National Post (National Edition)
Canada's biggest scandal
Justin Trudeau's madein-Canada vaccine rollout debacle may become the biggest scandal in Canadian history because lives are involved.
As of April 15, 22.7 per cent of all Americans were fully vaccinated (or received two doses) and another 38.6 per cent have received their first dose. That is roughly 251 million doses. By contrast, Canada has only provided 8.5 million doses, most of which will be reduced in effectiveness because of the Trudeau government's decision to delay the second dose by 16 weeks, contrary to pharma-company instructions.
Half-baked measures may work in politics, giving bragging rights about the number of people “vaccinated,” but it doesn't work in medicine. Studies show that the elderly and infirm don't get the full benefits of the second dose if it is delayed, but that doesn't matter to Trudeau who wants to disguise his government's failure to procure vaccines.
Half-a-dose may not be better than no dose at all which may be why our cases climbed to a near record of 8,590 daily this week, or four times' higher than occurred during the summer and fall. This is even proportionally higher than America's current daily caseload of 77,000 where unruly and maskless governors reign in half the states.
One emergency room doctor who messaged me, but asked to remain nameless, brought up a new issue concerning the dose-delay gambit. He said it is endangering even more lives because front-line health workers must also wait 16 weeks for their second shot and are directly exposed to the virus. He said this is a ticking time bomb.
Another physician, Dr. Alan Kruger, emailed: “As a physician, I am shocked at the lack of outcry against the delayed second dose decision. Informed consent is the sacred principle of western medicine. Anyone given the first dose prior to March 16, 2021 was injected with the informed consent that the second dose would be given 3-4 weeks later.”
Another unintended consequence of the vaccine fiasco is that it could contribute to vaccine “hesitancy” and why not? As one reader tweeted, referring to the CDC guidelines that second doses should be given no later than 42 days after the first: “And we wonder why there is vaccine hesitancy? Four months make it so.”
Another physician, Majed Khraishi from St. John's, wrote in The Telegram that the B.C. study that Ottawa relied on, concerning the four-month dose delay, was incomplete. “The study seems not to account for the emerging variants of COVID-19 and what may happen to their spread when second vaccines doses are delayed by 16 weeks. Also, not accounted for is the effect of delaying the second dose on vulnerable populations, such as seniors."
The question is why aren't the CBC and other “national” media weighing in on this? Why isn't the Canadian Medical Association? There are petitions galore being circulated, including one with 125,000 signatures, but nothing moves the dial because the Liberals continue to put politics before science.
A recent report by the Macdonald Laurier Institute also suggests that slow vaccinations have caused Canada's death rate to surge. It cites a Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), which has found that Canada's nursing homes had the worst record for COVID-19 deaths among wealthy nations.
“All this comes as countries with more effective vaccination rollouts are witnessing precisely the opposite trend,” it points out. “Canada's rate of excess deaths for those aged 85 and over is now well above that of the U.S.”
And on April 13, Toronto ran out of vaccines. The Trudeau government must be removed.