Alberta Health Services letters tell COVID-19 long-haulers specialized long-COVID clinics are being shut down

Anti-vaxxers have taken over the UCP. Soon, while the denials are everywhere, all vaccines will be unable as a “cost-cutting” measure. Cost-cutting in the name of the ‘Woo’ belief that so called “Big Pharma” makes up reasons to perpetuate the demand for their products. As for useful vaccines, like the Polio vaccine, which ended that disease’s spread over thousands of years, were disregarded. “What’s Polio? Never heard of it.” is the usually reply. Of course, Polio was irradiated thanks to the immunity that the Polio vaccine brought. And any other disease that has afflicted millions through the hundreds of decades are considered myths that Big Pharma profits from.

We are on the cusp of falling into a new dark ages, where science is ridiculed and falsehood is knowledge. Queen Danielle is playing along with this collapse, like so many others, for fun and profit. First long COVID clinics are folded, then what else? Didn’t Smith once say that cancer was the victim’s fault? One could easily pigeon hole all illness into victim blaming just to end public funding for their treatment. And it’s only going to get worse.

The struggle to ensure that Reason and rational thought prevails is no longer a debate; it has become war. In the US, they are in middle of an election cycle that could forever change their society for the worst possible outcomes. If the US elections fail to hold back the tide of ignorance and stop its practitioners, they will have a real and hot war. Alberta and Canada will not be immune from chaos that is unfolding.

Perhaps the idea is to direct the long-Covid patients to a Shopper’s Drug Mart, where the pharmacist can diagnose and treat them? Or the pharmacist’s-assistant? Or maybe the lady working in cosmetics?
Maybe they have a direct line on some ivermectin (horse de-wormer) supplies, or a stockpile of that Turkish Tylenol.

On “X” there are some interesting threads from doctors (real ones) commenting on the latest from that rapidly-developing area of commercial health care in pharmacies.

Dr. Shamji: “Mr. Leger (CEO of Shopper’s Drug Mart) … believes pharmacists “can do 40-60% of what a family physician can do.”

Dr. Meddings: “By the same logic a high school drop-out (who can read) could do 40-60% of what a pharmacist does.”

It could be, David, that Smith’s schmoozing with her fellow nut-bar anti-vaxxers is a factor in the closure of the long-Covid clinics. They would certainly be all over that. Who knows, though? Alberta’s health care policies are so erratic, like herself, and her “loyalties”. That could change in a heart-beat. Her record speaks for itself. If they get in the way of her ambitions they would end up under the bus so fast … like the poor long-Covid sufferers.

A quick review of Danielle Smith’s CV, starting with her monkey-wrenching of the Calgary School Board and curriculating thence to scabrous picket-line crossing, Lake-of-Fire Wildrose irrigation, exogamic bundling of the Wild and jilting of the Rose, Mephitus non grata at K-Boy’s fare-ill party, and artificially intelligent wannabe presidunce of Alberta Independence, will doubtless convince the reviewer that her political-possibility chops are painfully artless. She can’t even genuflect to Take-Back-Alberta fudgerhead, David “Gangrenous Kong” Parker, without appearing to grovel.

Smith was recently summoned to an anti-vax temple in electorally critical Calgary where a few thousand votes in a handful of Cowtown ridings just barely elected the UCP a second term, and where it might eventually be limited to two terms, both under the MAGA Yoke, through a dual-action process of external popularity-erosion (benefiting the former Calgary mayor, now leader of the NDP Opposition) by well-established laws of attraction, and by internal UCP dyspepsia behind which Smith’s TBA-tribulation will inevitably follow the laws of popular revulsion.

Although her compliance seems to hint at at least a modicum of psephological awareness—that is, sensitivity to potentially being sacked into a recycled plastic K-bag before the next scheduled election —it’s nevertheless a net-negative to thus admit, in effect, that the TBA faction, which on its best day comprises only about 1/5th of the province’s electorate, has got the UCP government, and therefore all Albertans, by the proverbial balls. Which inevitably offends the basic principles of democracy.

