The first case of the Omicron variant of the COVID-19 virus has arrived in Alberta, Chief Medical Officer of Health Deena Hinshaw confirmed yesterday at one of her routine pandemic update news conferences.
There was no sign of Premier Jason Kenney, of course, presumably because there was no way to spin this development as something for which his United Conservative Party Government would want to take credit.
So this development is newsworthy, although not exactly news, seeing as it was pretty obvious the variant was going to show up here sooner than later anyway.
Still, the single recorded case of the variant, confirmed in a traveller who came to Alberta from Nigeria via the Netherlands, made itself known with a definitely sinister here-we-go-again vibe.
The day before yesterday, at another news conference, Mr. Kenney allowed as how his government is pondering a “moderate” relaxation of the rules for indoor gatherings, seeing as it’ll soon be the holiday season and everyone knows that Albertans don’t like following rules.
We’ve heard this kind of thing repeatedly from Mr. Kenney’s lips throughout the pandemic, soon followed by new wave of COVID-19.
Asked by a reporter if she thought the premier’s idea was a good one during yesterday’s news conference, Dr. Hinshaw equivocated: “I think it depends on the exact way that restrictions might be eased, as well as whether there are additional protective measures that we can put in in place to mitigate any increased risk of transmission.”
Suggested translation: No, but the premier won’t listen so we’ll try to limit the damage as much as possible.
So, the reporter asked, what can you do to protect Albertans?
She responded: “Well, ultimately, I don’t think it’s the right time to completely lift all of our indoor social gathering restrictions, so, whether or not there’s an easing, I don’t think this is the time to turn them all off …”
Presumably, this means something like: I’ll try to talk him out of the worst of it.
It comes down, she added, to “how can we, potentially safely, ease off restrictions without enhancing the risk too significantly.”
Maybe in the next week or so, she added, “we might be contemplating expansion of booster eligibilities.”
So there you have it. We have seen this behaviour by both the premier and his CMOH before, most recently during the “Best Summer Ever,” which preceded Alberta’s disastrous fourth wave last fall.
Mr. Kenney clearly has concluded we Albertans have forgotten all about that. We’d best brace ourselves for a fifth wave, then!
Since the premier’s executive issues manager, Matt Wolf, is leaving the government on Friday, we should probably expect the tweet about how the pandemic is ending – accept it! – to be sent in a week or so by his replacement, Tara Jago.
Meanwhile, Dr. Hinshaw is not the only senior Alberta health official dealing with the UCP’s reluctance to follow common sense suggestions while responding to COVID-19.
At the premier’s news conference Monday, Health Minister Jason Copping explained that the government supports Alberta Health Services’ policy requiring all health care workers to be immunized or be put on leave, but that it was going to ignore it anyway in rural areas where vaccine resistance is high.
“I appreciate the tens of thousands of health-care workers who have made the right choice to get vaccinated,” Mr. Copping was quoted saying in the government’s news release, but “this directive is about protecting patient care – primarily in rural areas – which will always be my top priority.”
In other words, vaccine refuseniks in such places will be allowed to continue coming to work over the objections of the people supposedly in charge of AHS, the government has ruled, and AHS must provide them with “frequent and targeted COVID-19 testing.”
“Only sites considered at significant risk of service disruptions resulting from staffing shortages due to unimmunized employees will be part of the testing program,” the government release noted – a clear indication to anti-vaxxers that they can continue with their refusal to be vaccinated.
Asked by reporters to react to the policy switch during the Monday news conference, AHS President and CEO Verna Yiu was diplomatic, but clearly not pleased.
“I acknowledge that the introduction of a temporary testing option may frustrate physicians and staff who have made the decision to get immunized, and those feelings are valid,” she began. (Emphasis added.)
Notwithstanding the government’s wishes, she continued, “we were prepared to stay our course.”
“We were prepared to continue in our current route,” she said, but since the government decided to ignore that decision, “obviously the rapid testing provides us with an option to make sure the service is not disrupted.”
