Alberta’s changes to COVID vaccinations will backfire – unless you’re anti-vax
By Lethbridge Herald on June 20, 2025.
Editor,
Here we go again, anti-vaxxer Premier Smith has decided that Alberta residents will have to pay for the COVID vaccine come fall.
No surprise here, coming from a confirmed anti-vaxxer and member of the anti-vax conspiracy theory gang.
The Government has ordered approximately 500.000 vaccines and if you want one, you need to book ahead and they will no longer be available at your local pharmacy.
With a population of around five million, that would work out to a 10 per cent vaccination rate; not quite the zero-percent she is aiming for, but she is getting there.
Recent Alberta Government statistics show that between Sept. 1, 2024 and May 1, 2025 there were 11,099 COVID cases resulting in 368 deaths in the province of Alberta, so clearly it is still a problem. But according to the anti-vax gang it is their constitutional right to not get vaccinated and also their right to get sick.
And once they get sick, it is their right to be treated in a hospital by nurses and doctors who did get vaccinated and give them all the medical care they need.
So far there has not been a vaccine developed that fixes stupid. but then again, even if there was, they would be too stupid to take it.
Barney Feenstra
Lethbridge
11-10
Ten of us seniors got COVID after having 4 shots and we know they saved our lives while these idiots continue to show how stupid they are. The people we know who weren’t that smart are all dead.
Want to bet their parents got them vaccinated as a child against all the diseases like we were.
Thats how stupid they are, isn’t it?
How do you know it saved their lives, are you Kreskin or was it something your heard at your coffee shop seance with your oilman friends and committed Klein hater group. No deep thinking allowed. No questioning either.
Because all the idiots we know who didn’t bother are dead, why is that so hard to understand?
No “deep thinking” required.
Consider this:
Back in the early days of the pandemic around 80% of Alberta’s eligible population, had received two shots. Now here is the difficult math for you BW. That means 20 % had no vaccination. Right?
Hospital visits resulting in admissions with COVID , represented around 50% vaccinated , the rest not. Leaving aside those in CTU and deaths , which were mostly if not all non vaccinates, remember that out of every 1000 eligible people in the province, 800 were vaccinated. So in 1000 admissions to hospitals, about half were vaccinated (out of base of 800) and the other half were not (out of a base of 200).
Simple observable facts: Vaccination reduced the risk of serious consequences.
As vaccination rates have waned , so does the herd immunity, leading to increasingly serious consequences. This applies to measles, polio etc including COVID.
(The ethical side of vaccine development is another , but important part of the story.)
Charging for vaccination is ethically questionable with serious consequences, but par for the course this government is undertaking be it environmental or human health.
I get all the negative insulting condescending comments including my own. Fed up is a broken record, tape, cd, usb, whatever medium one chooses. The point is I do not blame the distrust in people when a supposed miracle cure is supplied within months when comparatively, I.e measles, took years to develop with proper research and test groups. The result has been obvious until this latest round of measles as uninformed persons are still wanting for trust. They view covid not as a disease but just another strain of the flu. Did measles mutate? How many boosters did measles need? No, I will answer that. Two doses of the MMR or MMRV are considered to provide lifelong immunity for most people. Those vaccinated before 1968 (me) may have certain risk factors, most are protected after the initial two doses. (Which I have) There is a big difference with Covid. Covid, for some, is a flu strain as it mutates putting it in line with the annual flu shot for everything that was around last year. People won’t do the lockdown thing again, suspending the world for what they think was a flu bug deliberately set upon the population. IN OTHER WORDS GET YOUR DAMN MEASLES VAX parents and get your children vaccinated (because it works) and if you think COVID is a virus, make your choice and suffer the symptoms and consequences.
4 shots and still got it? so, what did the vaxes protect them from?
i am not saying what or what not to use, i am saying use or do not use what you feel is best.