[O, gods of the pantheon of pithiness, grant me not trespass in the Valley of Proportional Representation, and to keep safely on the forgetful side of the mighty River Lethe so I can’t possibly wonder out-loud why the UCP —and any usurped conservative party anywhere, for that matter— hasn’t promoted the pro-rep electoral system by which domination of the majority of parliamentarians by a small minority holding the balance of power is at least legitimate in some sense. Curiously, the partisan right stoutly defends ‘First-Past-the-Post’ by which it must increasingly cheat to win. It’s all about choices, right?]

Smith often appears ambivalent about what is or is not politic in the re-election sense. Perhaps she simply covers-up a real or, plausibly, superstitious fear of psephological consequences behind her practiced mask of glibness—a possibility supported by her equally curious inconsistency in either appearing, on the one hand, unabashedly Ivermectin-ready or, on the other, scrupulously unscrupulous when minimizing, hiding, excusing or sleazing-through certain sabotages of the provinces beleaguered public health service. She stands —almost proudly—athwart cavalier cautiousness.

Whether TBA radicals intentionally keep their creation on tenterhooks or not, it’s impossible not to notice the intestinal strains their anti-vax vigilance inflicts on the UCP. That alone should induce existential anxiety about re-election, but whether TBA is insidiously stealthy or tactically ham-handed, it is making the government incrementally chop at the revered universal public healthcare tree that the majority of Albertans are vocally worried is seriously undercut already. The truncheon-ligatured TBA seems unperturbed that there is no political payoff from this purely vengeful anti-vax/anti-AHS policy, the party’s fading re-election chances notwithstanding. It reminds of Steve Goodman’s lyric in his wonderful “Lincoln Park Pirates”, a ballad about unethical tow-truck drivers: “What care I for the law?”

TBA is the epitome of the feral, North-Texan libertarian whose notion of ‘freedom’ rests upon “stand-your-ground” grounds and “self-defence” defences that would allow for shooting anyone on the wrong side of the fence, ostensibly of rural private property. It cares not for “snowflake” rules, regulations, and laws that melt upon the furrowed brow of the angry young man, and thus has no use for the real compromising and cooperating arts-of-the-possible; it is unconcerned with the source of policy proposals developed by democratic processes because it has its own it would rather impose on everyone whether the majority likes it or not. What known witchcraft of democratic politics can work with such a solidly redoubted cabal which only corresponds with its indentured parliamentary proxy with purposely ambiguous grunts and jeers? The kind of politics, ironically, that the most politically gormless politician in Alberta history now bows to. That’s ‘what kind.’

Most parties have factions and it’s the art of party politics that keeps them from compromising unity. Every party has one that claims custody of a sacred chalice it deems filled with what the party’s mores ought to be—sort of like a solitary, self-appointed lookout who rarely joins the other baboons in troop deliberations—and, even then, only when in a bad mood. However, it seems axiomatic that when the majority is bossed around by a single, much smaller minority faction, and the party leader and cher praetorian guards, the House leader, the party whip, old-fashioned ward-heelers, &c are also so-cowed, general democratic sensibility eventually condemns the lot.

Such is the path most neo-right parties (globalizing neoliberal usurpers of traditional Tory parties) have elected to take—which is why we hear unvarnished, impolitic hyperbole whenever far-right demagogues preach to the most extreme factions of their respective pseudoCon polities. In fact, it indicates desperation—the kind which hubristically reasons that the extremist minority, despite its repulsiveness and against all odds, is essential to longterm party strategy. If this were the case, the TBA strategy should be to somehow negate rival voters in order to acquire numerical victory for the remainder. Alberta’s secessionist drive seethes with wriggling ingredients borrowed from Redoubterism, anti-immigrant deportations and closed borders, Wexiteerism behind which are discernible features of bigotry and revenge. The ‘logic’ of the one-party, or “zero-party” state demands it. It’s hard to explain TUBCRAP ‘strategy’ otherwise.

