Thank you, Danielle Smith! We are No. 1!
In fact, congratulations to the whole United Conservative Party team.
Alberta wouldn’t be at the top today without your hard work. We are the champions!
Unfortunately, this isn’t a contest you’d think anyone would want to win.
The number of reported measles cases in Alberta now exceeds those in the entire United States, and, as we all know, Donald Trump’s America is no slouch when it comes to ignoring sensible public health measures and spreading ridiculous lies about vaccines and immunization.
But when it comes to spreading infection, Premier Danielle Smith’s Alberta punches above its weight.
As of today at lunchtime, media reported, the number of reported cases of the highly infectious disease had reached 1,314. That’s a rate of about 26 cases per 100,000 population.
Meanwhile in the latest reporting period by World Health Organization passed onward by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the CBC said, the MAGA colossus immediately to our south, with a population 68 times that of Alberta, had managed to post only a measly 1,288 cases – about 0.4 cases per 100,000.
Most of those have been in Texas, which, as UCP politicians always like to remind us, has a lot in common with Alberta – including far-right politics and bad government, as it happens.
With 3,053 cases reported in all of Canada, including those in Alberta, the national incidence rate is about 7.6 per 100,000. Mexico, has about 2 cases per 100,000.
So, without a doubt, we appear to be the leaders in the race to the bottom of the public health barrel on the North American continent.
Looking farther afield, though, several nations, including Yemen, India, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan posted larger numbers of cases, the CDC said, but most of them reported smaller numbers of cases per 100,000 – about 0.7 for India and 3.4 for Pakistan, for example.
But, hey, maybe reporting in those countries, and the United States too, isn’t as good as it is in Alberta! A word to the wise, dear readers: Don’t count on it.
Yemen has reported the largest number of measles cases for any country in the world (15,683), according to the WHO, a rate of about 39 per 100,000, according to me and the online incidence-rate calculator I found. Kyrgyzstan had a total of 8,487 cases, working about to almost 120 per 100,000.
So we may not be No. 1 in the world – just yet – but we’re a contender.
Chaos in our health care system is undoubtedly helping, as is the UCP’s laser focus on destroying and privatizing the most efficient public health care agency in Canada instead of fixing the real problems in health care.
But more than anything else, the spread is being enabled Premier Smith’s public suspicion of vaccines, her government’s refusal to allow public health officials to promote their use or even to talk about them, and even its now obvious efforts to slow-walk access to the measles vaccine everywhere except the hardest hit rural areas where immunization rates are lowest.
Take a bow, Smith. RFK Jr. must be envious.
Next up, this fall, the return of COVID-19 and influenza. The Smith Government’s plan to limit, restrict, and refuse to provide the vaccines for both diseases to thousands of Albertans – plus to make seniors pay a steep fee for the COVID shot – should encourage the spread of those diseases as well.
After that, who knows? Polio, maybe?
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