A number of scientists were prevented from expressing their views and sharing certain data during the pandemic, while provincial officials had access to only select information to make decisions at crucial moments, says the physician who led Alberta’s COVID-19 response report.
“Sometimes it seemed like people weren’t allowed to say certain things, but you could say other things. You had to follow a certain set of pre-scripted talking points,” he added. “That’s not science, and so as a scientist, we need to hear all of them.”
One of the report’s findings was that decision makers were not given all available data when shaping the province’s pandemic response, Davidson said.
“It appeared that only certain data sets were given to the decision-makers to make decisions in a very critical time,” he said. “That’s what we see in our report, and I can’t comment on the motive—why, who or how—but that’s what we saw. People weren’t making decisions based on all of the available data.”
Davidson cited the debate on masking as an example where not all scientific information was taken into account.
“We had all these peer-reviewed scientific research papers written on masking, showing how they work and how they don’t, and you couldn’t talk about it,” he said.
“So decisions are made on very scarce data, and I can’t fault anybody making decisions under that situation, because you’re trying to do your best.”
Asked by reporters to respond to the “anti-science” criticism, Alberta’s premier said it’s important that “contrarian voices” are not silenced when it comes to science, and that her government would listen to “every voice” and make assessments based on evidence.
“I know there’s been a narrative, and the narrative has been enforced by shouting down contrarian voices,” she added. “I think restoring the right of doctors to be able to speak their minds without punishment from their colleges, I think that’s going to be important too.”
Davidson, who was terminated from his position as associate clinical professor at the University of Alberta for his stance against some public health measures, said criticism toward the task force report is “good” because it’s part of “public discourse.”
“We need to sit down, and if somebody feels that the report missed something, [had] bias, or we missed something, I want to know about it,” he said.
Vaccine Effectiveness
Some of the report’s recommendations included halting the use of COVID-19 vaccines without full disclosure of their potential risks, ending their use in healthy children and teenagers, and conducting further research into their effectiveness.“The long-term safety of the vaccines is undetermined due to their rapid deployment and limited follow-up,” reads the document.
The task force reviewed reports of deaths and injuries attributed to the vaccines, as well as a known risk of myocarditis, particularly in young males. Davidson said patients should have been made aware of the risks of the vaccines, and that the province should have conducted real-time testing to assess the vaccine’s effectiveness before enforcing it.
“When you have a pandemic, you do obviously take more risks than you normally would, I understand that. So then, let’s have active surveillance that’s open to the public, so that in real time, we can watch how it’s going,” he said.
“We can’t be doing things in a secret. We need full transparency, so that in real time we can see if it’s working the way we want it to be working.”
Davidson also questioned the rationale for vaccinating children. According to the report, risk of COVID-19 infection or death is associated with age, with the elderly being most at risk. In addition, there is limited data on how effective the vaccines are at preventing severe illness in children, the report says, noting that COVID-19 vaccines were not designed to halt transmission of the virus.
“If it didn’t stop transmission, and if it had any risk of poor outcome for a child, and the chance of them dying from COVID was so low, why did we [vaccinate them]? And why are we still doing that? I don’t understand that,” he said.
Patient and Doctor Autonomy
Any future pandemic response plan should “balance people’s autonomy and their personal rights to the overall rights of the community,” said Davidson.He argued people should not have been made to take vaccines against their will.
“There needs to be patient autonomy. I can’t force a medical procedure or treatment on you now, and we shouldn’t have done it then,” he said, adding that “forcing” can include the threat of losing one’s job for not complying.
Masking, Cost of Lockdowns
The report suggests that non-pharmaceutical interventions, like school and business closures, mandatory masking, and social restrictions, resulted in high social and economic costs “with limited relative benefit.” Some of the consequences, says Davidson, included increased suicide rates and overdoses.He said lockdowns caused many people to lose their jobs, and the resulting unemployment, in addition to home isolation, was “mentally hard on people.”
“That’s an unintended consequence of the lockdowns that I don’t think we considered, to be honest with you,” he said.
Davidson also questioned the effectiveness of masking to curb the spread of the virus. According to the report, there is “a weak evidence base” for the effectiveness of continuous masking in preventing respiratory illnesses, including COVID-19. “The number of COVID-19 infections did not decrease despite the implementation of mask mandates and widespread vaccination,” reads the document.
Davidson said masking measures affected some individuals more than others, especially those with past trauma who felt “afraid” or “overwhelmed” when wearing masks. “We heard from lots of people with respiratory illnesses that couldn’t wear a mask,” he said. “They just couldn’t breathe well.”
Another unintended consequence of masking, he said, was more children needing speech therapy. “I was talking with a speech therapist in Alberta, and the increase in speech therapy consults when the masks rolled out were substantial, to say the least, because children learn from watching you, listening to you.”
Forming the Task Force
Davidson said he reached out to many people to be part of the pandemic response review, following a request from the premier to include different perspectives to have a “balanced” task force.Some experts decided not to be part of it for various reasons, said Davidson, but despite having a smaller team than expected, they managed to engage with several “world-renowned” experts. One of them, listed as a contributor, was Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor of health policy at Stanford University, and the Trump administration’s nominee to lead the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
“So our little team was able to tap into a broad group, and we sat down with people that agreed with us in this area and didn’t agree in that area,” he said. “That’s how it should be. If everybody agreed with me, they’re probably wrong.”
Davidson noted the report has a disclaimer, saying that those listed as contributors don’t necessarily agree with the report’s findings. He mentioned the case of Dr. John Conly, a physician and former head of the University of Calgary’s medical department, whose name was mistakenly included in the report’s bibliography after task force members consulted some of his research work.
Following the report’s release, Conly requested his name be removed. “We withdrew his name, but unfortunately there was some change in staff that was looking after the report, and it didn’t get changed,” said Davidson.
“I apologized to him, and we’ve talked about it since, and I’m super grateful for him taking the opportunity to talk to us.”
Davidson, who is still practicing medicine, said he hopes the report sparks scientific discussion.
“It’s been a lot of work, writing this report. I really enjoyed it, and I hope that it makes a difference,” he said. “And I hope it opens public scientific discourse above all.”