Dr. Yiu’s language was delicately and cautiously phrased, but you can take it as given that, behind the scenes, AHS leadership is extremely unhappy with this cabinet interference in the safe operation of health care facilities for what are essentially political reasons.
Everything will be rosy soon, finance minister promises
Finance Minister Travis Toews also held a news conference yesterday touting Alberta’s improved deficit estimates as if the UCP government was responsible for the recent summertime bump in international oil prices.
The government’s latest fiscal update really deserves its own full commentary, but there are only so many stories one can cover in a day! So, for now, readers will have to make do with the CBC’s competent crunching of the numbers used by Mr. Toews to push the government’s long-discredited trickle-down fairy tale about how low taxes for corporations and wealthy individuals will somehow result in more tax revenues being paid over time as we all grow richer and richer.
That said, while it is doubtful Mr. Toews is any less of a utopian market ideologue that our premier, it is remarkable how much better he is at making the government’s policies sound credible than Mr. Kenney. Indeed, he comes across as one of the few grownups in the UCP Cabinet.
Yeah, to paraphrase an old saying, when it comes to COVID, if Kenney didn’t have bad timing, he would have no timing at all. Does he not listen to the news? Everyone is talking about the new possibly more contagious variant of COIVID right now, so probably not the best time to be talking about easing restrictions again.
You have to wonder if having survived his party’s recent AGM, Kenney has a subconcious, but pressing and as of yet unfilled political death wish. Of course, I suspect Dr. Hinshaw is not going to be so helpful this time after he threw her under the bus a while ago for his worst summer idea ever.
Well, at least Mr. Toews had some good news. Unfortunately, the last fews days haven’t been very kind to oil prices either and the Alberta government’s projected price for budgeting is now a few dollars higher than the current actual price. Something about that potentially nasty COVID variant that also has the energy and financial markets very concerned. Well at least Mr. Toews didn’t promise us the best financial year ever.
Yet again, Kenney seems the only one unconcerned by his potenrially yet again reckless course of action. AHS sure doesn’t seem very happy with him either.
How many times do you have to do something the same way in order to get the same result before you are considered insane in Alberta? Or are you just considered strong and free?
To think that only Kenney is responsible for these waves is ludicrously disengenuious. Simply because your political animus towards Kennedy is so strong you attempt to blame him for waves of Covid. Every other Premier and Trudope himself keep harping on the same restrictions. IMHO every one of them is lying. Do you really believe that after almost two full years the vaccine is the only thing we can find to treat this? If the govt truly had our best interest at heart and IF this pandemic is so deadly why are they not looking at every drug out there to find a solution?
You know when you change the letters around to the word omicron, you end up with the word moronic. I guess a similar sort of thing is with a 50 year old song, by the American rock group the Doors, LA Woman. Mr. Mojo Risin’ is supposed to be Jim Morrison, if it is rearranged. Back to how the pretend conservatives and Reformers in the UCP are managing the Covid-19 pandemic in Alberta, it is nothing short of moronic, and people’s lives are being put in jeopardy. It won’t be much longer before we see cases of the already existing Covid-19 variant go back up, and cases of the omicron variant of Covid-19 go up, and both will do so substantially. Technically, it’s still autumn, but it will not end well, and winter will be even worse. This will also go into the spring. I wonder what the UCP will do, when they get hit with major lawsuits over this? It’s going to get real ugly.
I thought the same thing yesterday. The message from Toews is the same,but slightly less nauseating when delivered without the head-bobbing, gesticulations, and arrogant vocal inflections. One simply needs to watch videos of K’s press conferences with the sound turned off to see how many bananas are in this republic.
As for Covid restrictions, the anti-vaxxers were out in full force at the big box grocery store this week, walking around aimlessly with empty carts and their masks pulled down. They have a full vocabulary of four-letter words for the masked people they pass, but fortunately could not abuse the cashiers because they weren’t buying anything. They were already checked out, in a manner of speaking.
