After saying they would not give any of their vaccines to Canada (or Mexico) until every American was vaccinated first, President Biden decided to be magnanimous and announced that “1.5 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine arriving from U.S. on Tuesday.” To be clear, America isn’t “giving” us the vaccine or even “selling” it, they are only “loaning” it, which implies that somewhere in the future we are expected to give it back when there are more supplies. Moreover, it is not horribly generous as America has not approved the British developed Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine even for emergency use which means the five million doses that the USA is sitting on right now is basically going to waste. But, beggars can’t be choosers and given Canada doesn’t have its own Covid-19 vaccine production; we are at the mercy of the generosity of strangers and should take anything we can get.
But the real problem is our own health authorities and the federal government which seems to be incapable of getting a single public health policy issue right during this pandemic. I would blame all governments but the provinces seem to have done a reasonably good job in actually triaging and distributing the vaccines that they do get to the most at risk populations. The clear problem is not actually getting jabs into arms, where every province has a much higher capacity to do more daily injections than they currently are, but actually getting sufficient vaccine doses in the first place. The supply problem caused by hoarding in America and Britain are well known and the rest of the world and the European Union is rapidly losing patience with the whole situation given they have exported over 20m doses to the United Kingdom which has a much higher vaccination rate while receiving zero in return. As the BBC reports, “Coronavirus: EU and UK try to end row with ‘win-win’ on vaccines.”
But with a further 1.5m doses of AstraZeneca on the way from the US; what is Canada’s public health officials’ policy on this particular vaccine (which the UK has been using en-masse on its own population for the past three months). Well, first we have this 1 March 2001 announcement that, “AstraZeneca-Oxford’s COVID-19 vaccine not recommended for seniors, Canadian committee says“. “The National Advisory Committee on Immunizations (NACI) has recommended against using the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine in people aged 65 and older, although Health Canada has authorized it to be used in adults of all ages.” This had clear policy impacts as Alberta, for example, was vaccinating those over 80 at the time and then rushed to open AstraZeneca vaccinations for those under 65 who wanted to “jump the queue” and get their shots earlier. So high was the demand that Alberta ran out of the AstraZeneca vaccine before they managed to get the age below 60 as so many people signed up as they reduced the age requirement by a year daily starting at those aged 64.
It took over two weeks for NACI to reverse its decision as this 15 March 2021 report suggests, “Canada will recommend AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine for those over 65.” “Following this careful review, NACI decided to expand recommendations for the use of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine to include those 65 years of age and over,” the documents read.”
But that’s not the end. Two weeks after that, we have this news breaking today on 29 March 2021, “Immunization committee to recommend provinces stop giving AstraZeneca vaccine to those under 55.” “Canada’s National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) is expected to recommend today a pause in the use of the AstraZeneca-Oxford COVID-19 vaccine on those under the age of 55 because of safety concerns, sources told CBC News.” “The updated guidelines will be issued later today, according to sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The expected change comes following reports of rare blood clots in some immunized patients.”
Really? WTF. So does this mean that AstraZeneca should only be use for a very narrow age group between 55-64? How does that even make any sense? But that’s exactly what happening with “Dr. Joss Reimer, the medical lead on Manitoba’s vaccine implementation task force, said that the province also would pause its deployment of the vaccine among people under 55 because of a ‘very rare subtype, one specific type of blood clot.’ She said that while there have been no complications reported in Canada, ‘out of an abundance of caution’ Manitoba will restrict the shot to people 55 to 64, for now.”
The problem with all this is that NACI and Canada’s public health policy overall, has been flip-flopping more than a fish out of water. This naturally leads to skepticism in the public and an increase in vaccine hesitancy which is precisely what you don’t want at this stage of the game. “Dr. Zain Chagla, an infectious diseases physician and medical director of infection control at St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton, said the vaccine has already raised concerns from the public because the clinical trials underestimated its effectiveness, did not enroll enough people over 65 and lacked key data because few participants actually got infected with COVID-19. ‘People are already hesitant around this vaccine from that,’ he said. ‘And even if you do get better data to support its use you now still have to fight against these three different streams of negativity towards this vaccine.'”
