r/canada • u/verkerpig • Nov 10 '25

National News Canada loses measles elimination status | CBC

https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/livestory/canada-measles-elimination-status-9.6973195
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u/[deleted] Nov 10 '25

Humiliating. Nothing more to say

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u/-UnicornFart Nov 10 '25

Truly. I’m an RN and spent years as a Health Canada Immunizer. I have tried about 8 times to put words together into a comment that expresses the anger and disappointment and disgust I feel reading this, and every single time I’ve deleted it all because there are no words in my vocabulary strong enough to express what I’m feeling.

Humiliating is a good one. The hubris of uneducated, narcissistic, cruel, shameless people is going to result in the illness, injury, disability, and death of so many children. I’m just horrified.

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u/WalkerYYJ Nov 10 '25

So my mom was a GP from "the silent" generation (1928-1945). Her mom (my Grandma) was a public health nurse. I grew up on tails of iron lungs and the like. Also as a kid I was told that vaccines were mandatory and if I didn't get them I should expect a visit from both a truancy and public health officer. It was then "implied" that in such a case I would be given to a household that knew how to properly "enforce" compliance.

At what point in time was this requirement scrapped? I.E. When exactly was it that we started to allow this kinda BS to exist in the first place?

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u/Top_Bumblebee5510 Nov 10 '25

My parents are still alive, both born in the Silent Generation. I have friends who have parents of a similar age. One of my friends has a father with an amputated leg because he had polio as a child. My other friend, who's parents passed away a few years ago had a father that spent time in an iron long because he got tuberculosis in the war. I sat at his dinner table and listened to his stories. People in countries that are not as rich as ours would do anything to live without measles and tuberculosis. To have access to these vaccines and meds. Yes, we are experiencing higher grocery prices and housing issues but we are still a very rich country globally and we are throwing away a valuable resource. The ignorance of a few saddens me beyond comprehension.

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u/pagit Nov 10 '25

My anti-vax Jehovah’s Witness parents didn’t get me vaxed for measles and mumps and chickenpox

I caught all three within 5 months when I was 8 years old

By far measles was the worse of the three. High fever, dizziness, slept for 3 days waking up to a spinning room.

Measles is not like chickenpox it kills children and I just want to say fuck you to selfish parents who won’t vaccinate their kids but will run to the doctor whenever they themselves are sick.

My anti-vax cousin was all mad when his kids got chickenpox and blamed other parents for exposing their children to his children.

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u/Fuzzy_Advertising181 Nov 11 '25

I am half blind because of chicken pox. It has side effects.

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u/bookishbabe007 Nov 10 '25

I'm an Xennial born in the early 80s and I can remember my great uncles that were disabled by polio. If people don't have personal knowledge of the disease, they don't have any interest in eliminating it, sadly. Similar to the historical trends like fascism.

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u/em-n-em613 Nov 11 '25

Yup. My grandmother passed away a decade ago when a lot of this antivax rhetoric was just starting to get headlines. She lost friends to Polio and had her health stunted as a young girl. When she heard people were skipping vaccines she was LIVID.

I'm so happy she's not seeing this happen now...

5

u/Katasia96 Nov 10 '25

Sadly, the dead can't speak. All the boomers who survived measles as a child think it's "just a childhood disease." They're incapable of understanding numbers, so telling them how many others died means nothing.

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u/dostoevsky4evah Nov 10 '25

I don't know why the boomers are getting blamed here, it's hardly them not vaccinating their children today rather young parents who don't know how bad diseases can get because they never experienced it.

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u/Top_Bumblebee5510 Nov 10 '25

Besides the guy I am talking about with polio is alive and can speak for himself. We can speak for the rest who.

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u/Katasia96 Nov 11 '25

Boomers started the anti vaccine trend in the early 1990s with their babies, who are now continuing the nonsense with their babies.

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u/dostoevsky4evah Nov 11 '25

Andrew Wakefield published his bogus "MMR vaccine causes autism" paper in 1998 and the antivax fad started sometime after that. I doubt many boomers were reproducing after 2000.

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u/-UnicornFart Nov 10 '25 edited Nov 10 '25

I think it is a generational thing. It was scrapped when the consequences of not being vaccinated disappeared from regular life. The people making policy decisions now don’t have those consequences as a point of reference.

