Alberta Health Services yesterday announced it will dump the responsibility for masking to slow the spread of COVID-19 in its acute care facilities on the leadership of its regional zones throughout Alberta and individual sites.
In a memorandum on “enhanced masking at AHS sites” published on the province-wide health authority’s website yesterday afternoon, AHS indicated it will now leave the responsibility for determining whether enhanced masking is necessary to local or regional leadership.
The statement contains a link to a more technical and detailed “Use of Masks to Prevent Transmission of COVID-19” directive, which takes effect today.
The memorandum says in part “this directive supports zone and site leadership to determine if enhanced masking for staff, physicians, midwives, students, volunteers and contracted providers is necessary.” A press release also published yesterday makes the same statement.
This seems misleading, though, as the directive arguably does the opposite, leaving zone and site leaders who are aware of the hostility of Alberta’s United Conservative Party government to public health measures to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 on their own in the event they perceive a need to require enhanced masking on their sites.
Isn’t the result of this more likely to be paralysis and unwillingness to adopt more stringent infection controls, even when clearly necessary, to placate Premier Danielle Smith and the COVID-denying, anti-vaccine Take Back Alberta faction that now appears to dominate the UCP?
In turn, the new localized policy suggests hesitation to stand up for sound infection control and public health practice among the current top executive leadership of AHS, put in place by the Smith Government.
In other words, even though the details of Health Minister Adriana LaGrange’s plan to “decentralize,” “reconfigure” or plain dismantle AHS are not yet known by the public – and may never be in full – this sure sounds like an early instance of local decision-making, whether or not it’s in the interest of patient or public safety.
While there is some direction about where enhanced masking can be required – “patient care areas, elevators/staircases/hallways, common areas, gift shops and cafeterias where patient contract could occur in acute care facilities” – the policy suggests no one at the top is likely to take responsibility for the decision.
The policy does advise zone and site leaders that “where the enhanced masking is implemented,” it will be required for patients, designated support persons, and visitors in Emergency Departments.
The actual directive document defines Zone Executive Leadership as “the leadership team consisting of a Chief Zone Officer and a Zone Medical Director, which shares responsibilities and accountabilities for the clinical and operational decision-making of their designated zone.” Site leadership is defined as “individual(s) responsible for a specific facility of operation within AHS.”
The memorandum also indicates sites where masking is “NOT required” – boldface and all-caps in the original. These include anywhere not within an Emergency Department or acute-care facility.
The memo and press release also include bromides encouraging visitors and designated family support persons to stay at home if they’re sick, and to wait 10 days after the onset of COVID-19 symptoms before returning to the facility.
The press release also says somewhat ambiguously that where the enhanced measures are implemented, “no patient shall be denied services.” Presumably this includes patients who refuse to wear masks as supposedly required.
The message between the lines of these documents is that in Alberta today, health care policies are driven more by political considerations than public health and patient safety.
UPDATE: Here’s what David Parker, supremo of the UCP’s powerful Take Back Alberta faction, thinks of even this lame AHS policy, which might as well have been designed to fail for the reasons outlined above. “Masks do not work,” Mr. Parker tweeted this morning, inaccurately but with characteristic passion. “The fact that AHS is trying to push them again shows that a hostile and communist ideology has taken over our health care system and is defying the democratic will of the people. They must be removed from any decision making roles.” Mr. Parker’s tweets sound increasingly unhinged. Everyone he disagrees with, it would seem, is a communist. Nevertheless, at the moment he is a well-connected and influential figure in the UCP, and he may be more powerful after next month’s UCP annual general meeting when he hopes TBA’s cadres will take over the remaining nine positions on the party board. To cite the ever-popular Munich analogy, AHS’s pusillanimous leaders would be smarter to stand up to him now, than later, when he has consolidated his power.
DJC- re the pic….perchance was that taken when someone(?Calgary news?) suggested that both she and Ms LaGrange should be first to get the shots …? lol
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t this exactly what went wrong with JK and Dr Henshaw…are they arbitrarily leaving the zone/ site leaders out to dry before anything, let me see “bad” happens.
Not our fault/responsibility, because I listened and will do better and not interfere with…..
“Plausible deniability ”
imho…I just have to look like I’m doing the right thing…
Masking everyone is a huge waste. Make the vulnerable wear them.
oh! you mean humans!
