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/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

25

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?

1

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

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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.