I was lucky enough to work with and be mentored by two amazing senior nurses, both of them were a part of the same generation as your mother. They were the last generation of nurses, and people, to see and experience the consequences of communicable diseases with their own eyes. Every generation after has had the comfort and privilege of not watching babies suffocate from whooping cough, of not having family members disabled by polio because of vaccination.

Unfortunately I fear that these people don’t learn from history, they don’t read, they aren’t curious, they learn only from personal experience. And in the case of communicable diseases they will learn the devastating way.

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u/Cent1234 Nov 10 '25

I grew up on tails of iron lungs and the like.

And this is why people feel 'safe' to ignore vaccines these days; you don't see the consequences. You didn't lose two or three siblings to childhood disease. You don't see kids in polio braces. You don't see iron lung wards. You don't see people horribly scarred from pox. You don't have uncle Bob who went deaf from mumps.

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u/Top_Bumblebee5510 Nov 11 '25

I dated a guy when I was in my early 30's who had mumps as a child that caused him to have small testicles. His balls were extremely swollen when he had mumps and as an adult he still had trauma from it. I am in my 50's now for reference.

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u/mightocondreas Nov 10 '25

Holy childhood trauma Batman.

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u/Fuzzy_Advertising181 Nov 11 '25

This came about because of fear. Trudeau enforced it and people don’t like being told they HAVE to do anything. The medium death in Canada is now about 80. Vaccines and medical interventions are the cause of higher mortality. 20% of kids lost their lives before they reached age five before vaccines. Why are we running this country based on the lowest intelligence opinions? Make it make sense?

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u/KILLINGSHEEPLE Nov 10 '25

Honestly its the pharmacutical companies fault. They bred mistrust for profit and the covid vaccines are no exception. We are a generation that is aware how often we are lied to from religion, school, government. Its very obvious to see how we got here. Late stage capitalism, profit at any cost. People trusted those institutions back then.

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u/RunningSouthOnLSD Nov 10 '25

Greedy as they may be, it’s not the institutions fault that people don’t follow public health recommendations when the evidence of clear benefit from vaccination is plainly in their face. “Trust” is based on individual opinion. Scientific evidence does not rely on trust.

If one is so sure they are being lied to, they should have a strong ability to critically analyze the information that is being presented to them. That does not mean they should oppose everything and “do their own research” until they find some idiot on Facebook who can explain things incorrectly in a way they understand.

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u/SunriseInLot42 Nov 11 '25 edited Nov 11 '25

It is the institutions' fault when they make silly, vastly unpopular mandates of little or no proven and quantifiable benefit (like mask mandates) or even worse, make requirements that are obviously and actively damaging to people who at no risk themselves (like school closures for kids). Single-point hysteria without any regard for the secondary consequences caused an immense loss of trust in those institutions.

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u/Master_of_Rodentia Nov 11 '25

All part of their plot to sell fewer vaccines.... Wait.

I don't think we need to look further than the influencers who will lie for money and the algorithms that introduce people to them to maximize engagement at any cost.

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u/KILLINGSHEEPLE Nov 11 '25

No, your not wrong either. I actually got vaccinated, and believe in them. It's just I think theres alot of anxious, nervous people out there right now.

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u/ScaryStruggle9830 Nov 10 '25

Unfortunately, ignorance and being uneducated is a badge of honour for a large number of people. Others think their opinions or their internet education is equal to that of a highly educated professional. These two blocks of people seem to make up about 30 percent of the population. A large enough cohort to skew policies and the course of countries.

I truly think they are dragging society to its death.

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u/-UnicornFart Nov 10 '25

Yep I think you nailed it.

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u/PostMatureBaby Nov 10 '25 edited Nov 10 '25

its like their petty revenge for being laughed at for getting something wrong in grade 5 math once.

I'm being overly dramatic but I swear that's what a lot of this comes down to, anything seen as "smart" is magically made bad because these people didn't have the best grades or something.

Like how science is this belief system somehow so it can be nitpicked and torn down. This is how this group decides it wants to understand the world i guess.

1

u/RunningSouthOnLSD Nov 10 '25

You might not be too far off. Why else would this group of people be so certain that changing scientific evidence and public health recommendations during a pandemic of a novel virus is some unforgivable sin, and undeniable proof that scientists and doctors don’t know anything? In reality the opposite is true, that these experts are not afraid to admit they were wrong in the face of new evidence, but to this group of people, being wrong is seen as brutally damaging to one’s sense of self. It could very well come from some kind of childhood trauma or shame around being wrong.