Too soon to declare “Best Christmas Ever”?
The bad news is omicron is more contagious and will eventually spread all over the world. The good news is, according to early indications, is that it appears to make people less sick. The great news is that omicron may be a stepping stone to bringing this pandemic to an end. Widespread infections will lead to widespread immunity which will lead to herd immunity. Maybe we should be welcoming the omicron variant with open arms. Maybe it’s the best possible Xmas gift we can give ourselves.
In the meantime, people with two doses of AstraZeneca can get their third dose of Pfizer or Moderna, with a fourth dose eight weeks later. Just express interest in travel to countries that don’t recognize AZ/Covishield. I can’t say if this also applies to those who had mixed doses of other vaccines; mixed doses of any vaccines are not recognized by some countries and tour operators, but it is a question worth asking wherever vaccines are offered.
Two doses of AZ earns you a third shot six months later anyways.
With so many people thumbing their noses at the mask bylaw in public places, your omicron Xmas scenario might come true, Ronmac, and I might go back to online grocery shopping.
Given that over 80% of the Alberta population over age twelve is double-vaccinated, and according to the official Alberta stats, Covid produces lower rates of severe illness in children than other seasonal respiratory viruses, why the continuing terror narrative?
Of course, as of this morning over 40% of “active cases” in Alberta are double-vaccinated and a further 3.65% of active cases have received a single dose, perhaps there are a few questions to be asked.
Still, although we are now twenty months into Covidmania, and with a program of testing that would have been impossible to imagine in 2019, less than 10% of the population has ever tested positive, with severe outcomes observed in under 5% of that group, with that 5% consisting to an overwhelming degree of people who were already sick with multiple conditions. There is no getting around the fact that, for whatever reasons, the effect of this pathogen was exaggerated to an absurd degree, and no retraction of that perception has ever been taken, to any degree.
Telling the population that we would see 800 000 “cases” in the first ten weeks of Covid in 2020 was either an astronomical error, or the result of a calculated fear campaign. Either way, where is the investigation, given the array of socio-economic restraints imposed on the citizenry in the name of this “1918-level killer” that never appeared?
When will we get down to the task in this country of investigating the kill-offs in the Quebec and Ontario long-term care settings, and the increase in mortality in the under-45 age group in Alberta who are not dying with nor of Covid?
Asking for a friend.
Huh? Can’t work out what you’re trying to say. It’s prime Garglefizzle blah blah. Heydie, hidey, ho. Blart-a-diddle. Hey, time to update that noggin of your friend’s there, Murph, it’s frazzled. The initial case count was held back by lockdowns — the likely number of people to be infected was the estimate if we all just sat on our hands and did nothing. We didn’t, not even slow Jay to begin with — he was prancing around Calgary Airport telling the feds to stop them nasty furriners coming in to pollute true Albertans. Perhaps your friend can recall that. As for deaths, we were knocking them out of the park there for a while right across the country until the medical fraternity worked out how to keep more people alive.
Now to more important matters. Omicron is misspelled in the headline, DJC.
I’m sure Travis Toews is well aware that his oil wealth isn’t trickling anywhere. These people are craven opportunist scum to a person.
I for one, as an Albertan, am really excited about this band of ideological idiots REPEATEDLY destroying the economy in their blundering attempts to enrich themselves and their corrupt friends and allies.
Best government ever.
Every time they say “trickle down”, I hear “Trickle Creek”. Must be some kind of trigger.
ABS: Every time I hear it, I get an image in my head of a certain bodily fluid, produced in the kidneys, trickling down someone’s leg. ;-).
No doubt they are printing the Best Christmas Ever signage as I write this missive.
It’s not Alberta didn’t see this old trick coming again. Albertans remain the stupidest people alive, so why screw with that reputation? They’re actually proud of it.