Part of the extreme right’s most galling unabashedness is owed to sincere rejection of democratic principles because by them it cannot prevail in the long run. It’s normally impolitic to admit this—and so the far-right goes ahead and admits it, naturally. Faulty as it is, proto-post-democracy relies on the more-moderate factions of a party remaining cowed by its extreme right. Yet this status is betrayed by the partisan-right’s consistent habit of enacting too many, too-intemperate, and too impolitic legislation too quickly as if it has only fleeting opportunity to get it all done which results in hackneyed governance. Here exceptionalistic, ‘what-me-worry’ boasting about the “End of History” is contradicted, for if that were true it needn’t be in such a rash rush.

Given the likelihood the middle-of-the-road electorate will ultimately reject extremism, perverse logic must lead the flagging neo-right to pronouncements from the likes of self-styled saint of transactional-leverage, Donald F tRump, who assured his “Christian” supporters that if they get him elected president this November he’ll “fix” it so they’ll “never have to vote again.” The only thing goofier is the lead-foil cap of the Rapture (which is also a thing in some of these schizophrenic parties of the far-right: to be worn overnight so’s sudden nuclear Armageddon won’t catch you with your nightie up—and maybe a little bit so your friends can’t see you, too).

What other bent logic could sustain the flailing claws of Alberta’s MAGA? As a right-to-carry-firearms aspirant, TBA rationalizes that, even if it is a minority, it’s herd has more firepower, enough to cow or expel even the majority if it has to. This, naturally, is the core of Redoubterism of which the high-prairies, basins and badlands of western NorthAmerica, including Alberta, have long experience owing to remoteness and relative environmental inhospitality. The perennial ingredient of revenge (against ‘the Others’ alleged to have unjustly deprived self-styled righteous libertarians of an heroic past) is particularly unlikely to achieve strategic, or psephological, success and can only be invoked tactically, or performatively by reactionary freakouts, threats and bellicose posturing—we have to accept that and gladly would if only the aspired Redoubters promised to keep to themselves—like anarchism in the style of religious communes. Unfortunately, extremism of the partisan-right has become more pervasive since the total collapse of politically respectful discourse, ‘round abouts Carl Rove and the zenith of neo-right hegemony (c.2001)—and more than ever since the first ‘tRumpichron’ (birtherism), resulting in the perversity of the majority feeling besieged by the minority. When will it ever end?

The Neo-right thought once, back in its heyday— the decade between the Soviet Collapse (for which it claimed a trophy) and 9/11 (whence the recruitment of increasingly reactionary support)—, that it had achieved its pinnacle and would thence keep the clock set at “The End of History” when capitalism had defeated communism once and for all time. The disappointment of “trickledown”, growing chasm of income disparity, and increasingly undeniable scourge of human-caused climate-change should have by now condemned the neo-right’s goal of capitalist dictatorship. The plain dysfunction of MAGA and Brexit and TUBCRAP is appalling to the large majority, perhaps making a thin case that democracy itself is dysfunctional. Remind, however, that the neo-right has long past its best-before date and that the preposterous hyperbole we hear now is truly symptomatic of throes. It can’t last much longer.

Never lose hope. The TBAUCP’s futile attempt at politics will most likely keep it preoccupied with its own existential crises and, once defeated—one way or the other (no, not with guns at a place and time of TBA’s choosing; rather it could become victim of its own schisms and lose parliamentary confidence, for example), it’s constituent parts will crawl off like cells of newly-singled slime-mould after a rollicking convention of multi-gendered reproductive mushroom sex.

It has taken too long, I feel, there’s too much info, but the inevitable end is nearing. I would add that if a few more centre-right moderates were to cut the MAGAstone from around their necks, maybe even create a New Conservative Party (sorry: no points for that name), it would happen a lot quicker.

Be strong, my Alberta friends!