It’s clear the anti-science movement has a tight grip on the Alberta government, In Alberta, some politicians and activists are still flying the ‘freedom’ flag and continuing their fight against vaccination and necessary public health measures by Gillian Steward, January 2, 2024, Toronto Star
This time last year we were on the verge of seeing the end of the COVID-19 crisis. By May the World Health Organization declared the emergency over. Canadians started to breathe easy again and get back to socializing and attending large gatherings such as weddings and concerts.
But while the harsh waves of the immediate crisis had broken, COVID-19 never really went away. I personally know at least 20 people in Calgary who have been hit with COVID-19 in the past six weeks. Thankfully, they were all vaccinated and didn’t need hospital care.
But it’s not just the disease that is persistent: some politicians and activists are still flying the “freedom” flag and continuing their fight against vaccination and necessary public health measures. Here in Alberta the UCP government is still punishing public officials who promoted vaccines or imposed public health
protections – using words like “restrictions” feed the antimask, antivax, antiscience rage and hatred in the fucker truckers and their enabling politicians like Pierre Picklehead, Danielle Smith et al. I still wear N95s everywhere indoors in public, and even outdoors if I come across others while walking. Most people I know have gone full “normal” during the continuing pandemic and no longer mask, visit and dine often indoors with others only to end up coughing non stop, thus are high risk to be near. I hate being sick with any kind of pathogen, and value my independence and brain, so will keep wearing N95s to protect myself and the vulnerable in my community no matter how many times fucker truckers violently assault me for it. Since I began wearing N95s around humans, I’ve not once had a cold, flu or covid, or any respiratory or digestive upset. I love not getting sick! Masks are easy, economical and best, they are variant proof.restrictions. And according to documents obtained by the Globe and Mail, forbade any mention of COVID-19 or influenza in any of the public notices (there weren’t many anyway) about fall immunization campaigns.
Now hospitals are overflowing with patients who have influenza, COVID-19 or other respiratory diseases.
In his new book, Peter Hotez, a world renown vaccine scientist, proposes that the virulent opposition to management of communicable diseases is not about disinformation or misinformation but is a growing movement that wants to entirely discredit science and scientists.Led by guess who:
“Anti-science leaders and groups employ threats and bullying tactics against prominent U.S. scientists. Increasingly and especially in the United States, anti-science has become an important but dangerous political movement,” Hotez writes in “The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science: A Scientist’s Warning.”
Hotez cites the Freedom Convoy that demanded an end to vaccine mandates as it held downtown Ottawa hostage for three weeks in 2022 as an example of how this movement has spread beyond the U.S.The fucker truckers main goal was not to end Canada’s health protections, they knew USA had border controls that Canada is not able to remove. The fucker truckers’ demanded the federal gov’ts removal from office and replaced with cons, democracy and election results by Canadians be damned. Insurrection. Occupation. Threats and assaults. Billions of dollars in trade lost. No creativity, just copying Trump and the Jan 6 insurrectionists’ demands to overule US election results.
For two decades Hotez watched the growth of the anti-science movement in Texas where he is a leading physician/scientist at the Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine. It began as regional protests against vaccines for schoolchildren that prevented such diseases as measles and whooping cough. By the time COVID-19 arrived on the scene the movement had gained key political support and was ready to mount extensive campaigns against public health measures intended to limit the spread of the disease.
He sees the anti-science movement as “a means to assert control and demand allegiance to authoritarianism, especially on the far-right.” Authoritarian governments like to pick and choose what scientific evidence to endorse, or dismiss, depending on their political agenda.
Freedom fascist style = Freedom for them, but only them, not for any of the rest of us.
This certainly rings true in Alberta where Premier Danielle Smith was swept into the UCP leadership and consequently became premier with overwhelming support from anti-vaxxers and those who insisted ivermectin and other quack cures were all anyone needed to overcome the deadly virus.
After the UCP narrowly won the May election, Smith doubled down on her war with professional medicine: she is reorganizing Alberta Health Services (AHS) which delivers health care across the province into separate silos that will no doubt curb its influence; there is strong evidence she demanded the dismissal of Deena Hinshaw the former Chief Medical Officer of Health (CMOH) during the pandemic when she was later hired by an AHS Indigenous health team; our current CMOH is not allowed to speak publicly about immunization; and then as we found out recently the words COVID-19 and influenza were struck from public notices about available vaccines.
It’s pick and choose science in other arenas as well. Smith and her UCP government approve the science of Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage (CCUS) to reduce carbon emissions because that what the oil and gas industry also touts as a solution. But it rejects the science of renewable energy because it threatens the oil and gas industry.
Patients and health-care workers are already suffering because of the Alberta government’s dismissal of vaccine science. But unfortunately that’s what happens when you have an anti-science government.
Gillian Steward is a Calgary writer and journalist, and former managing editor of the Calgary Herald. She is a freelance columnist for The Star.
Refer also to:
The importance of cleaning indoor air, such as in schools and hospitals has been known for decades. Too much CO2 indoors, notably in classrooms/day cares, is known to harm brains of kids and negatively affect learning. Even if a member of the thuggery Take Back Alberta Klan, don’t you want your kids to learn well and be able to think clearly, critically and independently instead of blindly believing lies and fascist crap spewed by Steve Harper, Danielle Smith and her boss David Parker, Pierre Picklehead and his electricity-comes-from-kites bamboozery?
2002: In Alberta’s anti science, anti public health care Calgary Herald no less!
How many brain-harming pathogens do your kids breath in with every breath while at school or daycare or in church?