Well maybe you would like to explain to us seniors why we are all still alive and every fool we knew who didn’t bother is dead? Including the two who told us that we were stupid and 1 shot was enough and that’s all they bothered to get and they are both dead also.
If you had any intelligence and had listened to the doctors this Covid was changing and booster shots were being needed to combat it, and it certainly worked for us.
If you had bothered to notice our family members and friends were falling like flies in Nursing Homes before the vaccines came out and there has not been a problem since.
Being an idiot and ignoring what doctors were telling us, especially the retired ones we were having coffee with wasn’t an option for us, so why was it yours?
Some of us are have a ball travelling the world, mainly on Cruise Ships and aren’t prepared to give it up, we know what others are missing.
There are people who still refuse to accept reality. Without modern medical advancements, it will be like it was long ago. There are seniors who will tell you that they have siblings who passed away at a young age in the 1940s, the 1930s, or earlier, because they didn’t have the medical technology that they have these days. I even have an uncle who passed away as an infant in the 1920s, because there was no technology like there is in this day and age. Many seniors will remember vaccines for things like polio, which helped many people. What is so ironic and bad is that Danielle Smith paid Preston Manning, a failed career politician, $253,000 and $2 million to produce a covid report that is junk. Preston Manning has no medical expertise. He also made the bad suggestion that Danielle Smith and a bunch of her Wildrose MLAs cross the floor to join Jim Prentice’s Alberta PC party. We both know how that turned out. Preston Manning has a substantial political pension, and yet he got this payout from Danielle Smith, when there are seniors who are struggling.
My parents buried three children in their lifetime. Two in the 30s as you point out before much was known.
My four grandchildren get a great laugh at watching how stupid these seniors are and the idiotic excuses they come out with for being so stupid. Danielle Smith and these Reformers have treated them like morons and they are so stupid they don’t even know it.
Helping the rich steal their oil and corporate tax wealth is no concern of theirs that’s how stupid they are.
biff, I know you’re not stupid, so you know full well that no vaccine is 100% effective and you will also know, as you are a sophisticated consumer of the news, that the claims from the medical community and public health organizations relative to the COVID vaccines were never about total protection from the virus, but that it tipped the odds in favour of an infected person in terms of avoiding serious illness and potentially death.
Well said that’s exactly right so why have fools like biff chosen the stupid route and decided that he’s much smarter than the doctors and scientists instead?
You can likely bet his parents got him vaccinated against the diseases when we were kids.
As my senior friends who weren’t that stupid continue to say “ You would think these seniors would be a lot smarter, but they aren’t “.
It doesn’t surprise a former Bank Mansger and the Police Officers I have known considering all the seniors we have known that have allowed con-artists and politicians to treat them like morons and steal their money.
These Reformers have been doing it since the Ralph Klein days and they still are. Seniors totally ignorant of what they could have had like Norwegians and Alaskans that’s how stupid they are.
I will never forget how disgusted the former conservative and social credit MLAs that I knew were with these seniors and their stupidity and nothing has changed.
There is no question that they have allowed these Reformers to destroy our children’s future and they aren’t even smart and to understand that.
maybe you resort to insults too often? just use what you wish, avoid using what you do not want, and leave others to their choices. your beliefs do not supersede those of another, they are just what suit you and others like-minded.
When you get fools like you going against what doctors and scientists are telling us and find it smart to criticize those of us who aren’t that stupid of course you’re going to get insulted.
A lawyer friend said it best “ if you don’t want to be called stupid, stop acting stupid “.
When you have been talking to as many doctors, nurses, teachers, lawyers, accountants, economists, oilmen, fellow bankers, and former conservative and social credit MLAs as I have over the years you soon learn who the fools are, why wouldn’t I ?
I have a real problem with fellow seniors who don’t have an ounce of intelligence or Common Sense. I saw too much of their brand of stupidity as a banker and police officers I knew did also. It was amazing how easy it was to fool them and these Reformers have proven it and are still doing it.
What makes our blood boil is the massive debts these Reformers have created for our children and grandchildren’s future showing them no respect.