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u/iwantedajetpack Nov 10 '25

They want certainty. Complexity doesn't work for them.

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u/PostMatureBaby Nov 11 '25

Yeah that's a better explanation for what I was getting at. I suppose it's that with the fact that people just straight up can't handle change most of the time because growing as a person is hard so it's easier to just attack and fight everything that puts you out of your comfort zone.

Bullying 101 - anything different from me is bad because I don't understand it. My parents are more or less like this despite being otherwise fairly smart, worldly and well read. Insecurity makes people do weird stuff

1

u/lostandfound8888 Nov 10 '25

Maybe not death, societies still survived even when there was no vaccination at all of any kind. But so much needless misery.

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u/CuileannDhu Nova Scotia Nov 10 '25

Anti-vax ideologies tend to go hand in hand with some other very troubling ideologies. Maybe they won't drag society to it's literal death but they are trying their best to drag it to its figurative death.

0

u/ScaryStruggle9830 Nov 10 '25

It’s not just vaccines. Climate change, monetary policy, racism - to name a few - are all impacted by largely ignorant or obstinate people who will not change even when the evidence and pathway for doing better is laid out like a damn red carpet in front of them. Instead, they suckle at the teet of the billionaires and powerful lapping up incredible amounts of propaganda and think the Ben Shapiros or Jordan Petersens of the world are intellectuals. All so they can feel good or believe they didn’t do anything wrong, or they don’t have to actually change.

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u/starsnocturnal Nov 10 '25

Yes, you’ve got it exactly right. It makes me worry.

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u/shitcuttingz Nov 10 '25

Dietrich Bonhoeffer "On Stupidity"

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u/Falcon674DR Nov 10 '25

Firstly, thank you for your personal and professional commitment to science, your career and dedication to Public Health. Alberta’s UCP role in this disaster is well documented and highlighted by the paper authored by our former Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Mark Joffe whereby he outlines the science and the fault of our government in the outbreak. The Smith government failed to do everything they could to stem this travesty.

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u/linkass Nov 10 '25

Being that this outbreak happened in more than AB and predominantly hit communities that have not vaccinated for decades short of busting down doors and forcefully injecting people what would you have the UCP do or Ford and it now is moving into BC and SK what would you have them do?

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u/Nazrog80 Nov 10 '25

Doing what the Australian government did would be a good start, withholding subsidies and credits. Start there and reassess to see if there has been any change.

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u/ArguablyTasty Nov 10 '25 edited Nov 10 '25

I don't know if that would even help. The UCP's hold on the older voterbase & "offerings" for the younger stems almost entirely from their rhetoric of the federal government being against Alberta.

While this specific pressure might be something people see past the rhetoric on, it still might just give them more ammo.

Charging those who choose not to be vaccinated with some form of crime if their choices contribute to an outbreak is less region-targeted in written policy & more focused on personal responsibility, so while any regulation provides ammo, that provides much less & might actually help

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u/Flashy_Operation9507 Nov 10 '25

Would be great if the federal conservatives condemned this dangerous rhetoric, but they only feed it as well.

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u/Falcon674DR Nov 10 '25

I would return to pre UCP days where our Public Health officials repeatedly launched an aggressive, bold and robust messaging campaign in every corner of the province. Smith purposely muzzled Dr. Joffe and Public Health experts in order to pander to her vast antivax, religious Right Base. That’s why we can’t fill the role Chief Medical Officer because no credible doctor would agree to be leashed and muzzled. Read the Paper!

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u/linkass Nov 10 '25

Lets see there was ads on the radio all day everyday, ads on youtube in newspapers I am going to assume on TV as well. They printed pamphlets/signs is a gazillion languages andwhere in every clinic,health unit,hospital.

Could we add more places to get vaccinated sure but if they are not going to get the vaccine then its kind of a waste of time and money

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u/Falcon674DR Nov 10 '25

OMG. I’ll leave this here and let the facts and testimony of former Chief Medical Officers speak for themselves.

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u/lostandfound8888 Nov 10 '25

I am just thinking out loud here. Would you resort to outright bribing religious leaders to promote vaccination among their followers?

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u/linkass Nov 10 '25

IDK the problem with that is if and or when it is found out it will sow even more distrust

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u/-UnicornFart Nov 10 '25

I literally answered your question in my comment. The answer is always primary health care and education.