Why didn’t anyone else figure that out?
Of course we should only mask the vulnerable, you asshat. No masking cats and dogs, automobiles or planes, bugs and insects. Just the humans.
What a dork!
Go away!
Until the first lawsuits start a-flying.
Everything Alberta’s TBA government has ever done has been driven by political considerations rather than for the good of the people. They don’t even pretend to hide this. The fact that most Alberta voters are unsophisticated makes TBA’s manipulation that much easier.
Call me a crazy left-wing Marxist, communist, or whatever, but I have this nutty idea that hospitals are places you go to in order to get healthier. I guess the Batshit -led UCP believes otherwise. By all accounts nearly 20% of Covid cases are hospital acquired. Why would anyone in their right mind refuse to invoke masking precautions in a healthcare center? It doesn’t make sense. Maybe in Alberta we should re-designate hospitals as morgues? We should all be asking whether this “government” is even committed to the health and wellness of Albertans? It would appear from their actions that they aren’t. What a disgrace.
There are going to be lawsuits aplenty.
So site leaders who recommend masking could be in conflict with zone leaders who do not. And zone leaders may disagree with neighbouring zone leaders about what to do. Sounds like a perfect recipe for chaos and disaster.
Thus another excuse to disband AHS back into regional fiefdoms.
Cue the typical neoliberal creep towards privatization, because “the system is broken.”
Can we assume that since germs, like viruses, are invisible to the naked eye, the TBA-UCP will soon ban handwashing and sterilization of medical equipment? Who cares if linens are clean? Break the laundry contract! If you have a robust immune system, surely you can survive anything! If not, que sera.
Everything we need to know, we learned in kindergarten. Back in the day, kindergarteners got a visit from a public health nurse, who put “germs” on their hands and sent them to wash up. Afterwards, the “germs” could still be seen under black light on many little hands.
Homeschoolers don’t go to kindergarten. That explains everything. Protect our children: send them to kindergarten and public schools.
Boy, I’m glad I stocked up on these again:
https://www.costco.ca/medsup-kn95-disposable-5-layer-face-mask%2c-20-pack.product.100672009.html
$11.49 per box plus shipping. Protect yourselves and your loved ones, friends. The TBA guv’mint won’t protect you—unless you own an oil well.
(NOTE: the preceding is an unpaid, volunteer public-service announcement.)
Hello David and fellow commenters,
I have put a link below to an article about the plight of Mary Lou Retton, a U S gold medal winner in gymnastics at the Olympics, who is, according to her daughter, very ill but has no insurance. One important point that the article makes is that millions of Americans have no health insurance and millions more are under-insured. This demonstrates that it is absolutely crucial to protect the provisions of the Canada Health Act to maintain our publicly funded health care system and pressure politicians to keep our health care properly funded and functioning properly. Not allow it to be destroyed by these politicians who want to privatize everything in sight and to destroy our health care system.
At the risk of being repetitive, I will mention that, in the mid-1990s, our neighbour in Houston received a bill for $380,000 for air ambulance and health care for her and her daughter following a motor vehicle collision. This bill was after insurance had paid its share and the hospital where they received care provided some free and some discounted care since our neighbour worked there. This would be around $700,000 Canadian now. We don’t want this to ever happen in Canada.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/mary-lou-retton-insurance-olympics-crowd-funding-b2428284.html
Thank you.
When and where is the upcoming UCP convention and TBA takeover? I feel like a road trip and I still have my “NON” sign from the ‘95 referendum.
Lefty: Nov. 3 and 4, BMO Centre at Stampede Park in Calgary. Alas if you’re not a UCP member, the cost of an observer pass is rather steep: $999. Even adult members must pay $329. More information is found here: https://www.unitedconservative.ca/agm-2023/ DJC
I shall park my wheelchair outside the main doors and maybe, just maybe, David Parker will cure me with his anti-communist pixie dust. If not, Fang (my Alsatian service dog) might bite his butt.
If one needs even more proof of David Parker’s unhinged, foaming at the mouth rabid brand of crazy, one need look no further than this video Parker posted to the TBA feed on X.
https://x.com/DavidJPba/status/1710487931599896739?s=20
And Parker has big ideas for health care? I guess faith healing will be a treatment option soon enough.
Laying on of hands and holy water will be tax deductible health expenditures.
