Good Day Premier Kenney:.Thank you for your letter of March 11, 2021 responding to my “Open Letter” to you of December 11, 2020. .I accept your apology for your delay in responding, but not all Albertans accept your rationale for lockdowns given the evidence that refutes the necessity. .While we are both interested in the health and well-being of all Albertans, as your response implies, the purpose of my Dec 11, 2020 letter to you was to give you an off-ramp from using lockdowns to contain COVID-19 based on new evidence. I am acutely aware many in your caucus have been and still are advocating to hear an alternate narrative from professionals who disagree with your “Dr. Hinshaw-led COVID experts panel”, who convinced you to accept “conventional”, but misguided thinking on how to manage the “COVID‘flu”. .At the same time, I applaud you for challenging on March 26, 2021 the latest federal modelling prediction in which you stated that, “Dr. Tam’s office released modelling 3 weeks ago which has been proven to be completely inaccurate. Constantly publishing models which time after time prove to be spectacularly wrong is not a great way to instill public confidence”. Bravo! .https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBIab9Y0h-A..This is your first foray into challenging conventional thinking publicly on the management of COVID-19, and it must be acknowledged. .The purpose of my response to your response is to provide further rationale for targeting only the vulnerable and fully opening up Alberta for the rest of us..Thus far you have never questioned the veracity of “lockdown dogma” and have ignored evidence to the contrary provided by esteemed physicians and scientists from many prestigious medical centers and universities around the world. .Conventional thinking, Premier, is not always correct. .Prior to 1982, “conventional thinking” preached that gastric ulcers and gastritis were caused by hyperacidity. However, in 1982, Brent Marshall and Robin Warren from Australia provided evidence that the majority of peptic ulcer disease was actually caused by a bacterium, Helicobacter pylori. For many years afterward, the medical community stubbornly would not accept Marshall and Warren’s thesis. In 2005, Marshall and Warren were both awarded the Nobel Prize for their discovery. I think you see my point. It is not too late for caucus to hear from another multidisciplinary panel, and for you to change course, regardless of the damage already done by lockdowns. .Your 2nd paragraph in your response asserts that the evidence I referenced is “worthy of consideration—(but)—-is incomplete”. Your comment is a classic case of “cognitive dissonance”—–the inability to accept new evidence that is contrary to your accepted belief. Although all of the considerable evidence that I provided to you was irrefutable, timely and published within a few days and weeks of my December 11, 2020 Open Letter to you, it was certainly not incomplete, especially in the context of evolving knowledge. .Now, there is even more evidence to discredit lockdowns as a means to prevent COVID-19. A recent international study from Stanford published January 5, 2021 in the European Journal of Clinical Investigationproves that lockdowns have no significant benefit. .And from Oxford University, a worldclass Professor of Epidemiology explains that “lockdowns have done nothing to protect people from Covid-19, and that they have caused a great deal of harm”. .Closer to home, Dr. Ari Joffee, a specialist in pediatrics, infectious disease, and critical care, has also provided evidence on December 18, 2020, that lockdowns are the wrong response to COVID-19 using an analysis of Quality-Adjusted Life Years lost due to COVID-19 versus lost due to the lockdowns. .More recently, on Feb 9, 2021, Dr. Joffe and Colonel David Redman provided Alberta evidence on the futility of lockdowns. Contraryto your claim that “we (government) monitor all available evidence when making decisions about public health restrictions”, it would be more accurate to state that “We monitor all available evidence and ignore that which does not fit our predetermined narrative………….”.Your 3rd paragraph asserts that you have “resisted imposing unnecessary restrictions on Albertans…..”, but that is exactly what you did. You claimed there was a “significant threat to the capacity of our healthcare system”, which is debatable. You knew and admitted that you could increase ICU capacity from 272 beds to 1081 beds. By the 2020-year end, there were only 156 patients in ICUs diagnosed with COVID-19, of which the diagnosis of COVID-19 itself is questionable given the high incidence of false positives with PCR testing. .Out of an abundance of caution in the event of a real surge in cases, you were also persuaded to create a field hospital in the Edmonton Butterdome which, as I have been informed, did not accommodate a single case. .Finally, you claim that “the situation required more stringent health measures to preserve access to the healthcare services that Albertans rely on”. Those more stringent measures did no such thing. What you caused was a massive reduction in hospital-required diagnostic and therapeutic procedures for other illnesses, which has caused many deaths and will cause more deaths and disabilities in the future..Your 4th , 5th , and 6th paragraphs come closest to what I and many others have been advocating, which is to target the vulnerable, particularly those greater than 70 and anyone with predisposing conditions, such as obesity, dementia, diabetes, etc..Where you failed, and continue to fail, is by applying restrictions across the board to all Albertans, which has caused vastly more physical and economic harm than the COVID-19 ‘flu ever could. .In addition, how is it sensible for an asymptomatic octogenarian who has survived COVID-19 and had received both Pfizer inoculations to be kept isolated from family members? How can you support taking asymptomatic people off flights to Alberta and putting them in “hotel jail”, especially since there is irrefutable evidence that there is trivial to no risk of asymptomatic individuals transmitting COVID-19? .There is no logic to these usurpations of people’s civil rights. Yet, you continue to accept the flawed PCR test as the sine qua non to diagnose COVID-19 based on cycle thresholds of 35 or greater, at which cycle rates are frequently falsely positive. .Recently the CDC on February 13, 2021 stated that it is extremely difficult to detect any live virus at cycle thresholds greater than 33. Why is it that AHS does not report PCR cycle thresholds which would validate whether patients were admitted to hospital or ICU due to Covid-19 as opposed to with Covid-19?.For patients who die purportedly with or due to COVID-19, PCR cycle thresholds should