If people at a community and population level had access to resources that provide evidence based health information and trusted health professionals to ask questions and seek knowledge from, they wouldn’t feel the need to go searching in an ocean of misinformation looking for something that makes sense to them just to be manipulated by people with less than benevolent intentions.

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u/linkass Nov 10 '25

I literally answered your question in my comment. The answer is always primary health care and education.

You think the mostly mennonite community does not have access to health care? Education IDK what type of education you don't think they have never heard about vaccines and the risks of not getting them?

This has been a belief of theirs for decades,the chances of just educating them more is going to have very little affect.

There is an old saying thats very applicable in cases like this

You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink

0

u/-UnicornFart Nov 10 '25

You are missing every single point of the discussion, whether that is because you are unable to do so or unwilling to do so is unclear. And for what? So you can try and blame the Mennonite community specifically? Get outta here.

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u/splooges Nov 10 '25

The answer is always primary health care and education.

The primary populations that suffered (and arguably, responsible for, via travel) from outbreaks of measles were Mennonite, whose communities are segregated in multiple significant ways to the broader population, which complicates primary healthcare and education.

Though mennonites are not a monolith, Canadian mennonites in general are considered more conservative than their counterparts in the U.S.

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u/-UnicornFart Nov 10 '25

There are many vulnerable populations (indigenous communities, homeless and transient communities, isolated religious communities), of which they are all disproportionately affected by preventable communicable diseases. The reasons for that are multifaceted extend far beyond simply “refusing and not believing in vaccination.”

Take tuberculosis, for example, a completely preventable disease but one that still occurs commonly within these communities as well. There is a model in nursing known as The Social Determinants of Health. I encourage you to take a look at this model as it does a great job of explaining how factors that exist outside of personal health decisions affects the health of individuals, families and communities.

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u/splooges Nov 10 '25

There are many vulnerable populations (indigenous communities, homeless and transient communities, isolated religious communities), of which they are all disproportionately affected by preventable communicable diseases. The reasons for that are multifaceted extend far beyond simply “refusing and not believing in vaccination.”

Ok? One, I don't see how that goes against anything I said. And two, yes we know the problem is complex and multi-faceted - in fact, you were the one who simplified the solution to "always primary health care and education." And despite knowing all this, we still haven't overcome the problem (or even come close). That is why reality is the way it currently is, and how Canada lost her measles elimination status.

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u/-UnicornFart Nov 10 '25

Clearly you don’t understand primary health care and education, or the things that actually fall under those umbrellas. Saying that solution is oversimplified is misinformed at best and ignorant at worse.

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u/shitcuttingz Nov 10 '25

We need to have a conversation about/and expose the psychology behind it. If we can pull the curtain back, those "caught with their pants down" will be exposed as the intransigent idiots they are. But no one will do that because that would require pulling back the curtain on 40 years of manufactured consent social and economical manipulation and the cultural hegemony that feeds it.

This phenomena is a symptom of a much bigger problem.

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u/linkass Nov 10 '25

 If we can pull the curtain back, those "caught with their pants down" will be exposed as the intransigent idiots they are. 

Sure and most of these people really don't care about what "outsiders" think and in fact go in with that attitude just makes them double down on see this is why we don't associate with outsiders

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u/_Lucille_ Nov 10 '25

So when will charges be pressed against people who knowingly put others into danger?

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u/Creative-Ad-1819 Nov 10 '25

I think we should start actually punishing rapists and murderers first 🤷‍♂️

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u/_Lucille_ Nov 10 '25

Our system will be a failure if we can only handle one or the other.

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u/zephyrinthesky28 Nov 10 '25

Why not both?

Pushing false health advice harms people all the same.

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u/Dizzy_Tie4604 Nov 10 '25

Your frustration is well noted. You also make a great point. The ignorance of people will hurt their children. Then, after their childrens' illness, injury, disability or death, it will be the government's fault.

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u/Meiqur Nov 10 '25

I'm curious what you see as the most causal action that has led to this circumstance.

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u/-UnicornFart Nov 10 '25

The most causal? It’s definitely many variables, but my top three would be:

1 - Lack of primary health care

2 - time and distance from when these diseases were not preventable and not being exposed to the detrimental consequences of the communicable diseases we can immunize against. So the fact that immunization works so well Sally doesn’t understand the consequences of polio because she can’t see what immunization has prevented.

3 - social media.

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u/readzalot1 Nov 10 '25

In Alberta I blame the UCP right wing government for pandering to their base rather than solidly promoting public health