And of course there’s another oil boom coming, the best one yet. Alberta’s place in the sun and domination over Ottawa must not be challenged by this funny “Zulu Flu”. That unfortunate monicker is already circulating, btw.
Kenney’s career must be saved and everyone must pay for its survival.
No greater cause for despair for the human race than throngs of unmasked small-town Albertans streaming into the grocery store. Once inside, they navigate their overloaded carts around the “Masks are Mandatory” signs like Gilles Villeneuve at the 1982 Belgian Grand Prix.
Six out of ten shoppers without a mask. Two out of ten with masks under their nose. Not just invincible young men this time, but mothers with toddlers and teenagers in tow.
Outside the doors, a devout Christian woman assured me that Jesus would soon return to save British Columbians from the climate cauldron of floods and wildfires. If not, oh well.
Here we are 50+ years after the moon landing.
On the cover of the National Enquirer, word from NASA is that extraterrestrials entered our solar system last week looking for signs of intelligent life — and left without stopping.
Where’s the nearest bridge?
I might suggest a bit of a change in your comment. MANY or SOME small towns. In Athabasca, my small Town, the vast majority put on their masks so please stop the ‘they’re all redneck idiots’ stereotype of people who live outside major cities. Trust me, the IQ does not drop 10 points every kilometre away from a city.
Thanks for the giggle of this day: “grown ups” in the UCP!!!
Day before burbling about moderate reduction of restrictions, Jason Kenney called on Justin Trudeau to ban the flights from several African countries because of the new variant showing up…..
Hana: He’s thinking about another photo op at the airport, no doubt. DJC
Whats a rule if nobody follows it? Whats a rule that isnt based on the actuality of the need for it?
Is that the same thing?
Currently we have restrictions which are less for those vaccinated versus unvaccinated. Is that reasonable?
Here is a link which is worth reading to think about such things:
https://unherd.com/2021/11/how-fear-fuels-the-vaccine-wars/
And more science points to drawbacks in totalitarian tools to fight the pandemic:
https://reason.com/2021/12/01/masks-harm-infants-pandemic-restrictions-babies-covid-brown-study/?utm_medium=email
Bret: your comments demonstrate the truth of the aphorism that “those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” We have controlled highly contagious infections, like TB and Small Pox, not to mention Ebola, SARS, and MERS, with compulsory quarantines resulting from tracing for 150 or so years now. Remember “Typhoid Mary” to name a once popular meme? Your first cited article is just a juvenile use of straw man arguments and exaggeration.
On your second link about babies and cognitive development. Remember, like “one swallow does not a spring make”, one study is not definitive. You might also be cautious of a web site that proclaims “free minds, free markets” on its masthead, since those two are only randomly linked.
You should waste less time reading what amount to solipsistic articles from the loons in aristocratic Britain and America.
It appears you have swilled the koolaid. Covid 19 is a corona virus. Not something that is going to go away with vaccination and in fact you can see they are talking about it being endemic and we are on the Omicron version now.
Youre just going to have to get used to it like all of the other versions that you fight off every flu season. I would guess H1N1 is actually worse, but my Flu shot covered it, which will mitigate the effects for a while.
As to beating TB, the wife worked at the TB clinic. Why was she working there if we have beat it already?
Bret, the personal experience of your wife and TB demonstrates that medical people (and their immediate families) take personal risks to keep others safe. However, your observations are irrelevant to the long history of using compulsory quarantines to stop many infectious diseases from becoming endemic before antibiotics and vaccinations were developed. This is also how SARS and MERS were effectively eliminated from North America in the last 20 or so years.
The Regan era cutbacks to welfare directly created antibiotic resistant TB strains, especially in New York when the patients only took part of their prescriptions and sold the rest to buy food. These strains were ultimately contained with basic public health measures of testing, tracing, and compulsory quarantine.
