Covid_19 > Alberta Charging for Covid Vaccine shots

 

How long do you think it will be before Big Pharma takes Alberta to court?

Alberta premier defends charging Albertans for COVID-19 vaccinations, questions its effectiveness

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says her government’s new policy forcing many Albertans to pay out of pocket for a COVID-19 vaccination is about focusing on those who need it the most.

It could set a precedent across the country after the federal government put provinces in charge of buying COVID shots earlier this year.

Speaking Saturday on her call-in radio show the morning after her government announced the move, Smith said $135 million got “flushed down the drain” last year with doses wasted in part because Albertans are increasingly choosing to not take them.

“I think it’s because it doesn’t work particularly well, if you want the truth,” Smith said.

2:03

Alberta’s COVID-19 report sparks anti-science concern in medical community

Just under 14 per cent of Alberta’s 4.8 million residents got vaccinated for the virus last season.

“It’s those that are healthy, that choose to do it because they’ve talked to their doctors, those are the ones that will have a little bit lesser priority,” she said.

Smith’s government will still pay for some to get the shots, including those who have compromised immune systems or are on social programs. Seniors in a congregate setting will also be covered.

It’s all part of an effort to get more bang for the taxpayer’s buck, Smith said.

“We believe in vaccine choice, but we don’t pay for everything,” she said.

She pointed to higher influenza vaccination rates, pegged at 21 per cent last year, suggesting that COVID vaccines don’t match the effectiveness of others, including for the measles.

Alberta, which is grappling with a spike in measles cases not seen for almost 40 years, is falling well short of the 95 per cent immunization rate experts say is needed to protect the population.

Smith’s United Conservative Party government doesn’t yet know the amount Albertans, including many seniors over the age of 65, will need to pay for a COVID shot. It estimates it could be $110 each.

Routine influenza vaccines will continue to be publicly covered.

2:09

New Alberta COVID data highlights value of getting newly-formulated vaccine

Public health-care experts in Alberta say the province’s new COVID policy will mean more barriers to getting vaccinated and higher costs for things like hospitalizations and severe complications.

Dr. Lynora Saxinger, a physician and University of Alberta infectious diseases expert, told The Canadian Press Saturday that both COVID and influenza vaccines are formulated based on seasonal changes, so Smith’s prioritization was perplexing.

“They’re probably pretty similar in terms of how much potential they have to prevent severe illness — hospitalization, death, and then all those other things that come on the heels of both influenza and COVID,” she said.

She noted that for those 65 years or older, the risk of pneumonia, heart attack and stroke are much higher after a patient has had COVID or influenza, so vaccination can significantly reduce risk.

In a news release, Smith’s government pointed out that guidelines offered by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, under anti-vaccine advocate Robert F.

Kennedy Jr. The U.S. federal health agency recommended stopping vaccines for healthy pregnant women and healthy children.

Alberta’s Primary and Preventative Health Care Minister Adriana LaGrange declined an interview request from The Canadian Press.

Her office also declined to say whether LaGrange agreed with Smith’s assessment that the COVID vaccine “doesn’t work particularly well.”

Maddison McKee, LaGrange’s press secretary, said in a statement late Friday night that the government is following national guidance.

But, McKee confirmed Saturday the province is bucking one recommendation from Canada’s National Advisory Committee on Immunization that health care workers get a shot.

“Health care workers who do not fall into a higher-risk group will be eligible to purchase a vaccine,” McKee said in a statement.

Saxinger said vaccinating workers isn’t just about preventing an occupational risk — it’s about protecting patients.

She said influenza data shows that if you vaccinate health care workers, you reduce the death rate of the vulnerable people in their care.

The Opposition NDP has long accused the UCP of being anti-vaccination, and has called for the government to better promote the public health benefits of getting vaccinated.

NDP health critic Sarah Hoffman said Friday it’s a dangerous, callous and anti-science move to charge Albertans who want to protect their health and their loved ones.

University of Calgary health law professor Lorian Hardcastle has warned of the potential extra costs to the health care system, and has said she worries that Albertans are getting the message that vaccines just aren’t that important.

Covid_19 > Dangerous virus studies must end - Researcher

 

Inventing a disease so you can invent a vaccine against it is absolute insanity. But it makes a whole lot of money for astonishingly, greedy murderers.

NIH Infectious Disease Researcher Calls for

End of Dangerous Virus Studies

"I admired Fauci in his earlier career because I thought he was a strong leader with a vision for global research. But I can’t say that anymore."

May 04, 2025

Today’s guest essay is by a infectious disease researcher at the National institutes of Health who wishes to remain anonymous to guard against retribution.

As a decades-long NIH insider, I wasn’t surprised to see Dr. Tony Fauci go toe-to-toe with President Trump in his first term. After all, this is a man who built a $4 billion taxpayer-funded empire—the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)—and transformed it into a medieval Italian Signoria, where his every word was law, his every whim obeyed. When I entered his office, I couldn’t help but notice a portrait of The Godfather hung above his desk—Marlon Brando as Don Vito Corleone, not Al Pacino as the young, upstart Michael—a fitting tribute to his persona and leadership style.