Aside from Parker slandering anyone who understands the Germ Theory with
the label “communist”, what does he mean when he says these Health Care Workers should be “removed” from their positions. As in, what? Burned at the stake? Danielle Smith’s health care go-to person is clearly unhinged.
Irene: Adriana LaGrange, as the UCP’s Education Minister, sure didn’t care about the safety of school kids and teachers in the public education system, during the Covid-19 pandemic. Her nephew is a senior manager at one of the meat processing facilities in Alberta, and foolishly had a back to work order, when Covid-19 was running rampant, and employees got sick. The E-Coli outbreak at daycares in Alberta, is another example of the UCP’s foolishness in action. Cut red tape! Cut red tape! Cut red tape! The consequences mean zilch to the UCP. Lawsuits will be happening. I do agree with that.
“You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.”
The exception arises if you are an ‘Albertan’ with an imaginary sense of both self importance and perennial victimhood. The political paranoid style is not imaginary, as it is a well crafted tactic used to manipulate the soft headed, emotionally volatile rubes.
The circles that the fellow ideological travelers find themselves confined to are limited, therefore; the language and rhetorical style is similar if not the same:
1. “The fact that AHS is trying to push them again shows that a hostile and communist ideology has taken over our health care system and is defying the democratic will of the people.”
2. “Cooper goes on to suggest that a “made-in-Canada Marxist fundamentalism” will be “led by the successors to Marx’s proletariat who, in the Canadian context, can only be the racially oppressed First Nations.”
And any way it is sliced, diced, or parsed it still amounts to the same tired, old PR Alberta victimhood bullshit, that is for example:
“. . . bullshitters misrepresent themselves to their audience not as liars do, that is, by deliberately making false claims about what is true. Rather, bullshitters seek to convey a certain impression of themselves without being concerned about whether anything at all is true. They quietly change the rules governing their end of the conversation so that claims about truth and falsity are irrelevant. . . . although bullshit can take many innocent forms, excessive indulgence in it can eventually undermine the practitioner’s capacity to tell the truth in a way that lying does not. Liars at least acknowledge that it matters what is true.”
3. The lobbyist/talk show host that pretends to “speak truth to power”.
4. There will always be a willing Alberta audience for dishonesty, misrepresentation, and the political PR bullshit of pseudo religious useful idiots. So it is appropriate that:
“The American idiom “to speak with a forked tongue” means to tell lies, to otherwise verbally deceive someone, to make empty promises, or to say one thing but to do another. The saying comes from the fact that a “forked tongue” invokes images of a snake or serpent. Snakes have bifurcated tongues, and have been associated with evil since ancient times. Satan disguised himself as a serpent in the Bible in order to make deceptive promises.”
Wow! Looks like we are embracing a 2 level decision process where we have the site leader ( political hack ) and the site health leader ( a doctor ) facing off ! Sounds like USSR decision making !!!
And we know how it will turn out
I have been away on a cruise down the west coast of California with mostly Canadians from the Vancouver area and they certainly think Albertans are idiots for electing Smith. They can’t believe how stupid she is, and how dumb Albertans are.
As a former Royal Bank Manager I can’t believe that she is so stupid she thinks getting out of the Canada pension plan is a smart idea, when we all know that provinces with solid stable economies are the ones who have kept this plan working properly for the good of all Canadian seniors. Bringing it to the most unstable economy in all the provinces in Canada because of our up and down oil industry proves how stupid she really is . During the last oil industry crash in 2014 it was estimated that it created unemployment for 183,000 Albertans. In other words they weren’t paying into the Canada Pension Plan . So where will Smith find the money to run the plan properly when it happens again and we know it will.
To add to her stupidity she scraped the green energy projects that could have created 24,000 jobs to help pay for this scheme, that’s how dumb she is. Now she wants to waste another $7.5 million on proving how stupid she is, just like her pal Jason Kenney and his “Foreign corporations are attacking our oil industry and wasting $3.5 million trying to prove it when not one single oil executive agreed.
We do live in cynical times. Of course, this isn’t helped by every shade of charlatan and quick-buck artist, plying their grift on various platforms, including public office.
At this time, part of the world will soon be embroiled in another war, for the fun of fanatics, and the profit of the military industrial complex. The choice was guns or butter; these days, there will be less and less butter, but plenty more guns of every description.
Mo’ popcorn.