Covid 19’s many mutations are exactly why it is important to test, trace, and quarantine before its inevitable evolution creates a more lethal version. There are also long-term after-effects to Covid 19. You might want to ask your nurse wife about “post-polio syndrome” or the etiology of shingles.
Given the limited effectiveness of vaccines, compulsory masking, testing, tracing, and compulsory isolation are still our most cost-effective measures for eliminating Covid 19.
Naturally the drug companies are focused on vaccinations, just as the oil companies are focused on fossil energy. But public policy should be more nuanced, and the UCP’s simple-minded magic bullet/endemic approach is a demonstrated failure as Darwin has shown us four times in a row now.
The only effective way to keep safe is by exhibiting personal behaviours that keep you and yours safe.
There is defiantly a line that cannot be crossed in democracies in the name of public health. And we crossed it a long time ago.
KANG: Even from looking at things like The National Post, you can see how many people are misinformed.
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/what-christmas-gatherings-will-look-like-across-canada-for-the-vaccinated-and-unvaccinated
I still remember the American oilmen calling Albertans the dumbest people on the planet for good reason. Retired Lawyers and RCMP officers, over coffee, have called it the worse case of fraud the world has ever seen, phoney conservatives helping their rich friends steal our oil and tax wealth, and it was all done legally because the stupid Albertans kept giving them majorities which literally gave them permission to do it. We figure that we have lost around $800 billion.
Now many of the same stupid seniors who supported Klein are now hurling their sarcastic comments at us for not being as stupid as them and lawyers are telling us to stop letting them do it. It’s no secret that many Albertans are furious with Kenney and his ignorant supporters and as ANONYMOUS points out there could be a lot of lawsuits launched yet, like we saw under Klein.
ALAN K SPILLER: I note that you also don’t have a liking for pretend conservatives and Reformers. If Peter Lougheed were still around, he’d knock some sense into Albertans heads, but many are so dense, that they would still refuse to listen. I also think that the pretend conservatives and Reformers in the UCP are letting Covid-19 matters get out of hand so that our public health care system in Alberta can become fractured, and so they can have the excuse to fulfil their hero Ralph Klein and his neoliberal, Reform dream of having private for profit, American style healthcare in Alberta. Ralph Klein and his buddy, another pretend conservative and Reformer, Mike Harris, also put people’s lives at risk, due to their negligence and hardcore austerity, which was totally avoidable, had they followed what Peter Lougheed and Bill Davis were doing right. People sued both premiers and their PC governments, but they made it so they wouldn’t have to pay for the lawsuits, through bills they made. Taxpayers ended up paying the settlement costs. We will end up paying for the UCP’s negligence. Wait for it. It will happen. Where is the sense in any of this?
Wow, you must really detest the NDP then. Their polices trash canned 60,000 AB jobs. Alot of teachers and nurses could have been hired from tax revenue.
BRET LARSON: You are very mistaken on many things. If you’d bother to comprehend that oil prices took a downward spiral in 2014, and this had nothing to do with the NDP, you’d see things through non dark blue tinted glasses. The pretend conservatives and Reformers in the Alberta PCs basically turned what the true conservative, Peter Lougheed did, into a horrific mess, and when oil prices shot downwards, there was not much revenue left. Alberta has lost $575 billion after the oil royalty rates that Peter Lougheed was getting were drastically altered. Albertans are on the hook for a very grand sum of $260 billion to fix up the damages created by the oil industry in Alberta. $150 billion in extra revenue was lost, because of the Alberta PCs abysmal tax system. On top of all of that, the pretend conservatives and Reformers in the Alberta PCs constantly blew extremely large amounts of money on the priciest shenanigans. This is why the Liberal turned Reformer, Ralph Klein laid off an extremely large amount of nurses and teachers. The pretend conservatives and Reformers who make up the UCP, have policies that failed also. There has been $10 billion lost, due to their corporate tax cuts. There were never any jobs made from this trickle down economic baloney. The UCP also made a foolish error in assuming that The Donald would get a second mandate in America. $7.5 billion is gone on a pipeline, that is just a worthless pile of scrap metal. The UCP have the worst kinds of accounting skills, and they lost $1.6 billion. The UCP threw away billions of dollars more on very pricey shenanigans. I wouldn’t call increasing staff for their MLAs, hiring their pretend conservative and Reformer friends for absolutely redundant jobs, that pay very well, panels and committees that are rigged up, when the UCP has its mind made up in advance, Steve Allan’s dragged out and costly inconclusive report, and expanding offices in cities in America, gainful employment. Oil prices are not remaining at the levels they were, prior to 2014. The $80 something oil that was recently happening was a temporary thing. Oil prices are on a downward trajectory. The UCP has nothing to boast about. Alan is right. These pretend conservatives and Reformers sure pull the will over people’s eyes and fool them.
