Thursday's letters: Does Smith know vaccines save lives?
Article content
My mother was the oldest child in her family. She said to me that, one day, one of her siblings died of diphtheria in the morning, and another died of diphtheria in the evening. She was living in a Mennonite community in Russia.
She went on to have seven children here in Canada. And guess what: All of us received every single vaccination and immunization that was available. My mother was uneducated. She knew nothing about science. She certainly knew nothing about research. But she was smart enough to know that vaccinations and immunization save lives. We would be better off if Danielle Smith was as smart as my mother.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Winnipeg Free Press
a day ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
US measles count now tops 1,200 cases, and Iowa announces an outbreak
The U.S. logged fewer than 20 measles cases this week, though Iowa announced the state's first outbreak Thursday and Georgia confirmed its second Wednesday. There have been 1,214 confirmed measles cases this year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday. Health officials in Texas, where the nation's biggest outbreak raged during the late winter and spring, confirmed six cases in the last week. There are three other major outbreaks in North America. The longest, in Ontario, Canada, has resulted in 2,179 cases from mid-October through June 17. The province logged its first death June 5 in a baby who got congenital measles but also had other preexisting conditions. Another outbreak in Alberta, Canada, has sickened 996 as of Thursday. And the Mexican state of Chihuahua had 2,335 measles cases and four deaths as of Friday, according to data from the state health ministry. Other U.S. states with active outbreaks — which the CDC defines as three or more related cases — include Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Kansas, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota and Oklahoma. In the U.S., two elementary school-aged children in the epicenter in West Texas and an adult in New Mexico have died of measles this year. All were unvaccinated. Measles is caused by a highly contagious virus that's airborne and spreads easily when an infected person breathes, sneezes or coughs. It is preventable through vaccines and has been considered eliminated from the U.S. since 2000. How many measles cases are there in Texas? There are a total of 750 cases across 35 counties, most of them in West Texas, state health officials said Tuesday. Throughout the outbreak, 97 people have been hospitalized. State health officials estimated less than 1% of cases — fewer than 10 — are actively infectious. Fifty-five percent of Texas' cases are in Gaines County, where the virus started spreading in a close-knit, undervaccinated Mennonite community. The county has had 413 cases since late January — just under 2% of its residents. The April 3 death in Texas was an 8-year-old child, according to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Local health officials said the child did not have underlying health conditions and died of 'what the child's doctor described as measles pulmonary failure.' A unvaccinated child with no underlying conditions died of measles in Texas in late February; Kennedy said the child was 6. How many measles cases are there in New Mexico? New Mexico held steady Friday with a total of 81 cases. Seven people have been hospitalized since the outbreak started. Most of the state's cases are in Lea County. Sandoval County near Albuquerque has six cases, Eddy County has three, Doña Ana County has two. Chaves, Curry and San Juan counties have one each. An unvaccinated adult died of measles-related illness March 6. The person did not seek medical care. How many cases are there in Oklahoma? Oklahoma added one case Friday for a total of 17 confirmed and three probable cases. The state health department is not releasing which counties have cases. How many cases are there in Arizona? Arizona has four cases in Navajo County. They are linked to a single source, the county health department said June 9. All four were unvaccinated and had a history of recent international travel. How many cases are there in Colorado? Colorado has seen a total of 16 measles cases in 2025, which includes one outbreak of 10 related cases. The outbreak is linked to a Turkish Airlines flight that landed at Denver International Airport in mid-May. Four of the people were on the flight with the first case — an out-of-state traveler not included in the state count — while five got measles from exposure in the airport and one elsewhere. Health officials are also tracking an unrelated case in a Boulder County resident. The person was fully vaccinated but had 'recently traveled to Europe, where there are a large number of measles cases,' the state health department said. Other counties that have seen measles this year include Archuleta and Pueblo. How many cases are there in Georgia? Georgia has an outbreak of three cases in metro Atlanta, with the most recent infection confirmed Wednesday. The state has confirmed six total cases in 2025. The remaining three are part of an unrelated outbreak from January. How many cases are there in Illinois? Illinois health officials confirmed a four-case outbreak on May 5 in the far southern part of the state. It grew to eight cases as of June 6, but no new cases were reported in the following weeks, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health. The state's other two cases so far this year were in Cook County, and are