Alberta doctors criticize provincial COVID-19 report as harmful 'anti-science'

Experts are chastising a report from the Alberta government that proposes healthy youth shouldn’t get COVID vaccines. Chelan Skulski explains.

EDMONTON — The organization representing Alberta physicians is calling out a government panel’s COVID-19 report as “anti-science.”

Dr. Shelley Duggan, head of the Alberta Medical Association, says the report sows distrust by going against proven preventive health measures while promoting fringe methods.

She says the report is “anti-science and anti-evidence,” and its recommendations have the potential to cause harm.

“It advances misinformation. It speaks against the broadest and most diligent international scientific collaboration and consensus in history,” she said in a statement Monday.

Duggan said the $2-million price tag could have gone toward badly needed hospital beds or medical treatment.

The report, released without notice on Friday, comes from a panel appointed by Premier Danielle Smith in 2022 to look at how data was collected and used to respond to COVID-19.

Smith has been a staunch critic of pandemic rules and vaccine mandates.

The 269-page report calls for the government to halt COVID-19 vaccines without the full disclosure of risks and to end their use for healthy children and teens.

It recommends legislative changes to give doctors more freedom to prescribe alternative therapies in future pandemics, saying health authorities were too restrictive when it came to off-label medication uses.

The report points to drugs like the anti-parasitic ivermectin and anti-malarial hydroxychloroquine, which are not approved for the treatment or prevention of COVID-19 by Health Canada.

The report also casts doubt on the province’s approach to public testing for COVID-19, saying methods may have led to “inconsistent determinations regarding the actual infection rate in Alberta,” that in turn may have influenced government policies.

During the pandemic, the province enforced a variety of measures to stop the spread, including closing businesses and schools, and restricting gatherings and public events.

The report said the stringency of those measures had a “small relative effect on the growth of infections.”

It recommends future pandemic responses focus on “minimizing severe disease and mortality over extensive case detection,” and for Alberta to develop “a screening tool to help estimate individual risk.”

The panel advises giving more credence to infection-acquired immunity, saying they found no quality evidence that vaccines provided better protection from severe disease than natural exposure to circulating variants.

Duggan said in an interview the vast majority of studies show that the COVID vaccines are safe and that they prevented a lot of deaths during the pandemic.

She added that misinformation has real consequences, pointing to concerns about vaccine hesitancy at time of measles and other outbreaks.

“When we have another pandemic, we are going to need the public to be able to trust the science that we are giving them,” she said.

Her predecessor at the medical association, Dr. Paul Parks, said on social media that the report was “fully a slap in the face” to all the health-care workers who struggled to care for Albertans during the pandemic.

Dr. Joss Reimer, head of the Canadian Medical Association, threw the national association’s support behind Alberta’s doctors, saying the report “promotes misinformation and has the potential to create mistrust of the medical and scientific communities.”

“At a time when health-care access is scarce and misinformation is leading some Canadians to make desperate, potentially dangerous health choices, we call on governments to focus on connecting patients to the quality care they need and to uphold science and evidence-based medicine as a cornerstone of that care,” Reimer said in a statement.

The Alberta government confirmed in August it had received the report.

In a statement Monday, Health Minister Adriana LaGrange’s office said no policy decisions have been made in relation to the work of the panel, which included “health professionals from diverse practice areas.

“Their recommendations offer a perspective on how the government can be better positioned to protect the health and safety of Albertans in the future,” it said.

Health policy analyst Lorian Hardcastle said the report fuels the vaccine-skeptic fire and public health would be worse off if the government follows its recommendations.

Hardcastle also said she takes no issue with reviewing the risks and benefits of pharmaceuticals and the overall pandemic response, but it should be evidence-based.

“There is this pattern of the government trying to give credence to its ideological views by creating these so-called expert panels to write reports that give legitimacy to their ideologies.”

It comes after a previous $2-million COVID-19 report from former Reform Party Leader Preston Manning, which recommended in 2023 the government give more consideration to “alternative scientific narratives” in future health emergencies.

Alberta NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi called the report “authoritarian” and “quackery.”

“Does (Danielle Smith) believe in this kooky stuff, or was she pandering to an audience?” he said in an interview.

“The review of this report is pretty straightforward: throw it in the trash.”

Dr. Gary Davidson, who led the review, was the former head of emergency medicine for the province’s central zone and chief of the emergency department at Red Deer Regional Hospital.

Appearing on a podcast Friday, Davidson said there is no such thing as consensus in science.

“Science is about questioning everything, experimenting and proving whether it’s true or not,” he said.

The Canadian Press was unable to reach Davidson for comment Monday, but the government provided a written statement from him.

“I’m proud that Alberta’s government had the courage to review the data and decision-making we relied upon for our COVID-19 response and trust that these recommendations will help ensure that Alberta better protects the health, well-being and rights of Albertans during the next public health emergency.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 27, 2025.

— With files from Aaron Sousa

Lisa Johnson, The Canadian Press