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She hit BC to reassure about swine flu. But there was an outbreak of confusion.
Leona Aglukkaq: Heavily scripted
Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq spent Friday morning at the B.C. Centre for Disease Control, as part of a nationwide tour she's been doing with Dr. David Butler-Jones of the Public Health Agency of Canada and francophone Dr. Danielle Grondin. It was a tightly scripted event, with limited time for questions. Even so, the press conference revealed some confusion between the Ottawa visitors and the local health authorities.
The event began with a tour of a B.C. Centre for lab, with the media crowd taping shots of technicians stoically trying to do their jobs. The minister meanwhile was shown charts of the growing productivity of the lab in testing samples.
At the press conference itself, B.C. Centre for Disease Control's Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Perry Kendall, joined the visitors. Aglukkaq led off with a statement much like the ones she made at earlier stops on the tour, saying her purpose was to advise Canadians about H1N1 and to share information on new developments.
But she seemed a little unclear on what those developments might be. B.C. was now experiencing more H1N1 than it had in the spring, she said, but it's still spreading at a low to moderate rate. "This is not the second wave yet," she assured the media.
Aglukkaq promoted the government's new preparation guide, saying it will soon go out to 13.7 million Canadian households and that it's also available for downloading at FightFlu.ca. Ads, she said, will soon appear in newspapers, on radio and on TV.
Butler-Jones then took over, saying the government is "using a pandemic plan developed over years and adapted to present circumstances" -- that is, developed for bird flu and adapted to a completely unexpected strain. He said the federal government is working to improve B.C. hospitals' surge capacity, including purchasing 370 new ventilators.
Not entirely on message
Perry Kendall was not entirely following the script. Contradicting Aglukkaq, he said B.C. is now well into the second wave of the pandemic: "We are seeing singularly higher numbers." Labs are testing 700 samples a day, and almost half are H1N1. Kendall said that B.C. is seeing mostly mild to moderate cases, and that the mortality rate may well be lower than in a regular flu season. But H1N1, he warned, tends to attack younger persons than seasonal flu does.
"What's most important," Kendall said, "is that we are prepared. We have launched our own marketing campaign, referring people to the national program or to dial 811. Everything has been done to ensure we're prepared for the second wave."
Confusion broke out almost at once during the question period. Asked if pregnant women should receive the vaccine as soon as it's available, Aglukkaq stuck to her script -- the vaccine will be available early in November, and every person who wants it will get it.
Adjuvanted? Unadjuvanted? Whatever
Butler-Jones, however, said pregnant women would get "unadjuvanted" vaccine --lacking additives that enhance the vaccine's effectiveness. The unadjuvanted version would be available two weeks after the adjuvanted vaccine came out.
Why the delay? Aglukkaq returned to her script. "We're on track to get the vaccine out -- both kinds. We're not going to rush this." Butler-Jones, recovering, said it was too early to speculate on which vaccine will be available when. And in any case, he said in answer to another question, "It's a killed vaccine. Either version can protect you. We haven't seen a problem with the adjuvanted vaccine." In fact, he said, it's better. The problem, he explained, is the lack of reliable evidence on the safety of such a vaccine for pregnant women.
Grondin chimed in, saying that if she were pregnant she would get an immunization regardless. "The adjuvant is safe."
With the issue not much clearer, the questions moved on to whether the vaccine will be mandatory for healthcare workers (Aglukkaq: It will be optional), and just how high the infection rate in B.C. is (Kendall: Not untypical).
Unasked questions
The press conference wrapped up with Kendall saying healthcare workers (including retirees brought back into service) would be moved where needed most, and Aglukkaq promising mutual aid between provinces.
While the minister's stated purpose was to spread information and dispel "myths" about the vaccine, the conference brought out very little new information, and probably confused more people than it enlightened about vaccines for pregnant women.
