Alberta COVID-19 report pushes conspiracy theories, calls for stop to vaccinations
Hours after U.S. government health agencies’ websites began to go dark as part of President Donald Trump’s opening attack on public health in the United States, the Alberta government yesterday quietly published a conspiracy-theory-promoting report on the province’s response to COVID-19 that calls for use of COVID vaccines to be halted and accuses media of being paid off by drug manufacturers.
So if you were wondering if the Canadian province’s United Conservative Party (UCP) has gone full-tilt MAGA and is now operating on the theory that if the evidence doesn’t support what you want to do then you can always invent better evidence, this strongly suggests your worst fears are justified.
Alert readers will recall that in her previous life as a right-wing radio talk show host, Premier Danielle Smith was a tireless advocate of quack COVID cures like Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. So it should come as no surprise that the report pumps the tires of such remedies that were popular in far-right circles, as well as attacking the use of medical masks to suppress infection, and advocating for professional associations to be prevented from disciplining members for advocating quackery.
The government very quietly posted the report, which it admitted has been in its hands since August, without any announcement or accompanying press release.
Presumably the UCP’s intent was for the recommendations – which it had to know will be highly controversial and quickly debunked by reputable medical researchers – to be forgotten amid the brouhaha about the Trump Administration’s first moves south of the Medicine Line, where the attack on public health is just beginning. Controversy about Premier Smith’s divisive advocacy of appeasement in response to President Trump’s economic threats against Canada will also serve to distract Albertans who are not part of the UCP base.
Fortunately, Globe and Mail reporters Alanna Smith and Carrie Tait were doing their jobs on a Friday afternoon, the traditional time for governments to dump news they’d really prefer not to talk about. A spokesperson for Health Minister Adriana LaGrange responded to their questions with a statement that the government is reviewing the report and hasn’t made any decisions about implementing its recommendations … yet.
The two reporters have been on top of this story since last spring when they reported that Red Deer Physician Gary Davidson, chair of the $2-million effort, was the same doctor sharply rebuked by Alberta Health Services for his claims the province-wide health care agency had overblown the seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic. Previously, Dr. Davidson had sought the UCP nomination in the Red Deer-South riding in 2019.
If you are wondering, by the way, if this is why Premier Smith’s government is breaking up AHS, and disbelieve the misleading claims made by the government about how multiple bureaucracies will improve integrated health care, you might just be on the right track.
This task force is separate from former Reform Party leader Preston Manning’s review panel, also struck by the UCP and costing about $2-million, whose farcical recommendations in November 2023 included giving more time to “alternative scientific narratives.”
It turned out that Manning’s final report was based at least in part on a work of actual fiction he wrote earlier, and certainly wasn’t worth the $253,000 in personal pin money the superannuated Godfather of the Canadian Right was paid for re-writing this drivel. Well, to be fair, it’s not plagiarism if you’re plagiarizing yourself!
Getting back to yesterday’s verbose report and its dubious conclusions, the makeup of the full “task force” is now revealed and includes Jay Bhattacharya, President Trump’s nominee to run the National Institutes of Health and co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, which advocated during the pandemic the discredited notion that all would be well if we just locked up the old folks for their own safety and let the pandemic rip till everyone else had herd immunity.
In addition to Dr. Bhattacharya, other scientists who signed the declaration by clicking a button on a website included Dr. Johnny Fartpants, Professor Notaf Uckingclue, Dr. Person Fakename, Dr. Very Dodgy Doctor, and Banana Rama. I am not making that up.
Also among the members of the Alberta task force named in yesterday’s report was Dr. John Conly, a University of Calgary professor who denied early in the pandemic that aerosol transmission was a primary route of transmission for the COVID-19 virus and claimed N95 face masks were harmful. For the local angle, we note that the group also included St. Albert lawyer Angela Wood, the UCP’s unsuccessful candidate in the Edmonton-area city in the 2023 provincial election.
The report ends with an interesting disclaimer that states members of the panel “are not united by any political viewpoints or ideologies” and prudently adds that “the statements written in each chapter represent the personal interpretations of Task Force members and do not necessarily represent those of their employers.”
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