alexander wound up at Ottawa's trucker convoy protest (in a lead scientific role) & the US trucker convoy protest, with Dr. Roger Hodkinson, Dr. Byram Bridle

Alexander said he wants COVID policy makers in Canada and US in jail, "I don't care who you are. You should sit in a jail," said Alexander. "One day, I wish, and I hope, that we re-examine this."

Paul Alexander, who clashed with colleagues in Washington, finds allies at vaccine-mandate protest

Alexander Panetta · CBC News · Posted: Feb 10, 2022 12:00 PM EST | Last Updated: February 10, 2022

Paul Alexander, right of centre in a blue jacket, is a medical academic who worked in the Trump administration and promoted the herd-immunity approach to containing the pandemic. He has been participating in the Ottawa protests against vaccine mandates. (Paul Alexander)

A former Trump administration official has been in Ottawa for days to participate in the protests against vaccine mandates and other COVID-19 measures in what he describes as a personal mission.

Paul Alexander is a Canadian former part-time faculty member at McMaster University in Hamilton who lives in the U.S. and had a contentious stint as science adviser to former president Donald Trump earlier in the pandemic.

Now, he's part of the demonstrations in Ottawa, holding news conferences, appearing alongside People's Party of Canada Leader Maxime Bernier and tweeting about bringing fuel to protesting truckers.

He said he's also been contacted, as the protest spreads abroad, by people hoping to organize a similar convoy across the United States.

• Ottawa protest inspires talk of copycat convoys in U.S. and beyond

Alexander told CBC News he'll participate in any event he can, anywhere, on either side of the border, as part of his mission to oppose existing pandemic policies.

"The truckers have common sense," Alexander said in a phone interview.

"It's going to be massive," he said of a possible U.S. truck protest, "and politicians had better pay attention."

He wants policy-makers in jail

While protest organizers say this isn't an anti-vaccine demonstration, Alexander makes clear he's deeply critical of the COVID-19 vaccines, especially for use on young, healthy people. He says he longs to see public officials who promoted COVID-19 vaccines and other pandemic policies imprisoned someday. 

"I don't care who you are. You should sit in a jail," said Alexander. "One day, I wish, and I hope, that we re-examine this." 

His opinion sits far outside the prevailing view of the health policy-making community that COVID-19 vaccines have saved lives by inoculating people against a virus that has killed 5.8 million people worldwide. It even contrasts with that of his former boss: Trump has urged supporters to get vaccinated and says he's received three doses himself.

Gas cans line the street in front of Parliament Hill as truckers and supporters continue to protest in Ottawa on Wednesday. Alexander tweeted a photo of himself and other volunteers bringing fuel to the protesting truckers. (Blair Gable/Reuters)

One jurisdiction after another has credited COVID-19 vaccines with reducing hospitalizations and mortality. The latest numbers from New York state suggest unvaccinated people test positive at a rate almost nine times higher and are 15 times likelier to be hospitalized from COVID-19.

In Canada, since last October, more than 8,000 people have died and unvaccinated people suffered deaths and hospitalizations at a rate several times higher than those who were vaccinated.

Alexander made clear that he supports other vaccines: "I am not an anti-vaxxer. I am for vaccines. My kids are vaccinated. … It's [just] these vaccines," he said.

WATCH | Right-wing media and politicans voice support for convoy protests:

Ottawa protests front and centre in U.S. culture wars

2 years ago

Duration2:00

Anti-COVID-19 restriction protests in Ottawa are front and centre of the U.S. culture wars, with right-wing media and politicians voicing their support. The response has helped a new online fundraiser raise millions of dollars in a few days.

He's been professionally shunned

Alexander was among the political appointees in the Trump administration who clashed with colleagues over their starkly opposing views of the pandemic.

He says his life was upended as a result. He left the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in 2020 after only a few months in the role. McMaster University, where he earned a PhD in health-research methods in 2015, has severed ties with him.

"It has been devastating," Alexander told CBC News.

He ascribes his shunning to his claims that vaccines don't work as well as advertised, that their long-term effects are unknown, that some people have been hurt by them, and that lockdowns were a catastrophe.

According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an extremely small percentage of vaccinations have coincided with fatalities.

He wanted to test herd immunity

Alexander and his Trump administration allies bickered with other officials over his push for a completely different strategy, involving so-called herd immunity. Alexander's preferred plan was to keep things open, let low-risk people get infected, try isolating high-risk people, and in cases of serious illness, prescribe cocktails of existing anti-viral drugs.

In an interview, he called himself a non-partisan and said he hopes to see Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government succeed, though he used the prime minister's recent COVID-19 diagnosis to question the efficacy of vaccines.

"[Trudeau] is triple vaccinated and masked to his eyeballs," he said.

He said he won't stay much longer in Ottawa as he needs to get back to his home in Washington, D.C.

U.S. politicians now involved

Alexander's involvement with the pandemic-protest movement on both sides of the border illustrates the increasingly international nature of the convoy event.

Questions about it are becoming a daily occurrence at White House briefings, as protesters restrict traffic at the busiest Canada-U.S. border crossing.’