Still, Aglukkaq stuck to her script and avoided any obvious errors. She touted Canadian self-sufficiency in vaccines, but no one asked her why Canada hasn't donated any of its stock to poor countries, as the U.S. and nine other countries are doing. Nor did anyone ask her if allowing healthcare workers to decline the vaccination was a medically wise policy.
An open-ended format might have permitted such questions, and the very interesting answers they might have provoked. After a few more flu deaths, Leona Aglukkaq's press conferences may grow longer, and more acrimonious. ![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
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rockbysea
3 years ago
Reporter says violation of civil liberties: "medically wise"?
“Nor did anyone ask her if allowing healthcare workers to decline the vaccination was a medically wise policy.”
“Health Minister Aglukkaq, don’t you think it may have been a “medically [wiser] policy” to force healthcare workers to take the jab like they tried in New York which caused an outrage that led to a court ruling to halt mandatory vaccinations of healthcare workers?”
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/16/judge-halts-mandatory-flu-vaccines-for-health-care-workers/
Now what kind of question is that? A question big pharma would pay a reporter on the take to ask.
wssides
3 years ago
H1N1 shots
Authorities are being clear enough. The media is doing it's best to create confusion by seeking out and publicizing the segment of our society who distrust shots of any sort. I may have reservations about the trustworthiness of authority but I trust science for the most part and will support vaccination / inoculation programs for the general public good even if I may be the one in whatever remote chance harmed by taking the shot.
LeftSeater
3 years ago
jus' shootin' through tour...
Is Aglukkag's nationwide H1N1 swine flu shootin' through tour body-bag-less???.....
Cedar
3 years ago
Can we trust Health Canada?
I just read " Corrupt to the Core" by Dr. Shiv Chopra (published 2009 by Helke Ferrie of KOS press) a scientist with Health Canada for 35 years. He was involved in "insubordination" to protect the public against his superiors at Health Canada, and managed to keep the Bovine Hormone out of our food chain.He has just won his court case against the employer, Health Canada. These people, including the minister, are puppets for the pharmaceutical lobby. The flu and the vaccine are man made and bloody dangerous. We can not trust these "authorities"
carfreed
3 years ago
health minister
No Beattles tune to add to the promo from our Conservative Minister.
My children and many many children survived without vaccinations, shots and booster shots.However, we were attentive to their diets . They were fed good healthy organic food mostly and not much meat.
My experience has been that overconsumption of white sugar, and starch and meat makes people more vulnerable to viruses.
Eat less, use herbal and homeopathic remedies in a preventative way.
As a child, I was sick for a week after the smallpox vaccination and my arm was black,blue and green.
Sask Resident
3 years ago
Provincial Responsibility
The delivery of health care is a provincial responsibility while Health Canada approves the vaccines and drugs and coordinates with the provinces. Whether vaccine shots should or should not be taken is the responsibility of the provinces and the federal government should not intrude and only assist the provinces. Any issue with supply should be dealt with by Health Canada while getting the actual shot is from your health district.
I think Leona Aglukkaq has been doing a good job as minister, better than the last few. She tends to listen to the experts and explain the rest in regular language.
Booker
3 years ago
Reviving viruses
There is a widespread return of infectious diseases like measles, mumps, and whooping cough because of the drop in vaccination rates in North America and Europe. Primarily this is due to the alternative medicine/anti-vaccination movement. There's a very good article in Wired about it.
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/ff_waronscience
It's highly advisable to get both the seasonal influenza and the H1N1 vaccine. For anyone who has had true influenza, it's an easy choice.
jericho
3 years ago
whose science do we trust
Do we trust the pharmaceuticals scientists?
Or do we trust the little old lab tech in Austria who just happened to test a sample of the H3N2 seasonal flu vaccine that was about to be shipped to other labs and found that this H3N2 seasonal flu vaccine had been contaminated with the H5N1 Avian Flu virus.
Baxter International has yet to figure out how one of its live virus it is experimenting on, Avian Flu, contaminated its batch of H3N2 vaccine.