Can you explain how they are going to find the $500 billion to pay the oil well cleanup mess, the $85 billion debt, and a $20 billion deficit to repair roads and repair bridges because we can’t. We know it should never have happened in the first place. It certainly hasn’t in Alaska and Norway has it?
why the constant vitriol? the thing with vaxes is thus: if they are effective, and one favours a particular vax, all one needs do is take that vax and one is protected. one does not need everyone else to take it.
why do you, and so very many others, feel it is ok to force your preferences on others?
why do you, and so very many others, feel it is ok to torture and kill sentient life forms in order to derive and test products?
The issue of lab animals used for vaccine development or indeed human medical advances is worthy of further discussion. However, I must point out that the idea behind a vaccine – most any vaccine human or animal, is to convey “herd immunity”. A tried and tested epidemiological
tool – think smallpox or rinderpest (animals).
agreed – vaccines in general save lives far more than they might cause death or serious issues. the effectiveness of vaccines, for measles and polio as examples, are well illustrated.
i am not anti-vax, not even close. i am pro-choice.
that is not the point i wish to make – it is that fed up notes 10 seniors, i figure relative to his group of associates, got covid even after 4 shots. unsure as to what ratio of his group that 10 represents. moreover, seeing as covid mutated ongoing, and quickly, what did a covid vax end up protecting against? likely they got covid because the virus mutated beyond what the vax provided?
of those not vaxing, 98% testing positive for covid survived; likely more survived, as many got covid without being documented.
however, whether the vaxes worked well is a different discussion.
in another thread, same topic, you appeared to be dismissive of my outlook with regard to the covid vaxes, and to the govt’s use of coercion and force to have people vax. you may have read this response.
1) it is the divine, universal right of each adult to have ownership over their body. thus, one has the final right to consent with others, or not, as to how they use their body, and to have final say regarding what they use or do not use; however, this right is limited such that one’s rights may not extend into non-consenting others and thus infringe upon the rights of another.
2) i am opposed to the torture, cruelty, and inhumanity that is inflicted upon non-human and non-consenting sentient life to derive products. it should hardly be difficult to accept one might avoid products one finds to be repulsive.
3) with regard to vaxing: if a vax works, and one wishes to take one, it will protect one based on how well it works. one does not need another to vax, and one does not get to force or coerce another to take a vax for one’s own sense of safety. one’s rights do not extend into the body or conscience of another.
4) in a consumer, capital economy, it is fair to say that what one buys one buys into; thus, not buying may be a manner of conscience, and a means of rejecting a process as much as a product.
i am not at all debating whether vaxes are useful or otherwise. i am saying each has the right to their body – take what you wish, although i wish we did not have so much hubris and so little compassion as to feel systemic torture of sentient life is acceptable behaviour for any reason.
has one read “the ones who walk away from omelas”? a brilliant inquiry of a short story, by the masterful ursula le guin.
i reference it because the author has imagined a society where a virtually perfect quality of life exists, only that it depends upon the ongoing suffering of one person; just one person. for the many, the existence of that suffering for their happiness is acceptable; but, there are some who walk away from omelas. why would one choose to walk away from omelas? while the writing can be referenced several ways, i reference it because i became touched, awakened, by the query of how much suffering does one have the right to impose on another, for any reason. by another i extend that to all sentient life.
https://files.libcom.org/files/ursula-k-le-guin-the-ones-who-walk-away-from-omelas.pdf
biff, your position, rather opposition, to the COVID vaccine and related public health measures changed more times than a toilet seat at a mixed party, a phrase my late father used often.
I can’t remember the exact order, but your shifting opposing positions included the following: (a) it’s not really a pandemic, (b) the vaccine is not 100% effective, therefore it’s not really a vaccine, (c) big pharmaceutical companies are profiteering, (d) animal cruelty, (e) bodily autonomy, and (f) government overreach.
