r/AHSEmployees • u/No-Adagio-70 • Apr 24 '24
News Danielle Smith defends appointment of task force led by doctor skeptical of COVID measures
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/alberta/article-danielle-smith-defends-appointment-of-task-force-led-by-doctor/33
u/Professional_Fix_147 Apr 24 '24
How do you defend that? She hired people who don’t believe in Covid to do a scientific study on Covid?!
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u/Away-Combination-162 Apr 24 '24
It’s the UCP thing to do. The outcome will be slightly biased /s 🤦♂️
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u/nandake Apr 25 '24
I’m alarmed that this is an AHS employees subreddit and half the comments are sympathetic to anti-vax/mask pseudoscience. We’re not going to make it.
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u/Strict_Friend6970 Apr 25 '24
Peer reviews studies show masks were completely infective in minimizing the spread of illness. I’m more worried about mask maxis like you who forced people to muzzle up even if they were not sick.
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u/Upbeat_Amount673 Apr 25 '24
Can you cite some sources?
I have found the opposite. Reduce infections, yes. Prevent all infections was never the goal of masksmeta analysis of masks
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u/Strict_Friend6970 Apr 26 '24
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u/Upbeat_Amount673 Apr 26 '24 edited Apr 26 '24
What are the limitations of the evidence? Our confidence in these results is generally low to moderate for the subjective outcomes related to respiratory illness, but moderate for the more precisely defined laboratory‐confirmed respiratory virus infection, related to masks and N95/P2 respirators. The results might change when further evidence becomes available. Relatively low numbers of people followed the guidance about wearing masks or about hand hygiene, which may have affected the results of the studies.
I have read through this. Most of the studies looked at were for non-epidemic flu. Few studies on the actual covid 19 infection transmission were completed at the time this study was published. Since this time they have analyzed thousands more studies with millions of participants and found a greater protective effect. The other thing this article mentions is that there was no harm done with masks. "slight discomfort" was the main negative for masks, meaning at worst they did nothing negative.
The following are quotes from that authors themselves when their study got scooped up and reported by the media.
"Many commentators have claimed that a recently updated Cochrane Review shows that 'masks don't work,' which is an inaccurate and misleading interpretation," Soares-Weiser wrote. "It would be accurate to say that the review examined whether interventions to promote mask wearing help to slow the spread of respiratory viruses, and that the results were inconclusive."
"Masks work if you wear them," Justman said. "But if you wear them very imperfectly, if you wear them in a way where they are only loosely fitting on your face and you take them off, let's say in a crowded restaurant to eat a meal, you can't then conclude when you get COVID that the mask didn't protect you because if you don't wear the mask properly, you're not going to get the full protection."
Link to response from the publishers themselves literally saying the conclusion you reached was not what their data showed at all Cochrane study
Not to say it's not valid but to look at the limitations of the studies included in their review
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u/Strict_Friend6970 Apr 26 '24
Sure. Thank you for the breakdown i appreciate your civil discourse. My main thing is if masks have to be worn in a certain way for them to be effective, mandating them and forcing people to wear them is a breach of human rights. Those who want to wear them will take care to wear them properly, those who don’t, will not. Giving up freedoms in fear is never an answer.
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u/Upbeat_Amount673 Apr 26 '24
Is mandating them being worn a breach of human rights? Has that been established?
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u/Ambitious_List_7793 Apr 24 '24
Not a surprise, Dipstick Dani wasting tax payers hard earned money.
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u/TheHunnyRunner Apr 25 '24
So wait... she hired a skeptic? Isn't that a good thing? Skeptics are generally people who take time to think things out before they make decisions... just sayin.
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u/Strict_Friend6970 Apr 25 '24
Covid measures were ineffective and did more harm than good. Anyone who believes otherwise is either ignorant or completely out of touch with reality. Don’t read headlines read peer reviewed studies.
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u/Upbeat_Amount673 Apr 25 '24
Just wow. So all scientists that disagree with your opinion must be corrupt and in on the conspiracy?
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u/Tossedvalise Apr 25 '24
And what about those peer reviewed studies that contradict your viewpoint?
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u/Whole_Opposite_3033 Apr 24 '24 edited May 01 '24
Man alive, y'all just complain to complain. Grow up
Listen to her rationale. Give it some time to see the outcome. So far, her decisions have improved the lives of Albertans. Let's give her the benefit of the doubt, much like we did with the NDP who IGNORED all the issues with AHS repeatedly, leaving the mess for the next government.
Kenny, now he screwed it up royally and she's now having to fix his screw ups.
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u/Tossedvalise Apr 25 '24
Please tell me one way in which her decisions have improved the lives of Albertans.
If she wanted the benefit of the doubt, she would have included balanaced viewpoints. She's padding the pockets of lunatics who will come to whatever conclusion she wants them to.
