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There you have it folks. What has changed from a medical standpoint with regards to masking efficacy from the beginning of the school term until now? Absolutely fucking nothing from an epidemiological standpoint.
What has changed is that we have anti-vax lunatics closing border crossings and disrupting traffic in Alberta cities. These foolish ignorant people make up a significant part of the UCP’s ‘base’. And thus, despite what the science indicates or even what the precautionary principle suggests we’re just gonna do the opposite because it is politically expedient.
Gonna take this week off of teaching and let the COVID party take place in the schools without me.
This is what happens when you let the dipshits dictate public health policy.
Jason Kenny the Premier of Alberta is making the definitive case for the Federal Government to take over handling public health decisions during a pandemic event. Captain Clownshow is making noises about ending public health measures early (*again* – Open for SUMMER!!!?!).
“As COVID changes, our response to it must change as well. That is why early next week, Alberta will announce a firm date to end the Restrictions Exemptions Program and to do so in the very near future,” Kenney said.
“We will also lay out a simple, phased, plan to remove almost all public health restrictions later this month, as long as we see a trend of declining pressure on our hospitals.”
If our Premier had a record of exercising the precautionary principle I just might believe his last sentence. He doesn’t, so I won’t. Open For Spriiiiiiiiing! is the next UCP foray into overtaxing our healthcare system and letting more people become COVID-19 statistics.
“Kenney faced political pressure from many directions Thursday to both ditch restrictions immediately and keep them in place.
A week ago, he said a plan to remove restrictions would likely come “by the end of March.” Five days later, he changed the timeline when he said he hoped to relax measures this month.
On Thursday, a UCP statement said the premier will begin lifting restrictions “within days.”
Since Saturday, a convoy has been protesting vaccine rules, and occasionally blocking roads and a border crossing in southern Alberta.
“It certainly gives the impression that Mr. Kenney is caving to the far right, rural fringes of his political base,” said Keith Brownsey, a political scientist at Mount Royal University.”
Yep, because this is what good government looks like – allowing the vaccine skeptical science deniers make public health policy. Pandering to the false populist fringe in Alberta on important public health matters goes quite beyond the pale. It’s like asking Flat-Earther Society for their ‘facts’ for a science textbook.
Ludicrous.
“A political scientist said it certainly looks like the truck convoys and MLA demands are forcing Kenney to dump restrictions quicker than he originally planned.
“All you have to do is look at the timeline,” said Duanne Bratt from Mount Royal University. “It is not about COVID, it is not about health, it is about politics.”
Alberta had a pandemic high of 1,648 patients with COVID-19 in hospital on Thursday, and although new cases appeared to be dropping, the province’s doctor warned it was still too soon to move to an endemic response.”
This is what happens when stupid gets enough people together peddling the same bullshite at same time – they start to dictate the public agenda despite expert medical opinion and medical facts. It is fucking scary.
Unfortunately it’s my home province that is ground zero for this second public health clownshow fiasco sponsored by Jason Kenny and the Alberta UCP.
What a time to be alive!
Did you ever need to see what ignorance and a banal level of patriotism looks like? Here ya be. The Rally for Freedom in my hometown. It is so very disheartening to see this level of absolute farce on display.
These individuals are demonstrating their absolute lack of social responsibility and disregard for others. Sadly, others will pay for their ignorance while they enter the healthcare system en masse pushing scheduled and necessary life saving surgeries down the queue because getting vaccinated and following public health measures is just too much of an infringement on their rights.
https://twitter.com/Jo_Tates/status/1487575992487247872
This is a near perfect clip of the level of malicious ignorance being celebrated. It illustrates not giving a fuck about others (even your own child) while basking in a glorious herd stupidity moment of social irresponsibility. Seems like the perfect video for the anti-vax/anti-responsibility freedum crowd.
Covid has brought the out the very worst of the selfish libertarian impulse in people. It confirms that selfishness wrapped in hyper-patriotic tat wins against the serious responsible fact based response medical science has painstakingly laid out for us.
If the situation were not so fucking dire, the irony on display here would be laughably delicious. This willful malicious ignorance will come to no good end.
