Alberta healthcare system rife with bullying and discrimination
By Letter to the Editor on November 25, 2021.
Editor:
Love your neighbour?
With interest I have been reading your paper the last few weeks. Also the article about bullying! Now I am very disappointed with what is happening in our country.
Our health care and government is out of control with bullying and discrimination. With a capital letter! In the past year all the front line people did their utmost to care for the sick, and now…? The people who did not go to work because of the rules “got paid”, and now our health care has to get vaccinated or else…leave and no pay!
In the Nov. 10 paper Shannon Phillips mentioned about doctors leaving and the Bigelow Fowler clinic closed, but she did not say why. It’s because these doctors do not want to be bullied into taking the vaccination. So if more health people are being discriminated against they will leave. Being pushed or even having to pay for tests, people don’t want communism in the full daylight.
I agree with the letter in the Nov. 11 paper by Lynn Harrington, this is not the country we remember. I used to lead at meetings to sing O Canada, but now it will be Oh Oh Oh Canada!
Nellie Slingerland
Coaldale
-1
It’s because Doctors do not want to be bullied into taking a vaccination. Do not agree. To take the vaccination is a choice. It is a a Health and Workplace Safety issue which is managed by the employer. The employer in this case is the Alberta Government whom is you and I. As for them leaving you may wish to check out retirements, others who left for other parts of the province for reasons known only to them. Assume, better location for family, closer to aging parents, better places to practice than Lethbridge (in their eyes). None left Lethbridge for better pay. The Doctors are just exercise their choice(to remain unvaccinated), freedom of movement, and freedom to retire. The Doctor shortage is Canada wide and has been well documented since the early 2000’s.
PS. Who wrote this title for your letter. Couldn’t be farther from factual
buckwheat: In answer to your question, the editor writes the titles not the writer. At least that is my experience having written my share of letters to the editor. Side note: I also don’t agree with the writer what-so-ever.
……so let me take a wild guess : you are not vaccinated???
vaccinated or not, there is very little difference, except for discrimination. JPN you are an educated person that has not yet realized that people have been lied to and totally manipulated by the state controlled media. It is 1938,39 revisited.
Oh please , what is next “Big Brother”? Oh wait that was “1984”.
hardly a choice when forced to either vax, or, lose your job…let alone your ability socialise. truly sick when people, who are smart enough to know better and who otherwise believe they support freedom, can be so snide as to purport that the vax is at all in any way, a choice.
Another lecture from biff. Choices have consequences, hence you have a choice.
sure, as the nazis did: you can choose to kill your child, or kill yourself. the state can create “consequences” around sundry realms where it must not enter. recall the “consequences” for being gay; the present “consequences” for choosing to possess or ingest certain plants, shrubs, fungi…the “consequences” for choosing to possess or ingest alcohol a few generations ago. do you simply wish to not see the full picture – that neither the state nor any other party has the right over the one’s body – because you are so bought in to your belief that, because you see the vax as a good choice for you, it is therefore a must for everyone else, too?
in history, Russia, China and Germany executed 125,000,000 of their citizens. This was socialism and discrimination not unlike what is happening now.
What? eh? Executions? Go home phlushie, you’re drunk.
Poor old flushy..living an alternate reality. Get help, nutcase!
First, to compare vaccine mandates and other measures designed to limit the spread of COVID to what went on in Soviet Russia, China and in Germany under the Nazis is stupid, insensitive and objectionable. Such a comparison downplays the horror of state-sanctioned mass murder and genocide.
Second, and a less important point, the Nazis were not socialists, despite the name of the party. The Nazis under Hitler were not interested in state ownership of the means of production or the redistribution of wealth, rather, as noted in a Washington Post piece (link below) their focus was on “safeguarding a social and racial hierarchy” as they conceptualized it.
The right needs to stop falsely claiming that the Nazis were socialists – The Washington Post
Fairness. BIG A–hole – is that really the way you wish to be addressed? Be careful with which Bull you want to fight with, you may get the Horn up your…….
In answer to your question, Elohssa will be just fine. My father had a rather odd sense of humour and, trust me, I’ve been ribbed ferociously about my name ever since elementary school. You can take your place at the end of a very long line.
That said, with which of the two points made in my post do you take exception?