The Avian Flu, if all of you remember the days of that flu ravaging the barns of poultry producers in the Fraser Valley, does not readily infect humans.
Last year, the US CDC, Centers for Disease Control, published a report showing that H5N1 (Avian Flu virus) and H3N2 virus "mated readily".
Media questions have gone unanswered and this case of mixing the two virus together by "mistake" was never reported in the US.
The Toronto Star in Canada did report on this in February 2009.
"Officials are trying to get to the bottom of how vaccine manufacturer Baxter International Inc. made "experimental virus material" based on a human flu strain but contaminated with the H5N1 avian flu virus and then distributed it to an Austrian company."
Full article...
http://www.thestar.com/Comment/article/593439
Now who are we to believe that this vaccine is safe and whether or not scientists, independent from the drug companies (are there any?), have enough time to determine the safety of this vaccine for H1N1 (which is also manufactured by Baxter)?
Just what are these for profit companies experimenting with in their labs and who is monitoring and controlling this research? Just how many other virus "releases" have these companies mistakenly had?
Did the current H1N1 virus now infecting millions come from a mistaken release from pharmaceutical
lab?
Steve Conner, Science Editor for the Independent in the UK has written on this subject.
Three decades ago, H1N1 Swine Flu virus was released from a lab.
Here's a quote from Conner's article, June 30, 2009...
"Scientists investigating the genetic make-up of flu viruses have concluded there is a high probability that the H1N1 strain of influenza "A" behind the current pandemic might never have been re-introduced into the human population were it not for an accidental leak from a laboratory working on the same strain in 1977."
Perhaps Ms. Aglukkaq could provide the funding required to have our state monitor the practices and restrict the experimentation of lethal virus' by big pharma and stop using us as their lab rats.
State governments around the world have signed treaties stopping the use and manufacturing of biological weapons for war purposes, now how about signing an agreement stopping for-profit big pharma from doing the same.
jericho
3 years ago
whose science do we trust
Do we trust the pharmaceuticals scientists?
Or do we trust the little old lab tech in Austria who just happened to test a sample of the H3N2 seasonal flu vaccine that was about to be shipped to other labs and found that this H3N2 seasonal flu vaccine had been contaminated with the H5N1 Avian Flu virus.
Baxter International has yet to figure out how one of its live virus it is experimenting on, Avian Flu, contaminated its batch of H3N2 vaccine.
The Avian Flu, if all of you remember the days of that flu ravaging the barns of poultry producers in the Fraser Valley, does not readily infect humans.
Last year, the US CDC, Centers for Disease Control, published a report showing that H5N1 (Avian Flu virus) and H3N2 virus "mated readily".
Media questions have gone unanswered and this case of mixing the two virus together by "mistake" was never reported in the US.
The Toronto Star in Canada did report on this in February 2009.
"Officials are trying to get to the bottom of how vaccine manufacturer Baxter International Inc. made "experimental virus material" based on a human flu strain but contaminated with the H5N1 avian flu virus and then distributed it to an Austrian company."
Full article...
http://www.thestar.com/Comment/article/593439
Now who are we to believe that this vaccine is safe and whether or not scientists, independent from the drug companies (are there any?), have enough time to determine the safety of this vaccine for H1N1 (which is also manufactured by Baxter)?
Just what are these for profit companies experimenting with in their labs and who is monitoring and controlling this research? Just how many other virus "releases" have these companies mistakenly had?
Did the current H1N1 virus now infecting millions come from a mistaken release from pharmaceutical
lab?
Steve Conner, Science Editor for the Independent in the UK has written on this subject.
Three decades ago, H1N1 Swine Flu virus was released from a lab.
Here's a quote from Conner's article, June 30, 2009...
"Scientists investigating the genetic make-up of flu viruses have concluded there is a high probability that the H1N1 strain of influenza "A" behind the current pandemic might never have been re-introduced into the human population were it not for an accidental leak from a laboratory working on the same strain in 1977."