unrelated to the southern Illinois outbreak. How many cases are there in Iowa? Iowa has had six total measles cases in 2025. Four are part of an outbreak in eastern Johnson County, among members of the same household. County health officials said the people are isolating at home, so they don't expect additional spread. How many cases are there in Kansas? Kansas has a total of 79 cases across 11 counties in the southwestern part of the state, with three hospitalizations. All but three of the cases are connected, and most are in Gray County. How many cases are there in Montana? Montana had 22 measles cases as of Friday. Fourteen were in Gallatin County, which is where the first cases showed up — Montana's first in 35 years. Flathead and Yellowstone counties had two cases each, and Hill County had four cases. There are outbreaks in neighboring North Dakota and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan. How many cases are there in North Dakota? North Dakota, which hadn't seen measles since 2011, was up to 34 cases as of June 6, but has held steady since. Two of the people have been hospitalized. All of the people with confirmed cases were not vaccinated. There were 16 cases in Williams County in western North Dakota on the Montana border. On the eastern side of the state, there were 10 cases in Grand Forks County and seven cases in Cass County. Burke County, in northwest North Dakota on the border of Saskatchewan, Canada, had one case. Where else is measles showing up in the U.S.? Measles cases also have been reported this year in Alaska, Arkansas, California, District of Columbia, Florida, Hawaii, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia and Washington. Health officials declared earlier outbreaks in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania over after six weeks of no new cases. Tennessee's outbreak also appears to be over. Cases and outbreaks in the U.S. are frequently traced to someone who caught the disease abroad. The CDC said in May that more than twice as many measles have come from outside of the U.S. compared to May of last year. Most of those are in unvaccinated Americans returning home. In 2019, the U.S. saw 1,274 cases and almost lost its status of having eliminated measles. What do you need to know about the MMR vaccine? The best way to avoid measles is to get the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. The first shot is recommended for children between 12 and 15 months old and the second between 4 and 6 years old. Getting another MMR shot as an adult is harmless if there are concerns about waning immunity, the CDC says. People who have documentation of receiving a live measles vaccine in the 1960s don't need to be revaccinated, but people who were immunized before 1968 with an ineffective vaccine made from 'killed' virus should be revaccinated with at least one dose, the agency said. People who have documentation that they had measles are immune and those born before 1957 generally don't need the shots because so many children got measles back then that they have 'presumptive immunity.' Measles has a harder time spreading through communities with high vaccination rates — above 95% — due to 'herd immunity.' But childhood vaccination rates have declined nationwide since the pandemic and more parents are claiming religious or personal conscience waivers to exempt their kids from required shots. What are the symptoms of measles? Measles first infects the respiratory tract, then spreads throughout the body, causing a high fever, runny nose, cough, red, watery eyes and a rash. The rash generally appears three to five days after the first symptoms, beginning as flat red spots on the face and then spreading downward to the neck, trunk, arms, legs and feet. When the rash appears, the fever may spike over 104 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the CDC. Most kids will recover from measles, but infection can lead to dangerous complications such as pneumonia, blindness, brain swelling and death. How can you treat measles? There's no specific treatment for measles, so doctors generally try to alleviate symptoms, prevent complications and keep patients comfortable. ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
CBC
2 days ago
- CBC
Hospital-based decision making raises privatization fears, hope for efficiencies
The Alberta premier's announcement of her intent to restore local decision making to public health facilities is highlighting a philosophical divide in how to best manage the province's stretched health budget. Premier Danielle Smith published a video online Tuesday, saying decisions about hiring health-care workers or replacing hospital furniture belong with individual health centres, not Alberta Health Services (AHS) managers. "Soon, each facility will have an empowered leadership team supporting our sites, responsible for hiring, managing resources, and solving problems without sending every request into the vortex," Smith said in the video. The shift is part of a massive restructuring of health-care in the province, in which the government has broken the oversight of care into four new agencies and stripped AHS of decision-making power. A government news release Tuesday afternoon said the change will go hand-in-hand with a provincial shift to "activity based funding," beginning next year. The government will fund some facilities based on the number of procedures they complete along with safety measures, such as readmission rates, instead of allotting a global annual budget. Although the premier said the shifts will lead to faster patient care, health