Kenney playing to the crowd with position on vaccine passports
By Letter to the Editor on August 28, 2021.
Editor:
The UCP was elected on a platform which was solidly built around protecting and supporting the economic well being of Alberta. However every time Jason Kenney has made a move he has imperiled our chances for a brighter future. When Kenney zigs the world around him has zagged. His failure to look ahead on many, many issues with any degree of accuracy has rendered the UCP irrelevant.
The latest is the party’s position on vaccine passports.
Rather than recognize that passports would be a way of protecting and insuring that Alberta businesses survive and the health of Albertans protected, he has opted to play to the crowd who respond to sound bites and not well thought out strategy. Once again zigging while the world zagged. Premier, it’s time to get in step with the rest of the thinking world.
Peter Burns
Lethbridge
-1
Agreed. No wonder Kenney’s approval rating is the lowest in the country. Even internal dissent within the UCP party is a big problem for Kenney.
And where is Kenney, Hinshaw and their crony Shandro as the province enters an increasingly dangerous fourth wave? Talk about rats leaving a sinking ship!
On Twitter: UCP caucus chair and Lethbridge East UCP MLA Nathan Neudorf quoted as saying basically, that “the UCP is hopeful to see an accelerated case count, with all unvaccinated people catching COVID. This is our government’s strategy to make it through the 4th wave quickly. And to ‘see what happens’ as schools open.” Reference was made to the accelerated case count in the UK with a rapid decline, although there seems to be some refuting of that by some commentary out of the UK.
It is interesting, though, as to why Kenney, Shandro, or, Hinshaw couldn’t come out and talk about their hopeful, “accelerated case count.” What of the “deaths, long term disabilities, and severe breakthrough cases?” Oh well?
These guys really do seem to me to be more and more cult -like and dangerously so. Another way to define insanity is to visualize a marching band, all moving down the street in the same direction, all their movements choreographed and practiced meticulously; yet there are some in the band who decide to go in the opposite direction, and claim they are moving in the correct direction and manner and all the others are going the wrong way. Those are the current UCP moving against the direction and the tide of the majority; will. And making life miserable and dangerous for many in the mean time.
Respectfully;
That’s also what Hinshaw said, that cases would rise quickly for a month or so, primarily among the unvaccinated, but because they’re mainly younger and so relatively healthier, fewer deaths will result or even hospitalizations which is the ultimate measuring stick. This also corresponds to what Kenney said at the beginning, that it was mostly older people dying from this virus, implying that they would be dying soon anyway, so no worries. Both of these stances are basically accurate, so the UCP is actually being honest and true to form here; they simply value livelihoods above lives. And there IS clearly a connection; lockdowns cost on many levels. But then why dismiss vaccine passports out of hand? That’s contradictory, but also in keeping with rigid ideologues, which is what current conservatives actually are. They aspire to the GOP in that weird, unworkable hybrid of adherence to medieval religious doctrines and rogue, bad boy libertarianism. It’s stumbling badly at the moment with its fundamental psychosis now outed….but “freedumb” remains its endlessly appealing rallying cry for a certain type of people.
Nonetheless, “low information voters” keep falling for this brand of “commonsense” conservatism along with the persistent myth that cutting taxes and public spending is just good fiscal management.
“No drama here, ever” is the accompanying tone, but the drama happens for real in any society unfortunate enough to be saddled with the oxymoron that is conservative “governance,”
Speaking of zigging and zagging, in the medical system and changing the subject just a bit from vaccine coverage (I apologize Peter for doing this to your very important and relevant points)
I just felt it necessary to identify, another thing the UCP has zigged and zagged about is ambulance service and response times.
I understand it took 25 minutes for an ambulance to respond to the scene where the man had his face slashed by an assailant, requiring 17 stiches yesterday. 25 minutes is took long. 25 Minutes is unacceptable.
The LCP response time was 2 minutes. I don’t but any blame on the EMS or paramedics. They were probably tied up at the hospital until AHS would accept their patients.
This appears to be entirely on the UCP who have not addressed the ambulance response time adequately yet. If this is true hopefully some type of enquiry and /or investigation takes place to provide answers and ensure a 25 minute response time does not happen again.
Thank goodness for the expertise of the LPS and all the good Samaritans who jumped into action to help this man in medical distress. I understand a citizen followed the alleged perpetrator and was able to notify LCP of his location, so he could be arrested.
My best wishes go out to the innocent victim and his family for a speedy , effective recovery from this traumatic event
Respectfully,
passports are great. lets have them for aids. lbgtq+2. isis. pc.lib, ndp, ucp.etc, that we we can discriminate because it is legal
Slight exaggeration? 🙂 The COVID passports are probably not for the long term anyway. But, if we need them to visit our relatives in The Netherlands, in the near future, that’s what we would want.
Can we add “author of idiotic comments” to the list?
P Burns is implying vaccine passport is well thought out strategy.
Wrong,!! Just a knee jerk reaction like all other covid reactions from
governments and authorities.
There has not been much consistentcy.
I agree that the messaging on this issue has been confusing at times, but if you look carefully at the advice offered by members of the medical and scientific communities you will see a remarkable degree of consistency in the core advice given. Yes, the advice has changed, but that has been as our understanding of the virus and related matters has evolved. Don’t you remember when the reference point for social distancing — 6 feet — was a hockey stick? That advice remained in place until it was realized that even Zdeno Chara (the tallest player in the NHL) doesn’t use a 6′ stick.
This virus, although a member of a large family of viruses, has not been seen in humans before — that’s why the word “novel” is often used in reference to SARS-Cov-2 — and so there were many unknowns. Thankfully, the international scientific community has worked cooperatively and diligently to answer those questions.
Another cynical, ill – researched, pointless reply….
Referring to above letter??
I believe the the hockey stick comment is pretty close to accurate.
Not sure how much “research” is applied to much of the vaccine/covid
opinions that are expressed here(or promoted and propogandaized )
by certain health authorities.
There are many health professionals who are vaccine skeptics.
To be clear, the point of the hockey stick reference was to demonstrate that because the SARS-Cov-2 virus had never been detected in humans before (that’s why it’s called a “Novel” virus), public health officials were working in the early days with very little information and were doing the best they could. They should have said “socially distance at a distance roughly equivalent to Zdeno Chara’s stick” (his is 5″ shy of 6′), but that would have angered a lot of Canadian hockey fans and possibly generated an “anti social distance” movement to rival the anti-vaxers! Jokes aside, as intelligence about the virus, its genetic code, and how it functions was built, advice was modified accordingly. So, what seems like inconstancy to some, were really the products of scientific advances. That is how science generally progresses, in relatively small incremental steps.
As for the volume of research that went into the mRNA vaccines, I do know something about that too. The fundamental research in this area dates back nearly 50 years, and the first paper reporting the successful application of the technology (in a laboratory setting) was published in 1990. Researchers have been working on this technology for a long time, and many challenges have been met and bested.
I was referring to Plushies comment. But since I am here: There are “many” health care professionals who are vaccine skeptics. Name at least one of them.
Still waiting for at least one name to back up your assertion that there “ are many health professionals who are vaccine skeptics.”