Whether you were able to or missed the Jason Kenney speech on Tuesday, February 8th, 2022, I’m going to take a moment to give you an overview of what this whole conversation was about.
The big takeaways from his long-winded and mostly unnecessary speech:
Vaccines and passports saved lives and helped reduce strain on Health Care for Alberta;
We need to protect the most vulnerable;
The only thing you cannot personally control in easing restrictions is the strain on our current Health Care System. That is his job and you will be punished for making him look bad, whether you hit the hospitals for any reason or not!
There is a lot of rhetoric in what was in his statement but the real biggest things are the ones I mentioned and the reasons being is that the vaccines didn’t really do all that much and that you have zero control over anybody else’s health.
Now, Jason Kenney wants you to know that because we’ve seen the Spike of Omicron Reduce that this is a part of the reason that we can be a little more lackadaisical on restrictions. It’s not that I don’t agree with his conclusion, but I do question his reasoning. It’s like this:
The current case rate is still actually higher than was on the day that the vaccine passport system rolled out in Alberta. A part of his speech, pretty much easily glazed over, is when he said that vaccines helped reduce the spread. If case rate and vaccination rates are as high as they’ve ever been, why ease restrictions when case rate is still above the day this Emergency Measure was enacted?
Again, I am not disagreeing with his conclusions, I am just confused how he got here.
But I know what you are probably saying and I agree with you, case rates mean nothing!
They don’t.
The only thing that matters, during a global pandemic, is saving lives.
So, are we doing that?
Nope.
Still more people dying from the weakest variant of COVID - Omicron - than did from the more Deadliest and Deadlier Variants - Alpha, Delta.
But…At Least with the more contagious Omicron, we’re at least protecting those who need protection, right?
[Spoiler Alert]: No.
There is a very tight Venn Diagram that can be drawn by age and physical condition for mortality associated with COVID and age associated mortality and it looks like a perfect O. Almost….
You see, to a certain extent, without being all that particular about math, we all get it.
If the 95% chances of sunny skies and +20 C weather is foretasted for tomorrow, we dress in shorts.
Consequentially if the forecast says 5% chance of rain tomorrow, we should probably still do the same.
And this is where it’s easy to get lost in what is “being said” and “what is being said”.
Jason Kenney kind of eluded to this without actually explaining it, so you’re just supposed to nod your head knowingly and agree.
But, if you’ve made it to this point…you are not in congruent with this, necessarily.
On the following link you can see:
The majority of deaths are in the unvaccinated.
What you aren’t supposed to see is this part:
So, where we’re we actually at in vaccinations by January 1st, 2021?
You see, when the vaccines were available, the province started the unvaccinated vs the vaccinated death counter and if there are less vaccinated, there are obviously less vaccinated cases and mortalities. That’s literally how the vaccines have been pushed to now, at varying degrees.
But you’re not supposed to actually remember this or even be able to figure it out.
Jason Kenney mentioned, we need to protect the most vulnerable. Hard to argue with this, but we should retort with, “are we actually doing this?”, because the answer is STILL, No!
The first thing you’d have to do to even establish this is understand who is at risk. What’s funny is, even though the Province puts in Colored illustrations, Jason Kenney is still confused.
And from this, you can see the Highest Case Rates, ICU Admissions and Deaths. And an interesting thing to notice about this is how the Highest Deaths are in the +80 Group, while they also don’t seem to make it into the ICU?
This is a snap shot of the entire pandemic. It’s not selective dates as in the above but the reason that it makes sense to use here will be brought up below.
The Vaccine Passport Drove Vaccinations - Claims Justin Kenney (yes, I did that on purpose), and on a fact check, this comes up as true:
From September 20, 2021 to current, there was an increase Fully Vaccinated by 595,978, with the High Risk being 50,810 of those making up about 8.5%, leaving 91.5% of those in the lower risk age stratified groups. About 17% increase on total vaccinations in the Low Risk Group, 2% in the High Risk.
From this, Justin Kenney claims that these vaccinations helped slow down the spread of COVID, which from the chart above we know is a big fat lie but how big and how fat?
From September 20, 2021 to current, 44% of the total COVID cases for the province happened over this period of time. About 5 Months of Vaccine Passports driving additional vaccinations and just under half of the total COVID Cases from almost 2 years of us tracking COVID cases.
That’s right.
44% in 5 Months; 56% in 17 Months.
Slowed the spread hey?
Well, surely it helped ease on Hospitalizations, reducing the Risk?