But in all this, and on other matters, you have remained remarkably consistent on one thing, your idiosyncratic observance of some rules of grammar and written communication and your steadfast refusal to observe others. You strike me as a “Your not the boss of me” person. If I were a betting person, which I’m not, I’d wager you set out purposely to challenge your teachers. I think you would have been a lot of fun to teach.
perhaps my concerns came out piecemeal during the covid threads, so be it. covid being a pandemic or not aside, they each are valid, at least in a society that believes in freedom. as for covid being a pandemic, i had my concerns, each with the virus and with govt approach. i wore a mask, and refused the vax.
govt overreach – i have opposed consistently laws that undermine fundamental rights, whether it be laws that criminalise: sexual activity among consenting adults (homosexuality, sex for money, as examples of overreach past and present); the choice to use drugs/medication (far better to ensure drugs are clean and predictable as we do with liquor); the choice to refuse drugs/medication. i also oppose laws that breach our right to privacy and the blatant lapses in protecting it. i oppose the use of the public water system to deliver anything other potable water. on what grounds might a person uphold pro choice other than one’s right to their body? the basis of the pro choice ruling surely must apply more broadly than only to females: “any law that restricted a woman’s right to life, liberty, and security of person…”
i have long been opposed to the use of sentient life to derive and test products – long, before covid. to support such an abomination, and one that is so grossly routine, displays utter hubris and heartlessness. what is one upholding, the right of might and power to do as they wish? a more mighty and powerful entity coming to our planet, then, has the right to use us as mere experiments? regardless, this is a point of conscience, which govt/society has no right to subvert.
big pharm/chem profiteers – yes they do. and, they have a history, and ongoing one, of placing profit ahead of well being.
why do you suggest i shifted positions on covid? rather, i have numerous reasons for refusing the covid vax; several apply to why i refute pharma and refuse their products. are you suggesting we are only allowed one reason for favouring or opposing something?
moreover, unlike how you appear to present – which is to do as you are told at all times (is that what makes a good teacher?) – i favour the right of each to have final say with regard to their body. that is a basic human right, and not at all about ‘you are not the boss of me’. to resort to such a dismissive dig strikes me as weak and immature, which i feel does not reflect you at near your best. i care little whether the covid vax is effective or not. i am opposed to the use of coercion/force by govt. where that approach undermines our right to our body and conscience, and fundamental universal rights. might one support conscription to fight a war you did not support? and, whilst fighting a war, might one support orders that undermine your conscience?
please, you can read a great short story using the link https://files.libcom.org/files/ursula-k-le-guin-the-ones-who-walk-away-from-omelas.pdf
it is enlightening, as is all the best art. and, no report required.
Death is what the vaccinations prevented. Now, with the collapsing of healthcare in Alberta, ANY increased need for hospitalization in this province due to COVID and/or measles will push this crumbling system into disaster. If in doubt, for confirmation of THIS FACT, contact Medicine Hat ER physician, Dr. Paul Parks, immediate past president of the Alberta Medical Association.
“death” is both a very general statement and an exaggeration. yes, as i have noted, vaxes can save lives. however, let us be reasonable and acknowledge that rather small percentages die from viruses that we vax for. not at all to suggest lives do not matter. perhaps it is that some people have more distrust for govt and pharm/chem cos than do others? have they not a right to their beliefs, unfounded or otherwise?
Smith is waiting for COVID cases and death spike amongst her supporters then she will remove the user pay and location restrictions to minimize lose of votes. The rest of us she doesn’t care about. By the way, anyone know who is supplying those 500k doses? I have my suspicion but don’t think Smith is quite that stupid.
John Franklin Enders, (from the History of Measles Vaccine) often called ‘the father of modern vaccines’, developed the measles vaccine from the ‘Edmonston-B’ strain, named after David and used as the basis for most live-attenuated vaccines to this day.
Enders and his team tested their measles vaccine on small groups of children from 1958 to 1960, before beginning trials on thousands of children in New York City and Nigeria. In 1961 it was hailed as 100% effective and the first measles vaccine was licensed for public use in 1963.