I’m revolted to the core.
Kathleen Lowrey is one the few and the brave women inside the University of Alberta that manage to retain an authentically feminist outlook. Furthermore, her criticisms of the new gender ideology are spot on and her insights are useful in understanding the ontology of transactivism in academic and real-world settings.
Sex, Ptolemaic Style
“The pervasiveness of this formula helps to explain the widespread enthusiasm for gender identity ideology in the academy. The relevant flippages are of at least three kinds. First is the reversal of the sex:gender relation as it is commonly understood. Ordinarily sex has primacy. It is the biological given upon which the cultural constructions of gender are elaborated. In gender identity ideology, the terms are reversed. Gender is essential, and sex is the unsteady social construct. Second is the relation of men to women. Conventionally, the social standing of men is understood to be privileged relative to that of women. This relationship is reversed in gender identity ideology. Trans identified men (“transwomen”) are figured as vulnerable relative to women and are even described as the most vulnerable of all women. Third, the quotidian apprehension is that children develop their gender identities as they grow up and engage with and adjust to cultural norms. Under gender identity ideology, it is asserted that children know from very young ages exactly their gender identities independent of cultural conditioning. As a corollary, adult men who express gender identities late in life that appear to be wholly fashioned out of sexist cultural norms about femininity have in fact been real women–the very realest of women–all along. The department colleague who was my most enthusiastic denouncer placed two signs on her office door after I put up gender critical feminist messaging on mine: “trans rights are human rights” and “transwomen are women.” She understood very well the messaging required of a “trans ally” and displayed it quite correctly.
Gender critical feminists like me notice, of course, that one infinitely more often sees and hears the slogan “transwomen are women” than its counterpart “transmen are men.” To understand why this is the case, you’d have to pay attention to patterns of power in the world rather than to Ptolemaic valence-flipping. One of the signs on my office door that most infuriated feminist academic women colleagues on social media described the parallels between men’s rights activism and trans rights activism. Many feminist academic women clearly saw it as their moral and intellectual duty to decry this assertion.”
Well I’d like to think that our publicly elected officials actually gave a damn about the people that elected them. Obviously not.
“Wong says the messaging from policymakers and public health officials in the Prairies throughout the pandemic has been one of “individual responsibility” when it comes to following guidelines, getting tested or getting vaccinated.
“Now the narrative is very much pushing the societal blame and anger and frustration away from, frankly, policymakers and toward people who are unvaccinated,” Wong said. In his view, the “shifting of blame” may have further increased vaccine hesitancy.
“Even when the whole healthcare system is literally collapsing you’re just not going to get any kind of buy-in at a societal level anymore to actually care.”
Unlike Manitoba, Wong says Saskatchewan and Alberta will likely pay a “heavy human price” that will be “painful” in the weeks ahead, which he sees as unavoidable even if the government were to make the unlikely move of imposing another lockdown, or if vaccination rates climb.
Health-care systems in Alberta, Saskatchewan ‘broken’ by COVID surge, doctors say
6 days ago
16:41Dr. Aisha Mirza, an ER physician in Edmonton, and Dr. Hassan Masri, an ICU and critical care physician in Saskatoon, share how the provinces’ hospitals and medical professionals are struggling amid a fourth wave of COVID-19. 16:41“This is not a pandemic of the unvaccinated, this affects absolutely everybody — it’s everybody whose surgeries are cancelled, and who won’t have access to urgent surgeries if they get into an accident, or if their appendix bursts or if they have an aneurysm,” Schwartz said.
“And whether there is ever the sort of political reckoning that is required in order to actually change course, to prevent these lives from being lost — I’m starting to lose hope.”
![](https://thumbnails.cbc.ca/maven_legacy/thumbnails/186/383/1-nn-covid-sask-alberta-heath-care-270921.jpg?crop=1.777xh:h;*,*&downsize=510px:* 510w")
People are morons. They are abusing health care workers who are trying to save their ignorant, stupid lives. Can you imagine the audacity of some of these donkey-donuts cursing out medical staff while proclaiming Covid isn’t real? It’s happening here in Texas-North, and i am fucking embarrassed to live in this clownshow of a province.