I sincerely apologize. I will just add that someone attacked me, by spelling their name backward, and I will not comment on your points, respecting your Freedom of Speech. Thank you for your kind response.
don’t let the bullies and the brutes get under your skin, phlush. however “advanced” societies come to accept the manner in which they give off control to an elite group, there is always one constant: the elite are always foremost and the best served, while the masses are cared about only when they might present a challenge to the elite.
the biggest threat to our planet are the ultra wealthy oligarchs, who oversee the plunder and unsustainable damage to the planet. they cannot help themselves – that is their nature. the next biggest threat to us all are the bums that earn a great living doing the bidding of the oligarchs. the third biggest threat are the electorate, who support the farce of demockracy with a belief that one can effect change simply by signing off with an illiterate “x” every few years. indeed, every election trumpets “change!” as if.
while we are hypnotised now into thinking all our problems will be solved with vaxes and carbon taxes (amazing, but given the news of past 20 months, it seems we have conquered terrorism, save for the odd mental health issue being acted out and conveniently called an act of terror), the plunder continues…even after yet another gathering of the great greedy – glasgow version- among us. they have been doing that show for 50 years now, and still never a real solution…just keep raking in the coin.
I’m quite familiar with Bigelow Fowler, it was my clinic. The doctors there recommended vaccination. My own doctor left because when the government ripped up his contract, it became uneconomical to run a clinic. He and I are both vaccinated, as are our families. I urge you and your family to adopt this life-saving practice, for your own safety and for the safety of the rest of the community.
Yes, all public health organizations and governments are recommending vaccinations during this pandemic based on medical science. That’s not bullying. That’s public service. I trust the experts. That’s why we have these public health organizations, to study the science and recommend a course of action. Thank goodness I don’t have to do my own scientific evaluation of every research paper posted on Facebook.
“recommending” is one thing – this is well beyond “recommending.” perhaps you have slept in a little the past 20 months? it is either vax or lose your job, lose your ability to socialise…lose the right to autonomy over your body.
mind you, i have slept in late, too. i woke up a couple days ago to discover i missed about 10 letters of the greek alphabet worth of covid mutations. suddenly i awake and find us all the way at omicron. omicron, coming soon to a theatre near you! spoiler alert: omicron is brought to its knees when the populace buys into the latest science that says we must vax the fetus to under 5 group, whilst all other age categories will require a 15th booster and several stem cell injections. ahhh, popcorn and sigh-ence! a great night out for the vaxed.
That’s exactly what’s going to happen. That is, never ending shots for never ending variants; just like influenza.
When just about everyone is vaccinated (including the endless shots), the old and sick people will still be dying from Covid -cough-old age-cough.
When that happens, it’s going to go from, “Blame it on the unvaccinated!” to “Blame it on cats and dogs!” lol
alas – agreed. in fact, bc has just overseen the kill of all mink farms, due to covid spread. wish it was because fur farms are sick, and not the creatures.
the propaganda machine now has us blaming the unvaxed for pushing back cancer treatments. however, might we consider from where it is most of the cancer originates. no way do we want to accept that most cancers are the consequence of exposure to sundry consumer society toxins. cancer does not emerge from god’s thin air, but from the toxic mess that we have sown. but, hey, rather than hit that nail on the head, better to scapegoat people not comfortable with covid vaxes as a cause for concern.
i am guessing that once we run the greek alphabet, new covid variants will be named for mythical monsters and dinosaurs. i would prefer to name them for some of the henchmen currently running china.
Nellie said: In the Nov. 10 paper Shannon Phillips mentioned about doctors leaving and the Bigelow Fowler clinic closed, but she did not say why. It’s because these doctors do not want to be bullied into taking the vaccination.
That’s a good NDPer Nellie, Phillips knows why Doctors have left and it sure was not because of a forced vaccination lol. Out of the 14 Doctors that left Lethbridge only 1 left the country and that Doctor went back to his home country. The other 13? 4 Retired and the remainder went else where in Alberta ! (Easy enough to check all you had to do was walk into Bigelow Fowler and ask.) Phillips knows precisely why the Doctors left Lethbridge, but of course if she were to tell you the real reason, you would not be happy with the NDP!
