As the start of school approaches with the threat of strike or lockout looming, please remember that your teachers are fighting for your children and the future of their education. The Alberta government wants to cut your kids' education, especially for those with the most vulnerable needs. We can't let that happen. Please stand strong with your teachers, and keep your eyes on the goal.
"In terms of budget for education, we also have the most kids in the system than we've ever had. We also have large classrooms with the most complex needs that my colleagues have seen in a really, really long time, and they don't have the resources to meet those kids' needs every day."
- Jason Schilling, president of the Alberta Teacher's Association
On the other hand, they are in mediation from August 26-29. There is still time to reach an agreement before the start of school. Let's see how much your government cares about our kids' future, and an educated Alberta.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-teachers-strike-labour-dispute-1.7610619
#abpoli #cdnpoli #education #union #unionstrong
A highlight from Edmonton's Alberta Next panel!
“The more barriers you put between people and their doctor, the more people will die,” said an emotional cancer survivor, to audience cheers. “My question for this administration is this: Why do you believe that you know better than every health care expert in this province and this country? Why do you think we should have to fight tooth and nail for our right to health care?”
#abpoli #cdnpoli #yeg
We saw a huge decline in child poverty in Alberta after Notley and Trudeau introduced the Alberta Child Benefit and Canada Child Benefit respectively (both revamped from former, less effective programs), which continued to decline in 2020 due to Federal pandemic supports, but immediately after skyrocketed again over the next few years. Now the newest Alberta Child Poverty Report shows that 1 in 5 children in Alberta lives in poverty. :(
The report concludes that:
The recent history of government benefits has proven that governments can significantly reduce poverty when they invest in the social safety net, yet these lessons have not been being fully realized. CERB in particular represents one of the largest missed learning opportunities. Governments could have used COVID-19 benefits as a framework to make long-term improvements to the social safety net, through measures such as increasing benefit amounts, widening eligibility criteria, and reducing punitive claw backs.
https://www.pialberta.org/end_child_poverty
#abpoli #cdnpoli #poverty
U.S. could lose democracy status, says global watchdog.
"If it continues like this, the United States will not score as a democracy when we release [next year's] data," said Staffan Lindberg, head of the Varieties of Democracy project, run out of Sweden's University of Gothenburg.
"If it continues like this, democracy [there] will not last another six months."
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U.S. President Donald Trump's speech at the Department of Justice on Friday was 'one of the most extraordinary ever by a sitting president,' according to a professor who studies democratic erosion.
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The report refers to ongoing events in the U.S. as unprecedented, mentioning Trump pardoning 1,500 criminals who supported him; firing independent agency watchdogs without process; purging apolitical police and military brass; ignoring laws; and his unilaterally deleting federal programs, and even a whole organization, created by U.S. Congress.
He's just called his predecessor's pardons void and vacated. He gave a bitterly partisan speech at the Department of Justice, demanding the prosecution of the media and certain adversaries. He threatened numerous universities with sanctions. He invoked a 227-year-old war measures law during peacetime — for the first time ever — to deport accused gang members without due process. And, most importantly, when that deportation plan wound up in court, he may have — although it's still in dispute — defied a court order, cracking the ultimate constitutional safeguard.
It's not just the scope of what Trump's done that has Lindberg envisioning the once-unthinkable: removing the U.S. from the democratic list and shifting it to the second-lowest tier among five, to a so-called electoral autocracy. It's also the speed.
Lindberg said Trump is doing many of the same things as Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, Viktor Orbán in Hungary and Narendra Modi in India — only faster.
"It's the pace," Lindberg said. "He's trying to do in a few months what it took them eight to 10 years to achieve.… It's very dire."
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-democracy-report-1.7486317
#uspol #fascism #democracy
One thing I totally don't get about the anti-vaccination "logic"... so the measles vaccine is the old-fashioned kind which introduces a bit of weakened virus into the system so your body can identify it to build up a natural immunity.
So how can anti-vaxxers argue that you should just let yourself get sick with measles, suffer through the whole thing, then as long as you survive you will have immunity and be stronger for it?
That's exactly what the vaccine does, except safely, without the consequences.
You are introducing your body to the disease, to build a natural immunity. You can do it safely, or you can do it with great pain and suffering and even the potential of death. So yeah... uh, let's go with Option B to achieve the same result?
Is that really what's best for your children, and mine?
Forget about safely learning swordplay with practice wooden or bamboo swords so that you know how to handle it before the time comes when you need it, let's just give everyone real swords and send them off into battle with no training.
"Don't live in fear," live in chaos.