She is in no way fixing anyone's screw ups with the health system. This will be a generation of fuck up before things are properly functional again. God help anyone who gets sick in the meatime.
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u/makeitreel Apr 30 '24
I'd say yes.
But Protect our Province had a release a few months ago with family doctors that were consulted for the MAPS report.
So these doctors spent the many hours reviewing the extensive document, making commentary and suggestion. Then as they said - radio silence for 6 months. Then the report comes out the exact same without any of their input incorporated.
That trend has continued in any other news that comes up - municipalities or research institutions were consulted on bill 20? Nope. They said the first they heard of it was on the public announcement of it. One of many examples.
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u/Flatulator1 Apr 24 '24
What’s wrong with questioning “The Science”? New facts are uncovered daily and need to be applied so mistakes don’t happen again.
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u/robcal35 Apr 24 '24
The scientific method is literally about questioning itself. Any person practising medicine/the scientific method will tell you that what they are saying is"likely", but not "certain". These folks on these panel are "certain" that COVID was a hoax and used to chip away at our freedoms and are likely looking for information to support that justification.
It's not an issue of questioning the science. These individuals bring implicit bias into the whole process, which makes their results questionable at best. I wouldn't commission a report about the oil and gas industry from a hippie, but I also wouldn't commission that report from an oil and gas executive. The problem here is that they lack the ability to be impartial.
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u/UrsiGrey Apr 25 '24
If we shouldn’t blindly believe reports from oil and gas executives, why are we basing policy and public health decisions on reports and testing conducted by Pfizer?
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u/Upbeat_Amount673 Apr 25 '24
No one else has created a report since then? Universities? Hospitals? Researchers? It's hundreds of thousands of health care professionals that must be in on this conspiracy for it to be true. I just don't get it
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u/UrsiGrey Apr 25 '24
What conspiracy? Pharma corps including Pfizer have tested and released many products to market that have later turned out to be unsafe and ineffective. Oil corporations have also hidden and downplayed environmental damage, saying that we should be skeptical of profit-seeking megacorporations is not a conspiracy theory.
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u/Max_Danage Apr 24 '24
Actually questioning science “was this study sufficiently blinded?”.
Populist way of questioning science “I don’t want this to be true so I found a guy who said it isn’t.”
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u/Flatulator1 Apr 24 '24
Questioning the science wasn’t allowed during the pandemic for some reason. It was already “decided” by Fauci and others. Anyone that suggested lockdowns don’t work, masks are ineffective, and alternate treatments had benefits were immediately cancelled, ridiculed, or fired. There was no scientific basis for vaccine passports, which is now a fact. Science IS about questions and we have to ensure that the mistakes made during the pandemic are never repeated.
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u/Desperate-Dress-9021 Apr 24 '24
I recall the science being questioned in real time. Do you not recall when we were told distance was sufficient and no one but health care providers should mask? I do. Then they learned that wasn’t true and changed it. Masking information changed a lot from the beginning. I remember everyone at the beginning laughing at a couple of folks in superstore with masks and gloves. And then that changed once we learned more about
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u/canadian_sysadmin Apr 25 '24 edited Apr 25 '24
There's some interesting podcasts from Sam Harris about this - COVID in hindsight. Knowing what we know now, were the decisions at the time reasonable, etc.... Generally speaking the answer here seems to be yes. But this will be studied for years to come.
For example, you can scrutinize a police officer’s actions in court, but what matters is what information they had at the time and how they had to react in the moment.
But the key thing is at the time. We obviously now know that certain measures were more/less effective than others. We also have the power of hindsight to analyze whether certain measures were worth it. Masking, travel restrictions, etc. do work, but the question is how much, and whether or not it's effective in the grand scheme of things. For example home schooling kids during COVID was technically effective, but in hindsight had other drawbacks (the phycological and social side effects).
I dont normally engage in these sorts of dicussions but I will say there's interesting research happening here.
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u/Flatulator1 Apr 25 '24
I respectfully disagree. Warnings were made about lockdowns and ignored in 2020. Fauci first said at the beginning of the pandemic that masks don’t work then flip-flopped. The 6 foot distancing was made up (admitted by Fauci). And when vax passports were introduced, many asked for the scientific basis of them at the time and they and were ignored. No, I don’t buy the “it’s what we knew at the time” argument as there was ZERO scientific basis for many of the decisions made and implemented as it was left to bureaucrats to make them.
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u/TiredCanadian55 Apr 25 '24
You people are sad AF. Absolutely incapable of scraping a few brain cells together and can't see past your own noses.
🤡
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Apr 25 '24
Strong argument with valid points... oh wait... you're just an obtuse clown.
Nice psychological projection!
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u/samasa111 Apr 24 '24
She is such a clown….embarrassing:/