Upon entering NIH meetings, I sometimes caught a favored capo slouching down in his chair after dutifully raising Fauci’s own, so that, feet dangling, the diminutive Don would appear the tallest man in the room. From such commanding heights, the Boss often humiliated staff members, both women and men, in expletive-laden tirades. To avoid this wrath, his minions worked feverishly to anticipate his every desire and satisfy a relentless ambition to expand the Fauci’s scientific dominion.

Are expletive-laden tirades a good indication that Fauci is a godless person?

I admired Fauci in his earlier career because I thought he was a strong leader with a vision for global research. But I can’t say that anymore.

Several incidents caused me to change my view beginning in March 2020 when a group of renowned virologists published a paper in Nature Medicine that falsely concluded a lab accident could not have started the COVID pandemic. A year later, I watched in disbelief as Dr. Fauci testified before Congress where he strongly denied allegations about dangerous virus research he was funding at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. I realized that the Fauci-led NIAID had participated in a classic Washington ploy: satisfy your critics by pretending to regulate activity that can harm the public, while actually letting your friends do whatever they want. In this case, I’m talking about gain-of-function virus studies, research that should end tomorrow to protect us from future man-made pandemic disasters.

Pandemic Subterfuge

Like most everyone in the federal government, in the early months of the pandemic I was working from home when Nature Medicine published a paper called “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2.” Written by prestigious virologists Scripps researcher Kristian Andersen and Tulane University’s Robert Garry, this paper concluded, “We do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.” The paper analyzed the genetic sequence of the COVID virus and concluded that SARS-CoV-2 was a naturally occurring virus, as no clear signs of "gain-of-function" were detected.

Gain-of-function is a process where virologists manipulate a virus's genetic sequence to make it more transmissible, lethal, or able to overcome countermeasures. After making a virus more dangerous through gain-of-function, researchers then try to figure out how to defeat it. However, the “Proximal Origin” letter in Nature Medicine overlooked a common gain of function method.

Virologists often use a technique called "serial passaging," where a virus is repeatedly introduced to laboratory animals or different cell types, such as human cell lines. Repetitive passaging allows the virus to genetically adapt, enabling it to grow in the new animal or cells. And such passaging does not require direct genetic manipulation.

The authors of the “Proximal Origin” paper completely ignored the possibility of serial passaging. And because they didn’t discuss this very common laboratory practice, they did not “disprove” a laboratory origin for the virus. I have no idea how ignoring something so obvious could make it pass peer review and get published in a prestigious journal like Nature Medicine.

I remember sitting in my living room, carefully reading the paper line by line, and shouting over to my partner in the next room, “What the fuck is going on?!”

Despite such a gaping hole in the analysis, the paper was taken as gospel by basically every reporter covering it—New York Times, CNN, Science Magazine, NBC, Science News, Nature Magazine, Washington Post, etc…—as if it ended all doubt that the COVID virus could have come from a lab.

I discussed this quietly with a few close colleagues I consider friends, but I’m embarrassed to admit that I was afraid to speak out publicly. At the time, people were being called “conspiracy theorists” for even asking if the virus could have had a lab origin. There was a real fear of saying what you thought—shame, humiliation—and I was worried about getting fired. I believed the entire virology and the NIH-funded scientific communities would have banded together to discredit me if I said anything, and my career would have been over. Dr. Fauci was the most powerful man in the scientific community at that time and his word was undisputed.

Besides, the toxic political climate at the NIH did not allow much for dissenting opinions. All communications by federal employees are vetted and go through a multi-layered review process, and criticism of the official narrative would never have been allowed. As any member of the NIH knew, you don’t ever take sides against the family.

The authors of the “Proximal Origin” paper completely ignored the possibility of serial passaging.

During this same time period, I also became aware that something weird was happening inside the NIH. In April 2020, Trump cut off a grant to Peter Daszak who ran a nonprofit called EcoHealth Alliance. Daszak was partnering with researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology to collect and characterize bat coronaviruses in China. Trump’s executive action was an effort to prevent another possible COVID-19-like pandemic, even though Politico called these concerns a “conspiracy theory.” But rather than reassess the risks of this research, as the President wanted, the Fauci-led NIAID doubled down on high-risk viral research, funding new programs called Centers for Emerging Infectious Diseases (CREID). These research programs focused entirely on global collection and surveillance of zoonotic viruses from nature.

Instead of pausing to investigate whether a lab leak had occurred, Fauci awarded Daszak a new multi-million-dollar CREID grant dedicated to hunting for novel viruses in bats—not just in Chinese caves, but across Southeast Asia and parts of Africa. From 2020 to the present, Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance received $4,474,707 for his CREID grant plus another $3,353,628 for similar virus hunting grants.

Please continue reading this lengthy article on The DisInformation Chronicle at:

At the same time, NIAID also awarded

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