Phillips represents West and Downtown. When she decided to support our old SCS she invited the Southern Alberta Addicts to Lethbridge. The overflow Drug Addicts spent their time in London Road Park, and behind the Seniors Residence, which coincidentally is the area where all the Doctors renovated older homes because they wanted to be close to the Hospital.
When you are on call 24/7/365 and can get a call at 2AM Doctors and Nurses don’t want to drive long distances even if just a 15 minute drive. They like to be able to walk out their back door and be at work. This can be seen in every city in Canada, so its not exclusive to Lethbridge.
The Doctors started to see their Homes robbed, BMW’s broken into and their garages pilfered.
Now the UCPs contribution
UCP were antagonistic, and could care less if Doctors were pulling long hours because of COVID and knowing Phillips wants to expand the Drug Support Empire here in Lethbridge, the writing was on the wall. Sell your house and move to a lower crime area of Lethbridge, or just move out of Lethbridge. After all, with Phillips not representing Businesses and downtown residents anymore its easy for her to dump anything she does not want on the west side, downtown ! So the Doctors could see the planned changes, as everyone in Downtown sees it!
So unfortunately Ms Phillips will continue to con people like you into believing the Lethbridge Doctors left Alberta. they didn’t, they left Lethbridge for other parts of Alberta. That is not to say that Doctors are not leaving Alberta, I am sure some are, just not our Doctors! In fact if you read the College of Physicians latest quarterly you will find that there was a net increase of 56 Doctors in Alberta over that 15 month period. You will also find that these 56 NET INCREASE occured with over 120 Doctors Retiring. So in actual fact Alberta gained 176 Doctors while Phillips was screaming mass exodus to promo her next election campaign!
So the real question is, why are Doctors not coming to Lethbridge? All you had to do is take a walk down to London Road Park to see the reason. Phillips never bothers to go there, even though she represents the place, because she is to busy planning out her next assault on businesses and our Downtown to even bother!
Myashiro, the “Spearman opinion repeater” is running for NDP- East Lethbridge. Myashiro supported and bully’ed anyone that got in the way of Spearman’s support for the SCS and promo’d the concept that Drug Addicts are “Homeless”. Which I find personally interesting because an Addict pees away $3000 a month on his/her habit and I have yet found this same descriptor for a Senior who makes the same amount of money??
This new label repeated by Spearman led to the Non Profits renaming Drug Addicts to “Homeless People” and of course Spearman then started promo’ing his theory that Homeless people end up being Drug Addicts, why? All in an effort to make Lethbridge think donations are going to the “Homeless” when in fact its all part of the Non-Profits vision of a Southern Rehab Facility that serves the true homeless by accident!
No one builds an SCS, Intox , Detox, or Drug Counselling Facility for Homeless people, so you have to ask yourself whether we are being conned on not. You can almost see the drool leaking out of the mouths of the Non Profits as they line up to feed on the $100,000 Drug Addict, nay, “Client” nay “Homeless person”. If you continue to believe Phillips, you will participate in the con! Myashiro , I am sure he has already made a rubber stamp that says “I agree with whatever Phillips says”. So you can be assured he will cooperate in any way he can to ensure a shaft of the entire Downtown/North/ South Side for Permanent Addict residence because after all, they are Homeless, right and obviously not “West Siders” lol? Neudorf’s TOTALLY silent support for the fiasco happening at the Superlodge daily, will be continued even if he is replaced. You just gotta know that the Mustard Seed group are still drooling over the idea of getting a Hotel/Motel here to add to their $31million real estate empire, they presently own (Revenue Canada Tax submission data), its good to be a NON-PROFIT! I think by this time in 2023 we should have Addicts spread everywhere in Lethbridge (except West Side of course) as all the Politicians appear to like the concept of “spreading the fungus”! If you object to the term Homeless, then move aside Lethbridge Ratepayers, We’re Savin Lives Here!
So to be clear the Politicians at many levels and the Non-Profits intend on destroying the city for 200 addicts, in a population of over 100,000 , do you know why? BUILD IT AND THEY WILL COME! We will suddenly have far more than the 200 Addicts we have quicker than you can utter the word “homeless”. The true homeless? Well we have about 65 and if they get help it will be purely accidental and coincidental!
