That's the excuse Alberta's chief medical officer of health, Dr. Mark Joffe, above, with health minister Adriana La Grange, proferred when he finally called a press conference about the calamitous and devastating E coli outbreak that has ravaged multiple Calgary daycare centres.
Not urgent enough? With more than 300 preschoolers infected and 21 hospitalized and on dialysis, Joffe says it wasn't urgent enough to tell the public?!?! That's an outrage and definitely a firing cause.
The company that provided the food, 'Fueling Minds', owned by Faisal Alimohd, whoever he is, had been cited several months earlier for health violations, including a cockroach infestation, lack of sanitary food handling and unrefrigerated transportation. But Mr. Alimohd apparently continued to let things slide to the point where children eating the food it provided came close to death.
Great job!
And what was the minister of health doing? G-d knows, but she certainly wasn't on top of this deadly fiasco. Amazingly, both she and Joffe have admitted they will never know the origin of the outbreak!
This gives premier Danielle Smith a problem. One of the first things she did when she came to power was to unceremoniously punt Joffe's predecessor, Deena Hinshaw, with great flourish and indignancy. Joffe was her personal pick, so now what's she gonna do? She chose him because apparently he was perfect. Turns out he was running scared and trying to cover up the deadly daycare mess, while very sick toddlers lay in hospital near death.
Running on an anti-vax platform, Smith may well face another disaster this Fall, when a new variant of COVID starts spreading. Right now, we are hearing nothing about it and vaccinations are not being encouraged because to encourage them would piss off her base.
You can't play politics with people's health, which is exactly what Smith is doing. It may well blow up in her face very soon. Walkerton anyone?
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