Dr. Nathan Stall, a geriatrician at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto and a member of NACI said, “Overall, what has happened with the AstraZeneca vaccine has been very, very unfortunate from almost the get-go.” “So many things, unfortunately, went wrong along the way.” “Then of course, people see a product that I think they perceive as inferior,” he said. “Secondly, [the initial shipment] expires on April 2, so people feel like this is sort of like this second rate product that’s imminently expiring that the government is trying to get rid of.” Stall said all of those factors combined have led to a “very, very understandable but unfortunate perception” that AstraZeneca-Oxford’s is somehow a “bad vaccine” — which simply isn’t true.
I fully agree with this point of view but the problem is our politicians and public health officials are either stupid or incompetent or both in their overall public health messaging. It dates all the way to early 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic was just starting to make the news. As the recently released auditor general’s scathing criticism reports, “Public Health Agency was unprepared for the pandemic and ‘underestimated’ the danger, auditor general says.” “The agency assessed that COVID‐19 would have a minimal impact if an outbreak were to occur in Canada,” said the audit. In fact, right up to the point when the World Health Organization declared coronavirus a global pandemic — on March 11, 2020 — those risk assessments continued to rate the threat to the country as “low.” It wasn’t until the day after — in response to escalating case counts in Canada and rising concerns among provincial governments — that Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam ordered an upgrade to the risk rating, the review said.
And as this 7 April 2021 article in The Globe and Mail suggests, “Dr. Tam’s about-face on masks damages trust at a crucial time.” “Last week, Canada’s top doctor said that if we’re not sick, or haven’t been around someone with a confirmed case of COVID-19, we shouldn’t wear a mask. ‘Putting a mask on an asymptomatic person is not beneficial, obviously if you’re not infected,’ she said. This week, Dr. Theresa Tam did a complete about-face: actually, the use of non-medical masks can help to control the spread of COVID-19, she said. ‘Wearing a non-medical mask, even if you have no symptoms, is an additional measure that you can take to protect others around you in situations where physical distancing is difficult to maintain, such as in public transit or maybe in the grocery store.'”
Throughout this entire Covid-19, our public health officials and politicians have consistently screwed up their policies and messaging. The current shit-show of a mass vaccination rollout is just a continuation of this sad and sorry story. But the truly amazing thing is that nobody, at public health agencies or politicians responsible for public health, not a single one has suffered from this fiasco. I will admit that the middle of a pandemic may not be the right time to go around witch hunting and clearing the deadwood. But I have a sneaking suspicion that after all is said and done, other than a few muted apologies and mea culpa’s, virtually no one in the public sphere will fall on their sword for their complete failure to do their job correctly.
At this point, I would even settle for a simple mea culpa but this is what Doctor Tam had to say in rebuttal of the attorney general’s scathing review in a Globe and Mail article, “Original assessment of COVID-19 as low-risk wasn’t wrong, Tam says, despite Auditor-General’s report.” Surprisingly, it is virtually impossible to find any follow up like this on the Canadian Brainwashing Corporation, so they must have buried the story or not even reported it at all – thanks once again CBC for confirming that you are a bunch of useless government-funded political hacks masquerading as journalists. “Dr. Tam told reporters Friday that she knew before the World Health Organization declared a pandemic on March 11, 2020, that the risk to Canada was high. She said a key turning point for her was when B.C. announced its first case of community spread. That was announced on March 5. The Public Health Agency of Canada raised its risk assessment on March 16. Dr. Tam did not explain to reporters why the agency waited those 11 days to make the change in risk… ‘It was not wrong, it’s just that it is important to also provide what that future state might be like,’ Dr. Tam said. Public-health agencies, she said, ‘need to be prediction organizations and not just being able to assess the risk of that present moment’… ‘The domestic risk at that moment in time for the cases in Canada was relatively low.”
OMG, does Dr. Tam really believe this or has she been drinking too much of Trudeau’s Liberal Kool-aid? Well even the Globe couldn’t stomach that load of cow manure and wrote, “Tam criticized for supporting ‘indefensible’ assessment of COVID-19 risk.” Wesley Wark, an adjunct professor at the University of Ottawa who analyzed the risk assessments during the onset of the outbreak, said Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam’s remarks last week that sought to justify those assessments are “defending the indefensible.” “Bottom line is that [Public Health’s] risk assessments were an utter failure and cannot and should not be defended,” said Mr. Wark, who served on the advisory committee to the Office of the Auditor-General in its preparation of the report.