ALBERTA’S COVID-19 PANDEMICRESPONSE
- Leslie Vivvian
- Jun 1
- 3 min read
By Dr. Gary Davidson
On behalf of the Alberta Pandemic Data Review Task Force, I am pleased to present this report on the review of the response of the Alberta government to the 2020-2022 COVID-19 pandemic. This review might be one of few being conducted by Canada’s provinces. It examines the quality, use, interpretation, and flow of information and data that informed Alberta’s pandemic response to COVID-19. Because of this very specific focus, we do not discuss economic issues, although we recognise that negative economic impacts will have downstream negative effects on public health.
We also do not engage in issues regarding media handling of the pandemic, nor pose any questions of how, when and why the SARS-CoV-2 virus originated. We have sought to produce a report that identifies apparent shortcomings of the evidence used during Alberta’s response rather than absolve the decisions in the context of many uncertainties.
However, the Task Force is very aware that decisions made throughout the pandemic did not have the benefit of hindsight, so we try to use it sparingly. This document presents a blueprint around key public health questions for a formal COVID19 inquiry. In separate chapters we summarize key background information on the governance of information and how it was passed to decision makers.
We pose specific questions about failures to protect high-risk Albertans, non-pharmaceutical interventions – including their collateral harms, misleading risk communication, downplaying infectionacquired immunity, masks, testing, vaccine effectiveness and safety, therapeutics, and epidemiological modelling. While this report does not attempt to explicitly analyse “why?” decision makers were willing to accept the possibility of greater societal harm over the proclaimed benefits against COVID-19, the question will manifest throughout its text.
The report is the product of months of analysis of the documentation and the reported experience of some of those who were involved in the response and others who were close observers. Our quest for answers was impeded by barriers, including reluctance from key stakeholders to engage with the Task Force's mandate.
Throughout the interviews we conducted, it has become obvious that the situations in Italy and New York were given disproportionate importance amongst those in the Health Emergency Operations Centre. Whether, or not, these two international jurisdictions Archived COVID-19 Pandemic Response Task Force ii applied to Alberta, they certainly set the reference point for many judgements moving forward from March 11, 2020. Faced with the uncertain situation of a pandemic, many respondents were simply happy to be doing what other jurisdictions were doing. Unfortunately, amongst many of the quick decisions made, there was little consideration of the delayed consequences of the actions taken — largely because they were not immediately quantifiable.
It must be acknowledged that the spread of SARS-CoV-2 and its effects were not uniform and was influenced geographically, temporally, and demographically. Despite this, the relatively few deaths that did occur in otherwise healthy people, were – as they would be under any circumstances – tragic and poignant. The pandemic and the response it generated confirms how quickly routine methods to ensure timely and efficient action can be warped if a threat is perceived to be large enough. But pandemics are recurring events throughout history, and there will be others in the future.
It is therefore critically important that we use this opportunity to strengthen evidence-based decision making and position the government to better manage pandemics. However, we leave any improvements that could be identified to more formal means of inquiry. The Task Force wishes to express their gratitude to all who responded to the call for evidence, to all those who gave up their time to meet and discuss their experiences. Any errors or omissions in this report are solely ours.
Yours sincerely, Dr. Gary Davidson
For the full report please read:
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