Perhaps Ms. Aglukkaq could provide the funding required to have our state monitor the practices and restrict the experimentation of lethal virus' by big pharma and stop using us as their lab rats.
State governments around the world have signed treaties stopping the use and manufacturing of biological weapons for war purposes, now how about signing an agreement stopping for-profit big pharma from doing the same.
Camero409
3 years ago
Swine Flu is a Scam!
When I was younger (I'm 65) there were always flu epidemics going around. Since then, the intervention of big pharma the various CDC's and Governments have created a panic around the flu viruses. In my time we just stayed home and waited until you got better and then went about our business. Every year it was either the Hong Kong flu or some other one with a different name. We never panicked because next year there will be another one.
I challenge the interested and invested entities to prove the virus shot prevents or deters the most vulnerable from getting the disease. Those are the people who will suffer the most. I suspect healthy eating habits and cleanliness are more effective than a shot in the dark flu shot.
This current panic, supported by our LIbERal and CONServative, Federal and Provincial governments benefit no one but big pharma. What will it be called next year? Horse epidemic? Baaa epidemic? Quack Quack epidemic? Quack quack would suit it best I think.
I suspect you have a better chance of rolling the dice and getting a 7 than finding a flu shot that really works. BRING ON THE DICE!
Booker
3 years ago
"Current Panic"
Uh, where is this "current panic"? No one I know or have seen in the media is in a panic. Everyone seems to be pretty calm and measured. It appears to be the anti-vaxxers who are hysterical, trotting out the old claims of Big Government/Big Pharma/Scientific Establishment conspiracy.
Oh well, it has always been thus, and probably always will be.
SicPreFix
3 years ago
Camer0409 (and others) ...
say: "Swine Flu is a Scam" (and similar nonsense).
Hark, from the deep dark forests of Donwannaknow comes the call of the Everdumb beast.
Arguing against True Believers, and the willfully ignorant masses of woo is rather like holding back the backflush of a plugged toilet with one's hand: Almost pointless, and one feels rather soiled after the fact.
Ah well, it must be done.
I am not going to waste my time and breath trying to convince the unconvincible with my own weak rhetoric. Instead, I will present a few links to some very well educated, disinterested (please look up the proper definition), and very well researched individuals who actually know whereof they speak.
1. Effect Measure is a skeptical, authoritative site that reviews the current known AND unknowns of A:H1N1, the current vaccines, and a great deal of other relevant information. The responsible parties on this site are not affiliated with "Big Pharma": http://scienceblogs.com/effectmeasure/
2. Science-Based Medicine (SBM) is a highly authoritative site with several contributors, all of whom are disinterested and unaffiliated with "Big Pharma" or any other lunatic fringe focus of the conspiracy theory crowd. The topics on this site are wide ranging, so you should do some independant browsing through the topics. They cover A:H1N1, vaccines, Homeopathy, and a wealth of other important information: http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/
3. SBM's database of vaccine-related posts: http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?cat=36
4. SBM's database of "Public Health" posts, which cover issues related to the A:H1N1 flu, normal seasonal flu, flu vaccines, and other closely related issues: http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?cat=10
5. Bad Science. Ben Goldacre's Bad Science website discusses a wide range of issues important to understanding the various frauds and deceptions perpetrated by the woo believers and woo merchants, as well as other important science issues of the day: http://www.badscience.net/
This is just a very small sampling of the legitimate, authoritative information available on the web to counter the fear mongering of the stupid. These are informed, researched sites with intelligent, research-based posts by legitimate, educated, authoritative folks. These posts are not anecdotal bits of fluff designed to scare (or console) through crafted language and empty rhetoric. They are, rather, designed to inform, with research, real-world knowledge, and reproducible evidence.