Well, with 44% more cases, we went from 11,987 Hospitalizations on September 20th, 2021 to 19,640 up to current. That’s an increase of 40%. 44% more cases…40% new hospitalizations so in theory, there was a 4% reduction in cases. The problem with this is, we know that Omicron is the weakest of the variants to have hit Canada so far, a 4% reduction in hospitalizations could help to account for this…but what is particularly interesting about this is, by September of 2021, the High Risk Group made up 52% of the total hospitalizations. After September 20, 2021, they made up 55% of the change. The reduction in hospitalizations we seen was in the low risk group while those who have always needed protection seen an increase in being hospitalized during the REP program.
And as for ICU admissions…
What happened here was something that I pointed out in a letter that was sent to Candice Bergen and Jason Kenney. Those who were at lower risk moved into a Higher Risk Category with vaccinations. ICU Admissions in this snapshot of time were only 32% increased with higher case and hospitalizations only on the uptick of 40(ish)%…again, on a weaker variant. With a 17% increase on vaccinations in lower risk groups showed a 1% increase in their ICU admissions which means that the reduction in those who needed protection showed a 1% decrease.
Is this something worthy of bragatorial conversations touting vaccinations?
No. It is not.
Because when it all comes down to it, Saving Lives is what Jason Kenney mentioned as the big thing that vaccinations have done and the efforts that went into the REP program we’re worth because of this.
Now, there was a reduction seen here as well, so he will kind of get a little credit here, but let’s drill it out.
There was only an increase in death by 30% over a 44% increase in cases. That is good news. What isn’t so good is the Deaths in the Low Risk Group over this period. With a 17% uptick on Vaccinations, 43% of the total mortality for the Lower Risk is made up in these last 5 Months. Their reduction in death is virtually Nothing all while we watched 939 people in the High Risk Group which still makes up 84% of the total deaths from September 20, 2021 to February 7, 2022.
With a reduction in ICU admissions and COVID associated deaths, of course Jason Kenney can claim that the Vaccinations and REP Passport program show up as being effective.
Thing is…
If we compare countries with lower vaccinations by death rate what we’d see is places like South Africa, where Omicron was first discovered having a current vaccination rate of 28.3% at current, with their Death rate only being 20% of what it was Before Vaccines were available, with deadlier variants.
India, who have just recently crested 50% on fully vaccinated only seeing a Decline in Death from Omicron with current numbers sitting at 25% from their Spike High.
Where in Alberta, where we added another 595,978 to our Fully Vaccinated over the last 5 Months is currently seeing at most a 30% reduction from when No Vaccinations were available and sitting higher than it was before we’d Fully Vaccinated 600k people.
But the biggest thing to really look at in all of this…
As of September 20, 2021, 88.2% of cases, 87.7% of Hospitalized and 80.7% of COVID deaths were in the Unvaccinated or Diagnosed within two weeks from the first dose immunization.
As of February 7th, 2022, those numbers look like this:
Only 54.7% of cases, 67.8% of those Hospitalized and 67.3% of those who died are Unvaccinated.
Meaning:
72% of the New Cases, 51% of Hospitalizations and 45% of deaths were in the Fully Vaccinated group in this period and now, rapidly gaining. From the First Reporting Period back this year, January 3, 2022 these numbers look like:
84% of the Case, 70% of Hospitalizations and 72% of the deaths are all Fully Vaccinated or Fully Vaccinated with a Booster.
Jason Kenney moving to reduce restrictions and eliminate the REP program does make sense…but not because we have a handle on COVID nor is it because vaccines are doing anything, when in fact, there has been no reduction in cases nor mortality at current reporting and the Fully Vaccinated are taking up more hospital beds and are now 72% of the deaths, through the weakest variant, Omicron.
For this speech, based on Jason Kenney focusing on local data to remove the REP Program and ease up all restrictions based on Vaccinations, I give it a 7 out of 4 possible Pinnochio’s.
And this is all to remember that the only reason we had to go into the REP Program to begin with…is because after 17 Months of Global Pandemic and up to September 20, 2021, Jason Kenney, after spiffing people $100 to get their Jabs and a couple of Million Dollar Lotteries to get vaccinated, never had the foresight to make a recommendation to our provincial service provider to increase hospital beds and overseen a decision to suspend Health Care Workers during it.
I've read that Jason has dropped the vaccine passports but not really. It seems he will leave them in place as a business tool should such establishments think they will require them. Already I can hear the vaccinated whining about the possibility of sitting nearby an unvaccinated individual while enjoying their virtuous meal. The truckers on the Alberta border are right. The vaccine passports and QR codes need to be dropped immediately and never see the light of day again. This to my mind is one of the biggest issues in this entire farce.
Brilliant analysis! The numbers AHS does not want you to know.