“While we’re on this unit, the doctors (and nurses) are just being horrifically, horrifically abused,” she said.
“(Health-care workers are) being sworn at, they’re being told that COVID isn’t real and (patients) don’t want to be intubated,” Christensen said.
“There are no words at this point. I’m just completely baffled. I’ve walked the halls of this ICU. I’ve seen that it’s real.”
Un
Fraking
Believable.
Dr. Paul Parks, the head of emergency medicine for the Alberta Medical Association, said the situation in Alberta hospitals will only become worse without an increase in restrictions.
“I am advocating so strongly for increased public health measures at this point in time and our government to take leadership and to put in some meaningful restrictions,” Parks said.
He said he believes the province is just days away from implementing critical care triage, with increasing COVID-19 patients and no workers to care for them.
“We’re for sure close,” he said. “We cannot continue to keep adding (patients).
This public health crisis was easily predictable and entirely avoidable, but our conservative UCP government led by Jason Kenny proclaimed the province was “Open for Summer!” and lifted all public health safety restrictions.
321 Albertans died for the “Open for Summer” debacle – and more are dying everyday – expect a big jump in the death toll once the medical triage starts.
What a tragedy, made worse with the knowledge that it was entirely preventable.
“Ok…I am ready to share whether anyone wants to read or not.
I am far more of a qualitative researcher than quantitative. I like themes and patterns. Swabbing today uncovered a theme I guess I didn’t expect. Yes there were lots of kids.Tons of Close Contacts that created stress and confusion for families. There were a lot of 20-somethings who had friends test positive and most of them were unvaccinated. That wasn’t a surprise either. There were more unvaccinated than I anticipated and in groups I wouldn’t have expected. I did my darnedest to answer questions and hear concerns about this.Maybe I swayed one which is a win no matter what.But what became so evident was how so many aspects of this pandemic are dividing FAMILIES. The dangerous narrative Jason Kenney and the UCP have perpetuated that COVID isn’t a big deal if you’re healthy or younger has begun to show itself in the basic day to day functioning of families.A parent with their under 12 child needing to get swabbed because grandparent came for dinner sick knowingly and it turned out to be Delta. The pain and anger was palpable and intruding into the marriage of these parents. Watching tears stream down mom’s face as she explained why they were there was excruciating because she understood the selfish risk the child had been placed in. A grandson and his grandmother being tested as he livedin her home as well as his parents’ who had both recently tested positive and he was beside himself that he may have passed it on to gramma unknowingly.He was angry at his unvaccinated parents. But when he described how ill his dad was, we had to discuss the need to seek medicalattention before it was too late. Likely another admission to hospital by my estimation. A father asked me how they might convince their teenage son to get vaccinated when there was so much misinformation at his disposal that fueled his fears. We sat for 20 minutes talking about strategies and questions to pose. He was desperate for a way to convince his child to do as they had and protect himself. He admitted that until his son was alienated from things he enjoyed because he wasn’t vaccinated, he didn’t think he would get it.You see, these constant shifts over the last year created solely and purposely by Kenney have created imbalance at every level. It is exactly as he wants it to be. Because with imbalance comes distraction and with distraction comes Kenney’s ability to remain unaccountable. While families are strugglingto remain in tact with their heads’ barely above water, Kenney ignites kindling of a million little fires. It destroys the fibre of community.That is what I saw today. I saw families in crisis. NOT because of COVID itself but the misinformation and anger and distrust that this government has planted and cultivated since day one. We only need to look to the east coast to see how doing things the “other way” could strengthen community and family resolve. We are a province divided…but today I witnessed how, like the crisis in our health system, the lack of empathy, compassion and leadership as caused a crisis in families.There is a such a deep need for guidance and comfort right now. The vaccine debate is just another reflection of the turmoil that has been orchestrated in Alberta. What I witnessed today was people desperate for definitive compassionate leadership.Desperate.It will get worse before it gets better. This I know. I need to believe it WILL get better though. I need to.”
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
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