So, either do the reserach and learn something, or continue to add to the death toll through idiot pseudo-science and fear mongering. It's your choice.
jaelson
3 years ago
A response
I'm one of those people that has gotten the flu shot for years and has a had a bad reaction to two of them. I haven't made up my mind about getting the shot this year, but if I don't I will take precautions to ensure that, if I become ill, I will do my best to avoid infecting others.
I found this article very helpful in my decision making this year. It just cleared everything up for me.
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/200911/brownlee-h1n1
David Huntley
3 years ago
How effective are 'flu shots?
Would reporters please ask the health ministers, health officers and others what the effectiveness of 'flu shots is, and if they give an answer then ask for the proof. When they do not provide it, because they cannot, then challenge them to organize a proper study - that is a double-blind placebo-controlled study.
Nobody, anywhere, has done a double-blind placebo-controlled study of the effectiveness of any influenza vaccine for the general population. So, we have no idea what the general effectiveness is.
Until we know this, we do not have enough information to decide whether or not the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks.
There have been two double-blind placebo-controlled studies for seniors living in the community. The results indicated vaccination may have a small beneficial effect, but the number of people studied was not enough to be certain of this. Interestingly, in one study a cost analysis was done and vaccination was not found to be cost effective.
dorothy
3 years ago
How optional again?
"the questions moved on to whether the vaccine will be mandatory for healthcare workers (Aglukkaq: It will be optional)..."
This is not a question that will be answered differerntly in this istuation than in any other. It is determined by reference to collective agreements, which gives the employer the discretion to make immunization a condition of employment. In most practical cases, this means that in case of an outbreak, those not vacinated without a bona fide health-related reason will ostensibly be barred from working and will not be paid, as they are considered 'unemployable' in the situation. That this may be a moot point, given that not enough workers are willing to be immunized to make up an adequate workforce, only speaks to what we already knew - we are suffering a societal breakdown. we really don't give a blessed damn about the next guy.
OilbertaRedTory
3 years ago
Reducing hospitalizations and death in the elderly ...
... seems like a good idea to me :
http://nejm.highwire.org/cgi/content/abstract/357/14/1373
Let's use flu vaccines ; they work !
OilbertaRedTory
3 years ago
How effectively confused are journalists ?
Doesn't seem to take much.
" a BC Center for lab..." [You mean the laboratory at the BC Centre for Disease Control ? A very good one I'm told]
" technicians" [what were they doing - repairing machinery ? Or as my neighbour insists: Medical Laboratory Technologists ?]
"Confusion broke out almost at once ..."
" 'The adjuvant is safe.' With the issue not much clearer ..." [what, exactly is unclear about that for a journalist ?]
Apparently, Crawford can't distinguish rapidly changing and incomplete science from Harper's 'hotter-than-isotopes' Health Con-bot's incapacities.
According to her cabinet colleague from the Raitt tapes :
http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2009/06/08/raitt-injunction.html
How is it Harper has so little talent on his front bench ?
Intention Pure
3 years ago
Unethical
Big pharma and the GM agri-food business are Health Canada's employers. Vaccines are extremely contaminated with other viruses, mycoplasma, and prions. The FDA and Health Canada know the industry has not done the studies for contamination, nor has industry made any attempt to change their faulty manufacturing techniques. The FDA and Health Canada can DO NOTHING to make big pharma do any studies on the safety of the contaminating mobile genetic elements that recombine with our own DNA in our cells. Purity of vaccines is a bald-faced assumption, however contamination of vaccines is well known. For example, the H5N1 viral contamination of the seasonal flu vaccine meant for world wide distribution and discovered in Austria.
The contamination of Merck's tetnus vaccine with human chorionic gonadotropin in the Phillipines, which sterilized hundreds of thousands of young Phillipino women.
The contamination of oral and injectible Polio vaccine, to this f*#&*#* day, with Simian Virus 40 (SV-40) which causes metastatic tumors in rats. And Simian Immunodefiency Virus (SIV) was in the Polio vaccines given in Africa prior to the AIDS pandemic there.
