Municipal Round-Up — August 21: Vaccines Are a Municipal Issue
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Hello Ragers,
It is wonderful to be back!
Let’s get into it. What a week.
We are in the dog days of summer. For many, this means thoughts are turning to September and what their school-aged or daycare-aged children will to do this fall.
Late in July, the Alberta government released a guide for parents whose children are going into schools or childcare. And when I say a guide, I really mean it was a one-page flow chart containing the same bullshit the government has been spewing this entire pandemic (editor: yep, this checks out).
Naturally, this frustrated parents, guardians and caregivers. It’s fair to say that the frustration has also spread to school boards and trustees.
Edmonton Ward Papastew candidate and current Edmonton Public School Board Trustee Michael Janz called for an apology from the minister of education for the province’s lack of direction on contact tracing, isolation requirements and testing.
There was a rather spirited discussion about whether masks will be required in schools, with trustee Sherry Adams claiming that mRNA vaccines haven’t been proven safe, and that some parents are worried about oxygen intake when using masks. Health Canada and the Food and Drug Administration in the United States have both declared the vaccines approved for use in their respective countries to be safe.
Recent research also shows that although it can feel uncomfortable to wear a mask until you get used to it, the Annals of the American Thoracic Society found that it has a negligible negative effect on oxygen and carbon dioxide levels.
Since then, fellow EPSB trustee Bridget Stirling has tried to point out something that people should honestly know by now, almost two years into a pandemic. Masks, social distancing and other measures all work together to reduce the spread of COVID-19.
In Calgary, Lethbridge and Medicine Hat there have also been discussions about whether masking will be mandatory. All have slightly different decisions but their decisions all mention a lack of direction from the province.
How do we solve homelessness?
Alberta has adopted a housing-first police for dealing with homelessness, but the success of the plan is largely tied to the funding provided by the province.
Some councillors and municipal candidates in the province disagree with the research and have decided their own plan is better because … reasons.
Meanwhile, Calgary mayoral candidate Jeromy Farkas has mostly skipped over the discussion on his policy pages.
Supervised Consumption Policies Taken to Court
Two non-profit societies — Moms Stop the Harm and the Lethbridge Overdose Prevention Society — lead the way on a court case that claims there are life and death consequences to the provincial closure of safe injection sites.