Dozens of Alberta scientists, doctors and researchers have penned an open letter calling on the Alberta government to reject the recommendations contained in its recently released pandemic response report.
The group, including experts in infectious disease, pediatrics, virology and immunology, says it is essential government policies are based on well-established scientific evidence, and it claims the task force misrepresents data.
“We collectively request that the ‘Alberta’s COVID-19 Pandemic Response’ report … be officially dismissed for use as a source of information for both public and provincial policy, as it inaccurately reflects the body of scientific evidence,” the letter states.
It’s the latest group to speak out against the $2-million task force report, written for the provincial government and published on its website. The Alberta Medical Association has described the report as “anti-science” and “anti-evidence.”
Released last week, the task force report makes a number of recommendations, including barring healthy children and teens from getting COVID-19 shots and immediately halting the use of COVID vaccines altogether without “full disclosure” of potential risks.
The open letter accuses the task force of misrepresenting the body of evidence relating to vaccines and being selective about the data it chose to include.
Preventing access to vaccines, the authors argue, could endanger Albertans and add more strain to the health system.
Calgary-based infectious disease researcher Craig Jenne is one of the letter’s signatories.
“I’ve got a very high level of concern. There’s a lot of things … in this document that directly misrepresent the situation and is not capturing the efficacy and safety that we’ve determined on these vaccines,” said Jenne, who has a PhD in immunology.
“We thought this was quite misleading and, in fact, could be quite dangerous.”
He argues the data is flawed and appears to be selected to support “a specific narrative.”
Pediatrician perspective
“We certainly saw children up in ICU and we had children die,” said Dr. Cora Constantinescu, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Alberta Children’s Hospital who has treated many children with COVID-19.
“All I care about is the health of children. And if this report — just by virtue of being there — means that fewer people are going to protect their children, then that’s distressing.”
Constantinescu, who signed the letter, is concerned no pediatric specialists are listed as contributors to the task force report.
The letter’s authors contend vaccines are still the best defence against SARS-CoV-2 and that scientific evidence shows they’re effective in preventing severe disease, hospitalization and death — along with the risk of long COVID and a severe complication in children known as multisystem inflammatory syndrome, or MIS-C.
The group argues the risks associated with COVID-19 vaccines are routinely disclosed, counter to the implication in the report, and that vaccine risks are much lower than those associated with a SARS-CoV-2 infection.
“You can’t have a discussion around safety without also talking about the disease that the vaccine is trying to prevent. And that balance was not offered, in my view, in this report,” said Constantinescu.
Government responds
Premier Danielle Smith was asked about the task force report at a news conference in Calgary on Wednesday.
She said she was pleased to see the diverse perspectives in the report. She says the government has no agenda when it comes to how they will proceed on this issue.
“We’re going to take a look at that and obviously we’ll make some decisions about whether to move forward on any of those recommendations,” said Smith.
“The point of it was to figure out what we should do, should we have a another pandemic that we need to respond to, so that we don’t make mistakes that hurt people.”
Smith also said she believes a variety of voices should be included in discussions about science.
“A narrative has been enforced by shouting down contrarian voices, and that’s not what we’re going to do,” she said.
“We’re going to listen to every voice and we’re going to make our best assessment based on the evidence. And the evidence has changed.… What we were told at the beginning is a little bit different than what we’re hearing today.”
The health minister’s office did not respond directly to questions about the letter or whether it would dismiss the report as requested by the authors of the open letter.
The authors of the letter said Health Canada, the Public Health Agency of Canada, the Alberta Medical Association, the National Advisory Committee on Immunization and other international health organizations consistently affirm the safety and efficacy of vaccines.
“A report that is designed to help shape government decisions — to inform government what the current state of knowledge is — needs to be more comprehensive,” said Jenne.
MLA Eric Bouchard, who hosted a town hall meeting last spring which aimed to persuade the government to end COVID mRNA vaccines for children, was the first to share the document on social media last week. The UCP representative for Calgary-Lougheed is calling for the government to act swiftly to pause access to the vaccines for kids.
Meanwhile, the pandemic response report was reissued on Tuesday after the name of a University of Calgary professor and former department head was pulled from its list of contributors.
The new version of the document includes a note saying Dr. John Conly was included in error and that he was interviewed for a “singular item” related to the interpretation of one of the referenced articles.
The task force said it regrets the error and Conly’s name and bio have been removed.