policy experts say they have looming questions about how it will work, and warn the transition further opens the door to private, for-profit companies running public hospitals. "They're trying to create some sort of a market — a competitive market to provide acute care services, and … arguably have different providers compete with each other," said John Church, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Alberta. Church, who has authored books on the creation of Alberta Health Services and evolution of health administration in the province, says the announcement could herald a shift to the way Alberta's health system was run before amalgamation into health regions, and then a single health services provider. In an interview Tuesday, Church said the government moved away from local hospital control in the 1990s because facilities were frequently running out of money and returning to the government to ask for more. The fragmented system was time consuming and expensive, he said. Church said the province may try to control those costs by either selling off individual health facilities or contracting private operators to run them, assigning a fixed contracting cost and giving the operators the flexibility to run them as they wish. Handing control of critical public services to the private sector is risky, he said. Church pointed to a private surgical centre in Calgary that faced bankruptcy in 2010, prompting the province to swoop in to prevent mass cancellations. In 2023, the Alberta government rapidly reversed course on privatizing lab services when private operator Dynalife was on the brink of insolvency. More efficiency or more risk? Krystle Wittevrongel, director of research at MEI, an independent public policy think tank, is more hopeful about the potential of site-based decision making in combination with activity-based funding. "I think we're going to see some actual change," she said on Wednesday. "I'm very excited about the fact that these two things are happening together." MEI believes competition incentivizes adaptability and innovation, Wittevrongel said. She pointed to health systems in Quebec and Australia using activity-based funding that had decreased wait times for diagnostic imaging and colonoscopies, and reduced some procedure costs. University of Calgary medicine and health economics professor Dr. Braden Manns is more skeptical. The former senior AHS administrator said Alberta moved away from local hospital control because facilities were competing for a fixed number of health professionals working in the province, which drove up costs. Manns said there was also inconsistency in medical treatments across the province, which meant not all patients were getting the best evidence-based care.. He said despite the premier's statements, local hospitals did have the ability to make hiring decisions — until the government froze health spending and AHS was forced to centrally approve all hiring decisions to control costs. Although competition and free markets may generate cheaper and better laptop computers, it doesn't make better medicine, Manns said. "It's different in healthcare, where you have to provide coverage for everybody and you're not paying out of your pocket, you're paying out of the taxpayers funds," he said. "We need to make sure that everybody gets care." Privatized, competitive care in the U.S. is among the most expensive in the world with worse patient outcomes, he said. "That's not the system we should be trying to emulate," he said. What does local control mean? Steven Lewis, a health policy consultant and adjunct professor at Simon Fraser University in B.C., says it's unclear from the government's announcement what new decision-making authority a hospital will have. "It's always politically attractive to say to local communities 'You're going to have more power now,'" Lewis said. The test of that purported autonomy will come when a facility leader wants to add or eliminate a program that the oversight body, Acute Care Alberta, wouldn't have chosen to do, he said. Lewis questioned whether health facilities will now hire CEOs, or have new local boards governing decision making. "It's kind of like reading hieroglyphics," he said about the lack of details. In a Wednesday email, Kyle Warner, press secretary for the minister of hospital and surgical health services, said there are no plans to add administrator positions at hospital sites — but he didn't answer questions about local boards or the scope of facilities' decision making power. Warner said hospital-based leadership will be piloted at a single site to start, but the government hasn't yet chosen where. He said the government has no plans to lease or sell AHS facilities to private operators. "Private hospitals are illegal to own and operate in Alberta, and Alberta's government has no plans to change that," Warner wrote.
Edmonton Journal
2 days ago
- Edmonton Journal
Thursday's letters: Does Smith know vaccines save lives?
Article content My mother was the oldest child in her family. She said to me that, one day, one of her siblings died of diphtheria in the morning, and another died of diphtheria in the evening. She was living in a Mennonite community in Russia. She went on to have seven children here in Canada. And guess what: All of us received every single vaccination and immunization that was available. My mother was uneducated. She knew nothing about science. She certainly knew nothing about research. But she was smart enough to know that vaccinations and immunization save lives. We would be better off if Danielle Smith was as smart as my mother.