Nellie, I must admit though your spin on Doctors refusing to take a vaccination is a new one for sure, considering they remained in Alberta and work at other hospitals or Clinics that have the same rules as we had here, because its AHS calling for the vaccinations!
You might want to volunteer for the NDP campaign, you have a great ability to spin things and they appreciate people like you.
not disagreeing with any of this entry. however, theft related to
“drugs” would not at all be an issue were “drugs” legal, as they should be. it is laws that deem “drugs” illegal that causes the prices to be so artificially inflated. no one steals for coffee, and coffee is more expensive to bring to market than opium – were it legal.
Drugs are cheaper then they have ever been. Are you saying Legal or Decriminalize what you carry for personal use?
i am saying legal (decriminalising would not bring down prices; moreover, substance use is a personal choice). i feel what stands in the way of legalisation is that many of us have a jaundiced view of ‘drugs’ due to generations of govt propaganda. we have long been fed a steady diet of lies and extreme, defamatory caricatures of who/what drug users are, and how drugs affect people. people are against legal drugs – the right to allow each to choose what they ingest – in large part due to having been conditioned: they are judging choices of others based upon their own preferences, and determining that their choice must apply to all.
this is exactly what underscored the progressive movement to bring about prohibition of alcohol. and we know how that turned out; prohibition created crime, violence, deaths due to violence and poisoning due to no quality control, and a vast network of organsised crime. it sucked money out of the public purse for policing where none was otherwise needed, tied up courts, made criminals of users/makers/sellers. in addition to being entirely ineffective, prohibition created far more issues than it solved, and, of course, there was the usual graft that lined sundry pockets of “enforcement” officers.
roughly the exact same has played out with the war on drugs. a massive waste of resources, court time, jail space, corruption among the so-called enforcers, making criminals out of people exercising their rightful choice to their body, deaths due to gang/organised crime battles, deaths due to lack of quality control…where we need a war is on human trafficking. next to nothing on that, however.
let us be clear: the vast majority of people that use and have used ‘drugs’ are able to do so responsibly; that is also the case with alcohol, a drug that numerous studies have determined to be the most dangerous of with regard to its social and economic impact. the economist article is an especially good read. as i have noted many times, if a society can survive alcohol, it can survive any drug.
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/06/25/what-is-the-most-dangerous-drug
https://thedawnrehab.com/alcohol-addiction/most-dangerous-drug/
https://www.addictioncenter.com/community/why-alcohol-is-the-deadliest-drug/
there is always an addictions risk pretty much with everything people do. in a very general sense, we might attach a 10% addictions tag to many things, be it gaming, sex, alcohol, caffeine, sugar, cannabis…oddly, not at all the case with things like mushrooms, lsd, mda, mescaline. and, those “psychedelic substances have show incredible promise in helping people with their traumas, addictions, and their spirituality. there is much under way again in exploring those benefits.
addictions tend to increase as natural products are refined and the chemical chains become altered. hence, addictions to processed/refined sugar are real, but i have not heard of addictions to fruit. in essence, addictions are rife when it comes to ‘unnatural’ products.
ideally, we need to move addicts off of ‘opioids’, methamphetamine, and even refined drugs such as heroin and cocaine. the replacements should be coca leaf, from which cocaine is processed, and opium, from which heroin and morphine are processed. addictions related to opium and the coca leaf are far, far lower than with the refined derivatives. as for ‘opioids’, and meth, they each are so synthetic that the human system has no evolved ability to interact with those substances in a healthy manner. hence, ridiculously high addictions rates.
we may never wean every user and addict off of refined/processed ‘drugs’. however, we also may never prevent addictions. even in countries with draconian ‘drug’ laws, where simple possession will still mean summarily being executed, use and addictions are inevitable.
what we can do to stave off the theft associated with addictions to artificially expensive drugs – they are all very cheap to bring to market – is to legalise, and ensure that drugs are quality controlled, like liquor and cannabis, and are cheap enough that an addicted user does not have to steal to use. one may not like that there are addicts, but it is certainly much better for a society at large that innocent people will no longer be victimised because of artificially high ‘drug’ prices.
i continue to believe that drug laws that criminalise ‘drugs’ are the real crime, not drug use.