Interrupted analysis of the UCP's Pandemic Response Report

I couldn't even finish it; it's just so bad.

Gawd. Credit: @thebreakdown on X

Reading the UCP’s $2 million report on the province’s Covid-19 pandemic response, one underlying assumption stands out in its first chapter: an assumption that there was lots of time available to reinvent the wheel.

Late addendum: I know what was happening at the beginning of, and during, the pandemic because I was writing for an online publication at the time — and then back to self-publishing, and the podcast — and I watched every update, and had to learn about science-y stuff that I never wanted to know. As you were.

why did the interviewee not include community members representing economic and mental health issues in their discussions? Furthermore, why did the HEOC recommend policies with associated risks and harms in the absence of an appropriate public safety assessment? (page 32)

Why did the government not strike a committee made up of stakeholders whose interests would be grounded in concrete timelines while a public health emergency — before we even knew how the virus was spread — got off the ground?

Gee. That’s a tough one, guys. Let me think on it for a bit.

Oh, right, the government had no way of informing those people because no one knew how long it would take to get the pandemic under control.

However, it became apparent after the first wave that there was a lack of scientific understanding concerning the virus, prompting a rush to gather data and insights. (page 33)

No, guys. There was no “rush” that wasn’t already ongoing since the beginning of the pandemic. This is just ridiculous.

Containment of the virus was paramount in many of the recommendations and policy directives implemented in Alberta to minimize transmission. Measures included, but were not limited to, testing, isolation, workplace policy recommendations, school and business closures, and work-from-home recommendations. Despite the controversial history of such approaches in containing publicly transmissible viruses like influenza, Alberta's strategy contradicted known information at the time. (page 37)

In early 2020, when school closures etc., took place, the only thing the scientific community knew is that it was not “like influenza”. Previously healthy people were dying. That wasn’t normal.

This stance was based on the Government of Canada's Public Health Management of Cases and Contacts Associated with COVID-19, which acknowledged that "epidemiological evidence suggests that the majority of people with COVID-19 do not require care in a hospital," as supported by daily updates from the Government of Canada.32 Given the data and information available, the Task Force is unclear as to why Alberta continued to implement containment measures through policy and mandates when the information at the time did not justify such aggressive actions.(page 37-38)

The initial public health recommendations were based on trying to prevent the healthcare system from being overwhelmed, as were subsequent recommendations that limited in-person interactions.

While the “majority of people with Covid-19” would not be hospitalized, the number of people who were hospitalized was overwhelming hospitals and available human resources to deal with the people who did require hospitalization.

That, in turn, reduced the access to, and availability of, care for everyone else based on otherwise “normal” reasons people end up in hospital.

The SAG showed inconsistency in their use of evidence. For example, they used product monographs to recommend against Ivermectin for COVID-19 treatment but did not apply the same scrutiny to vaccines regarding transmission. (page 38)

Aaaand, I’m out.

The Scientific Advisory Group was formed in April of 2020 and disbanded on December 31, 2020, as noted earlier in the report on page 35. Vaccines were not available until March of 2021, and the SAG was not applying any scrutiny to them, nor anything else, after they disbanded.

Illogical reasoning and bad arguments hurt my brain and I’m really not sure why I should suffer through another 231 pages. Too long don’t want to read: false assumptions lead to false statements and false equivalencies, even if you weren’t specially chosen to start off that way.

It’s like algebra. If you’ve already made a simple mistake earlier in your formula, no amount of work is going to help you get the right answer (if you’re new to me, I know my limitations — don’t trust my math. I carry numbers and move decimals and mistake threes for eights. If ever I’m using my own math, it will always come with a disclaimer reminding the reader of this).

In that vein, though, what I began with was a simple explanation of the problem Ms. Smith and the chair of the pandemic review made in their defence of this report.

After a press conference on Tuesday about the creation of the Heritage Fund Opportunities Corporation, Danielle Smith was asked whether she was taking the rebuttals of the report from the Alberta Medical Association, the Canadian Medical Association, and even one of their interviewees, into consideration. Her response?

Anyone who doesn’t think that science is a process of point-counterpoint, and then being able to synthesize information is somebody who doesn’t believe in science.

This isn’t a counterpoint, but that’s not “science”; what Ms. Smith is describing here is debate, followed by an analysis of that debate. If one wanted to be very, very charitable, it’s the process by which a scientist might formulate a hypothesis; the legitimate starting point, but not the conclusion of, the scientific method.

Ms. Smith continued:

So, I know there’s been a narrative and the narrative has been enforced by shouting down contrarian voices and that’s not what we’re going to do. We’re going to listen to every voice and we’re going to make our best assessment based on what we’re seeing with the evidence. (Emphasis hers.)

Ms. Smith’s response echoes that of the committee chair, Dr. Gary Davidson, who said in a statement to the Globe and Mail, “Science is not a narrative or consensus but thoughtful, public discourse.”

Again, not a counterpoint, Dr. Davidson is giving an excellent description of debate, or opinion, or a conversation between people who are talking about science. That is not “science”.

Dr. Davidson also added that, “an ‘international scientific collaboration and consensus’ sounds like a conspiracy, and I stand firmly against conspiracy theories.”

…

Forgive me because I’m about to explain the scientific method slowly like these people are five.

The scientific method doesn’t end at forming a hypothesis.

The next stage in the scientific method is observation. In this stage, scientists gather data from all sources — not just sources they want to use. During the pandemic, this required “collaboration”, where scientists from every country shared the information they had observed and collected so that other scientists in other countries had all of the same information available to them.

They were trying to figure out why Covid-19 was killing people and they all had an incentive to do so — because it was killing people everywhere.

After that information was shared, many scientists in many different countries analyzed the information available to them, tested the results, and then compared their results to results obtained elsewhere.

Only after such independent testing and analysis yielded the same results did the “international consensus” happen.

That consensus was not reached via “narrative” or “enforcing a narrative”.

Through testing, and repeated testing (also referred to as testing the veracity of previously obtained results) in many different countries, and only upon achieving the same results as scientists in other countries, did they arrive at what is called “international consensus”.

If only these people were five, instead of being given leadership positions, it would all be so much less sad.

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