So anyways, on to the public health alert for Alberta and Edmonton specifically, even more specifically, people who were at the Stollery Children's Hospital's emergency department between March 14 at 10 p.m. and March 15 at 12:30 a.m. and anyone who was at the Belle Rive Medicentres Family Health Care Clinic in northeast Edmonton on March 12 between 2:15 p.m. and about 5:15 p.m.:
'Health officials say anyone who was exposed to a possible confirmed case may be at risk of getting sick and is strongly encouraged to review their vaccination records, AHS said.
Anyone who was potentially exposed and was born in or after 1970, and has less than two documented doses of vaccine, is at risk for developing measles and should monitor themselves for symptoms, AHS said.
Symptoms include a fever of 38.3° C or higher, a cough, runny nose and red eyes, and a red blotchy rash that appears three to seven days after a fever starts, beginning behind the ears and on the face.
People who are pregnant, young children and those with weakened immune systems are among those most at risk for complications from the disease which can include infections of the middle ear and the lung and swelling of the brain.
According to data from AHS, one to three out of every 1,000 measles cases is fatal. More than 90 per cent of people who are not immune and come into contact with the virus will become infected.
If symptoms develop, individuals are advised to stay home and call Health Link at 811 before visiting any health-care facility.
In Alberta, measles vaccine doses are offered, free of charge, through the province's immunization program. People exposed to the disease may also be eligible for vaccine or immune globulin to reduce the risk of developing measles.
Albertans uncertain of their immunization history are encouraged to call Health Link at 811 or contact their public health office.'
And finally, a statement by Dr. Mark Joffe, Alberta's chief medical officer of health:
"Measles is not just a mild childhood illness — it is a serious, highly infectious disease that can have devastating consequences.
Thankfully, we have a highly effective vaccine with a long-proven track record of safety. Everyone should take the time to check their immunization record to ensure they are fully immunized. No one should have to endure the consequences of a disease we can prevent."
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/edmonton-measles-exposures-1.7485363
#yeg #yyc #abpoli #vaccination #measles
The mRNA technology behind coronavirus vaccines is now being used to create bespoke vaccines for cancer patients.
"Cancer vaccines weren’t a proper field of research before the pandemic. There was nothing. Apart from one exception, pretty much every clinical trial had failed. With the pandemic, however, we proved that mRNA vaccines were possible.
mRNA cancer vaccines work by giving the body instructions to make a harmless piece of a cancer-related protein. This trains the immune system to recognize and attack cancer cells carrying that protein. Think of it like a training manual for security guards. The vaccine gives the immune system a guide on what cancer looks like, so it knows exactly who to watch for and remove.
Going from mRNA Covid vaccines to mRNA cancer vaccines is straightforward: same fridges, same protocol, same drug, just a different patient.
In the current trials, we do a biopsy of the patient, sequence the tissue, send it to the pharmaceutical company, and they design a personalized vaccine that’s bespoke to that patient’s cancer. That vaccine is not suitable for anyone else. It’s like science fiction.
The UK was ready. We had fridges and we had world-class manufacturing and research facilities. During the pandemic, we had proven we could open and deliver clinical trials fast. Also, the UK had established a genomic global lead with Genomics England and the 100,000 Genome Project. All doctors and nurses in this country are trained in genomics.
So the UK government signed two partnerships: one with BioNTech to provide 10,000 patients with access to personalized cancer treatments by 2030, and a 10-year investment with Moderna in an innovation and technology center with capacity to produce up to 250 million vaccines. The stars were aligned.
For many years, we believed that research is inherently slow. It used to take 20 years to get a drug to market. Most cancer patients, unfortunately, will succumb by the time a drug gets to market. We showed the world that it could be done in a year if you modernize your process, run parts of the process in parallel, and use digital tools.
We have a trial to stop skin cancer coming back after you cut it out. It’s now completed. We over-recruited again, just like every single one of the trials that we ran, and the trial finished one year ahead of schedule. That’s completely unheard of in cancer trials because they normally run over-long.
What will happen now is that, over the next six to 12 months, we will monitor the people in the trial and work out if there’s a difference between the people who took the cancer vaccine and the ones who didn’t. We’re hoping to have results by the end of the year or beginning of 2026. If it’s successful, we will have invented the first approved personalized mRNA vaccine, within only five years of the first licensed mRNA vaccine for Covid. That’s pretty impressive."
- Dr. Lennard Lee, UK National Health Service oncologist and medical director at the Ellison Institute of Technology in Oxford
https://www.wired.com/story/wired-health-lennard-lee-cancer-vaccines/
#cancer #vaccination #Science #COVID