Contamination of the Hepatitis B vaccine with SIV and given in San Francisco in the 1970s prior to the AIDS pandemic there.
Flu vaccines, along with the Measles/ Mumps/ Rubella (MMR) for children, are the most well known as highly contaminated, and the FDA and Health Canada know it and they can do nothing. We can do everything! Refuse all vaccines at all times until whoever is trying to push it on you shows you a study proving the sample they are holding in their hand is not contaminated with unknown viruses, prions, and mycoplasmas.
sicntired
3 years ago
Had all my shots
When I was a kid I had all my shots.I spent most of my life giving myself a lot more.Coincidence?Of course it is.People that are afraid of vaccinations will be the death of us all.The granola crowd is fooling themselves if they think this poor polluted planet gives a...darn about your paranoid ravings.Seriously,I haven't been right since they took my heroin away.Flu shots are for pussies and you don't even get off.Just having a little fun because the comments on this article are so serious and with all kinds of references that you would think there was some kind of big pharma conspiracy or something.There isn't a conspiracy,is there?
SicPreFix
3 years ago
Miss aware-beware ...
you are a paranoid distortionist. The kind of delusional fabrication, factual distortion, fear mongering, and outright lying that woo-meisters like yourself spread is actually killing people. You should be ashamed of yourself.
Why don't you post some links to actual research, clinical trials, facts, and other non-hysterical real-world data.
Intention Pure
3 years ago
SicPreFix
Everything I state is available in the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Monitor, Len Horowitz's excellent truth telling books, Engdahl's truthtelling book, Janine Rodert's book "Fear the Invisible", and Jenny Craig's book "Jabs, Jennifer, and Juggernauts".
And you, SicPreFix, are a brainwashed conformist who is threatened by those who still have active brain cells. Vaccines seed the population with disease. Whether or not this accidental or intention is a seperate debate I stay out of. Lets stick to the FACTS: purity of vaccines is a bald-faced assumption and contamination of vaccines is extremely well documented.
Those of us who have done the research into vaccine production have the responsibility to educate the general population in any way we can. Those of us that see vaccine injury and illness all around us are sick and tired of the general medical establishment's inability to address the facts. What responsibility do you take? How about you go purchase the books I have posted, read them, and then lets talk.
The whole point of my post was that Health Canada and the FDA have no power to enforce industry to do the tests, studies, and/or clinical trials. They will not even allow a placebo controlled study of flu vaccines. Uhm, is that because it is "unethical" to give a placebo vaccine to one group and a real vaccine to the other group because those in the placebo group may get the flu and this is unethical? No, it is because NO ONE has the power or authority to force industry to do anything.
SicPreFix, you should be ashamed of yourself, as every professional association involved in the medical field allows public and professional debate on these issues. But somehow, stimulating national conversation on these issues is a sin and I kill people? Right, and my ass is a box of chocolates too.
SicPreFix
3 years ago
Miss aware-beware ...
You really like them anecdotal fluffernutters dontcha?
I do not for an instant discourage debate. What I do discourage is peddling anecdotal invention, fabricated nonsense, and intentionally misrepresented and out-dated research as legitimate science. That's called lying, deceiving, and fear mongering.
But you wouldn't understand the difference would you?
I bet you didn't even have a serious gander at any of the links I provided did you?
By the way, it's not "Jabs, Jennifer, and Juggernauts" it's "Jabs, Jenner, and Juggernauts." And it's not "Fear the Invisible" it's "Fear of the Invisible."
Jeebles Crystals, if you're going to try and pawn off anecdotal dithershits as your proof, at least get your titles right.
soleprobe
3 years ago
Canada Decides To Approve Unlicensed Adjuvanted Vaccines
http://preventdisease.com/news/09/102109_Canada_approved_unlicensed_vaccines.shtml
drink up provaxers