So when the commodity you’re selling drops in price, is that a good time to make a review and see if you can get more money from it?
It was politicking at its worst and destructive of the economic base of the province.
As to your hate on for the policies of the UCP. I dont like any government intervention. However, you have to arrange your investment environment to be fertile for future job growth. Any such expenditures are reasonable on that basis.
Dave, it is both good and kind of you to give Dr. Hinshaw the benefit of the doubt when we have no way of knowing exactly what advice she is giving the premier and the cabinet. Because of this veil of secrecy, Kenney can deny having received appropriate advice and throw Hinshaw under the bus. Wait…didn’t he try to do that once before?
We need more transparency and accountability. The people of Alberta need to see the data and, importantly, need to see all the recommendations. That way, Premier Bumbles can take full responsibility for the decisions he makes, whether chooses to follow or not follow professional advice. But, like all craven politicians, he knows a scapegoat when he sees one and will always have one handy to use as a distraction from his own bad decisions and his unwillingness to take responsibility for them.
Phlogiston: Perhaps not kind, exactly. I was wondering if her previous experience under the wheels made her feel a little more feisty than usual. DJC
Regarding the economic update and the sunnier revenue figures, does anyone appreciate the irony of much of that increase being due to higher personal income tax revenues. In other words, our apparent economic upturn will lead to more money for the loathed-in-Alberta equalization pot that we’ve actually been drawing on in recent times. How will Kenney and the gang explain that?
On another topic: How do Albertans feel about Atco getting caught illegally skimming Alberta consumers?
Remembering SNC Lavalin.
https://globalnews.ca/news/8215104/snc-lavalin-former-executives-charged-fraud-rcmp/
In Alberta, the RCMP investigate fraud, too. Somehow i it takes years and we never hear anything more.
Keeping with the dark Alberta comedy, it appears that, in another one of his prolific tweets, Brett Wilson has challenged the threatened lawsuit against Kenney by various environmental advocacy organizations. Wilson declared, in a tweet, that he will fund Kenney’s defence, effectively sidelining any notion of the Alberta government footing the bill. Further, Wilson boasts that he will not only back any amount a defence will cost, but it will win. Yes. Brett Wilson has already claimed victory.
I recall he claimed victory in Calgary’s municipal election and then threw a fit at the result.
JUST ME: The UCP are in so much doo doo, that Brett Wilson won’t be able to help them.
The one piece of good news in the newly deferred vaccine mandate at AHS: those anti-vaxx staff will have to pay out of pocket for those tests.
Where does the cognitive bias gifted, logic fallacy imbued, libertarian, don’t tread on me, hyper-individualistic, anti-science, contrarian, hypocritical streak that seems to infect about 1/3 of Albertans come from? I like living here and enjoy debating and engaging folks with a diversity of ideas… but there is a segment of the population that seems almost TFG and disconnected from any shared reality. It scares me sometimes, to be honest.
DAVID WILLS: Just look at the comments on publications, such as this. It’s scary and unsettling to see how selfish people are.
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/what-christmas-gatherings-will-look-like-across-canada-for-the-vaccinated-and-unvaccinated