Alberta’s health-care system suffered a “critical failure” in its COVID-19 messaging, according to the province’s pandemic review task force, which says mask mandates and lockdowns were harmful and recommends a halt to COVID-19 vaccine use without full disclosure of their potential risks.
The task force recommends halting the use of COVID-19 vaccines without full disclosure of their potential risks, ending their use in healthy children and teenagers, conducting further research into their effectiveness, establishing support for vaccine-injured individuals, and providing an opt-out mechanism from federal public health policy.
The Alberta COVID-19 Pandemic Data Review Task Force also said it found a “critical failure of Alberta’s health system” that remains a concern in how pandemic information was developed and shared. It added that “regulatory governance failed during the COVID-19 pandemic,” and that when “centralized entities” are at risk of “capture by special interests,” it could result in the implementation of “biased policies and measures.”
The report says Canada’s pandemic response had a “range of unintended consequences” that affected various aspects of society and individual well-being and that “collateral damage” from the response will be felt for decades by millions of people, according to international research.
The report raises a number of questions about the safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines, mask mandates, and the province’s emergency response approach, among other things.
“We pose specific questions about failures to protect high-risk Albertans, non-pharmaceutical interventions –including their collateral harms, misleading risk communication, downplaying infection-acquired immunity, masks, testing, vaccine effectiveness and safety, therapeutics, and epidemiological modelling,” write the authors, headed by Dr. Gary Davidson, former chief of emergency medicine at the Red Deer Regional Hospital Centre.
COVID-19 Vaccines
The report questions why vaccines were pushed on age groups with low levels of risk from COVID-19 infection.“Healthy minors were at low risk of serious COVID-19 infection and yet were recommended vaccination despite known and unknown safety risks inherent in the vaccines,” it says.
“Pregnant women in the Pfizer randomized controlled trial did not fare well. It is unknown why vaccines were recommended in Alberta to pregnant women and those of childbearing age.”
The report notes that Pfizer vaccine safety data from the three-month post-authorization trial was “alarming,” with 1,223 deaths during the trial attributed to the vaccine and 42,086 injuries within four days of vaccination—45 percent of them between the ages of 18–50, despite that age group having negligible risk from COVID-19 infection.
The report adds, “Lipid nanoparticles have a well described toxicity in scientific literature after multiple injections.”
The task force says it did not see any evidence that vaccines were superior to natural immunity and government messaging was wrong to indicate otherwise.
“Studies demonstrated similar levels of immune response between vaccinated individuals and those who have recovered from COVID-19, indicating the non-superiority of vaccine-acquired immunity compared to infection-acquired immunity,” the report says.
“A balanced approach to communicating about immunity, avoiding coerced vaccination in populations with either high levels of infection-acquired immunity or low baseline susceptibility to severe disease, should be pursued to promote truth and transparency in public health messaging.”
The report says regulatory bodies’ or colleges’ position of supporting government health measures did not consider that “novel” vaccine technologies may not have the same characteristics as previous practices.
Masks
Another finding is that masking is ineffective as a protection means, despite it being mandatory at times during the pandemic.“It is inaccurate to suggest that masking is entirely safe and provides effective protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection,” the authors write.
They say there is an absence of evidence showing masking—whether medical/surgical masks or N95 types—protects against respiratory illness.
“The efficacy of masking to prevent viral transmission remains a contested area of study, however an overwhelming amount of research has determined that masking outside of healthcare settings does not provide statistically significant protection against transmission,” the report says.
Lockdowns and Emergency Processes
The authors also note that lockdown policies brought significant loss to society.“Our review demonstrates that ‘lockdowns’ did not substantively reduce transmission or off-set the use of healthcare resources and have come at considerable social and economic costs,” the report says, adding that researchers and decision-makers in the province at the time “overlooked crucial data” when forming policies.
“Given the data and information available, the Task Force is unclear as to why Alberta continued to implement containment measures through policy and mandates when the information at the time did not justify such aggressive actions.”
The task force says that even though at the time of the pandemic Alberta had a previously established emergency response process that included disease containment while minimizing disruption to society, the province used a different process and team that ignored important issues.
Previously established processes, the report notes, involved steps to control the spread of disease, while mitigating societal disruption, minimizing adverse economic impacts, and supporting efficient and effective use of resources during response and recovery.
Therapeutics and Testing
The report notes inconsistencies in the use of evidence when it came to vaccines and controversial drugs used to treat COVID-19, such as ivermectin.Alberta Health Services’ Scientific Advisory Group (SAG) “used product monographs to recommend against ivermectin for COVID-19 treatment but did not apply the same scrutiny to vaccines regarding transmission,” it says.
“Although COVID-19 vaccine monographs do not address viral transmission, the SAG claimed that widespread vaccination was most likely to reduce community transmission” compared to non-pharmaceutical interventions.
The report says there are indications of potential benefits from some of the interventions and that further research should be done.
“Studies show promising results for ivermectin in terms of viral clearance and reduced hospitalization and death rates,” it says.
Following the Data
Further, the report says Alberta’s regulatory colleges did not appear to conduct internal reviews of studies and data. The authors say the colleges followed directives from Alberta’s chief medical officer of health and did not engage in “due diligence.”Following the recommendations of Alberta Health Services or Health Canada “does not demonstrate that Colleges conducted independent and thorough reviews of the underlying studies and data,” they wrote.
Additionally, the task force says the province’s ability to find effective solutions to the virus was limited by the threats and disciplinary action against health professionals, who were “constrained” “into a narrow band of COVID-19 responses acceptable to health regulators.”
Regulatory bodies “should not have the power to stifle scientific inquiry and debate,” it says.
The report also notes the challenges and limitations of developing accurate models for diseases, especially in the early days of the pandemic, and says modelling should only be one source of information used in decision-making.
Premier Smith established the task force in November 2022 with a mandate to look at the COVID-19 response and offer recommendations to better manage a future pandemic.
The task force says the way the province developed and shared COVID-19 emergency response data, information, and messaging was “a critical failure of Alberta’s health system and is an ongoing concern.”
“When a few centralized entities are at risk of capture by special interests, it can result in the implementation of biased policies and measures in response to public health emergencies like COVID-19. The immediate and long-term effects of this institutional capture may go unrecognized and underappreciated,” the report said.
Other authors of the report include Dr. Blaine Achen, assistant clinical professor for anesthesiology and pain medicine at the University of Alberta; Dr. David Vickers, statistical associate and epidemiologist with the Centre for Health Informatics at the University of Calgary’s Cumming School of Medicine; Dr. Justin Chin, emergency medicine specialist at the University of Alberta Emergency Department; David Speicher, PhD, a molecular virologist and clinical epidemiologist; and Angela Wood, who holds a juris doctor degree.
Contributors to the report include Dr. Bryam Bridle, associate professor of viral immunology in the Department of Pathobiology at the University of Guelph and Kevin Bardosh, affiliate assistant professor at the University of Washington.