Compared to Covid vaccine, rolled out in three months. It is significant that there is a large contingent of Non Sheep who questions the validity of five or six shots that in comparison to the measles vaccine is left wanting.
Get the measles one.
4 covid shots and you still got covid? Myself, no covid shot and no covid disease. I know it “saved my life”.
Have you been mingling with thousands of people around the world on cruise ships or are you hiding in your basement afraid to come out?
Of course as our doctor friends point you can still get COVID and without the shots you are at a huge risk to get it, if you mingle with people who might be carrying it.
Not hiding! Visited old people and shut-ins. Illegally probably . Not even remotely concerned about covid. Would have been arrested if I lived in Calgary or Edmonton. Cops there were stupidly dedicated to the cause. The lone hockey player who was harassed by AHS and its nazi cops. Mark Neufeldts legacy.
Have you had your anti-racist shot yet? Nope!
My goodness. I learned not to generalize from a sample of one from my grade eight teacher, Sister Luella Nagy. I’m guessing your grade eight curriculum didn’t include that material , or maybe it did and you weren’t paying attention.
comparing the measles vax process to covid is important, as many refusing the covid vaxes did so because they believed it was rushed, and particularly alongside another rushed aspect – the massive use of the mrna delivery. neither the covid vax nor the mrna delivery mode had been widely used prior to the covid panic. not to say the skeptics can be proven correct, but there was plenty of reason for skepticism; for many balking they saw the mrna covid vax rollout as using the planet as a lab.
btw – here is a fun fact: moderna, a two-bit animal torture house that traded at about 12 bucks just before the covid panic, soon peaked at close to 400$ within a handful of months following the forced/coercive covid vax measures by “free world” govts, but now it sits under 26$. and their ticker symbol? mrna.
as for those always blindly following govt and big corp, you are free to do so, but, please, respect the rights of others to their freedom and good conscience. your rights do not extend into the body or the mind of another, and neither do the rights of any govt.
and, rather than believe your govts and big corps are ever so always right and good, why not have a good look at their histories, not just long ago but also recent. here is a good one: weapons of mass destruction in iraq lol
here is another: only one nation has used atomic/nuclear bombs upon another, killing and maiming many innocent people and poisoning the land- can you guess which one? hint? the same one that inflicted war crimes and cirmes against humanity for a decade in vietnam, then in the balkans, then in afghanistan (still torturing people without charges in guantanamo jails), still supporting war crimes and crimes against humanity in at least the gaza….
big pharma/chem has given us a very many poisons despite telling us they were safe, and each approved by govt.
the point: one is free to have utter trust in govt and big corp; but one is not free to coerce and force their preferences upon another.
Mnra vaccines have been out for a long time that it only took three months to roll it out just means research has been ongoing. it’s 2025 wake up
It took 20 years to create this COVID vaccine yet these morons state it was created too fast and is useless, that’s how stupid they are, aren’t they?
It took 20 years to create the covid vaccine. The vaccine is 8 times older than the disease. Remarkable. Follow the science.
You are confusing other corona vaccine research /vaccines with COVID. Same virus family, different species. That knowledge gleaned earlier allowed a fairly quick COVID mRNA development.
As per usual lumpy chimes in with his “smartest in the room” comments. Small room.
https://substack.com/@drwojakmd/note/c-127406525?r=nlphz&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
Baaaaaa.
truly – and how many got covid, and wow!, survived without hospital care? 98%+, and likely higher as that number can only be relative to those actually testing positive. very many will have had covid but never tested for it. certainly, the planet will not have lost 2% of its population in a given year to covid.
mind you, covid was not an evenly spread killer – there were those far more vulnerable. if one is in the vulnerable group the covid vaxes presented a good option.
covid vaxes sould be available, and as accessible as any pharma drug. they should be free and available at least to those deemed at risk by a doctor. they should not be a political game.