be defined. This would better distinguish those who died from COVID-19 as opposed to those who died from their underlying disease who coincidentally tested positive with a non-pathogenic PCR cycle threshold. There is an opportunity here that should not be missed..You also stated that you have been widely criticized for “highlighting the negative effects of restrictions”. Those criticisms are trivial compared to what is coming when Albertans fully understand the futility of COVID-19 lockdowns and the corresponding harm from them. And that additional scientific evidence is coming like a freight train. Believe it or not, I and several others would like to help you get out of the way. .Your 7th ,8th and 9th paragraphs require special attention. First, you “assert that at the height of the restrictions in the “Spring of 2020, 85 per cent of businesses representing 96 per cent of our economy continued to operate safely”. However, as of Jan 21, 2021, according to the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB), only 60% of small businesses are fully open in Alberta, and 1 in 5 small businesses (34,500) are contemplating permanently closing, which would result in 625,000 job losses in the private sector (41% of all private-sector jobs)..Presently, “only 20 per cent of small businesses in Alberta are making normal sales” according to the CFIB. The truth is uncomfortable, isn’t it?.Second, you once again claim that the restrictions were necessary to prevent overwhelming the hospital system, yet you provide zero evidence to support your claim. In fact, the numbers that you cite prove that your claims are “demonstrably false”! .Your 10th -13th paragraphs are maddeningly illogical regarding overwhelming the healthcare system. You know that you have 8,500 beds in the province and 272 ICU beds. As of March 31, 2021, there are 301 “supposed COVID-19 patients” in the hospital (3.5 per cent of the 8,500 beds) and 58 in the ICU (21.3 per cent of the 272 beds). .You also admit that you could ramp up to 1,081 ICU beds, but you then claim that you would only do so in a “worst-case scenario”. Really! What could be more of a worst-case scenario than cancelling thousands of patient’s access to healthcare, for whom many lives have already been lost, and other patients whose quality of lives have been severely compromised, along with others whose businesses and livelihoods have been shuttered forever? .You have set yourself, Dr. Hinshaw, the AHS, and your government up for class action lawsuits by all of those families who have lost loved ones, those whose conditions have deteriorated beyond curative medical intervention, those who have permanently lost quality of life, as well as the thousands of patients who could not access diagnostic studies, who will find that their illness is beyond life-saving curative treatment..What is especially troubling is that you were previously informed that more people have died from lockdowns than from COVID-19, yet you locked down the province again..Your 12th and 13th paragraphs highlight the fundamental problem with yours’ and Dr. Hinshaw’s interpretation of “cases”. Asymptomatic COVID-19 “cases” are no such thing. In medicine, cases refer to individuals who become ill with something. .Your costly testing of large numbers of the asymptomatic public has not provided any useful information but has unnecessarily sewn fear and apprehension of a ‘flu-like illness which has a 99.97 per cent overall survival rate for those under 70 years who test positive for COVID-19. Further, you knew from the first lockdown last spring that the elderly and those with predisposing conditions were at the greatest risk. .This should have informed you to target the vulnerable and let herd immunity, along with vaccinating first those at risk, rather than implement your 2nd lockdown, for which there was and still is zero evidence justifying your decision. .On the contrary, lockdowns actually delay natural herd immunity from developing in the 90 per cent of the population not at risk..“Dr. Hinshaw’s-panel-of-experts” will try and convince you that ‘another reason justifying lockdowns is that the virus has mutated, is more transmissible and possibly more lethal, and the spread must be stopped’. By now you must know that RNA viruses such as COVID-19 mutate all the time. .That is why there is a new vaccine every year to treat seasonal ‘flu. Further, there is no confirmed evidence yet that any new strain of COVID-19 is more or less lethal. But let’s assume that it is twice as lethal. This would mean the mortality would increase from 0.03 per cent to 0.06 per cent for those under 70 years of age. Conversely, this also means that instead of survivability being 99.97 per cent, survivability would negligibly decrease to 99.94 per cent..Recent data reported in Nature on March 21, 2021 suggests that for males aged 55-69 years, the B117 variant is 55 per cent more lethal, meaning that the mortality risk would increase from 0.6 per cent to 0.9 per cent with survival probability being 99.1 per cent..At present, the average age of death in Alberta from all causes (excluding COVID-19) is 82 years, and the average age of death from COVID-19 is 82 years. In other words, COVID-19 has not negatively impacted overall average survival in Alberta, further questioning the rationale of pan-lockdown measures. .Given that people die for many reasons, we all understand that life carries many risks which we are prepared to accept, or not, such as mountain climbing, skiing, driving, over-eating, etc. What we don’t need is death from lockdowns, which is totally in your control..Finally, you state “In the future, our government will continue to focus efforts on protecting the vulnerable and minimizing restrictions on the rest of Albertans. However, we must keep in mind that when the capacity of our health system is in jeopardy, we are all vulnerable”. .Instead, why not focus exclusively on the vulnerable, as you have stated. Permit the rest of the Alberta population to function unfettered by lockdowns, for which there is now considerable evidence to be a more effective strategy to minimize deaths, disability, despair, and economic devastation. And if you are really concerned about overwhelming the healthcare system, invest in another 100 or more ICU beds and show Albertans that you meant it when you said that “lockdowns were a mistake last spring”, for which you apologized. Albertans need to be reassured, not locked down. .In conlusion, I would like to make an overture to you and your caucus. Given your willingness to challenge Dr. Tam’s modelling, I and other interested professionals would very much like to present the case to end lockdowns. At the very least, our presentation to you and Caucus privately or in a public forum, followed by a Q & A will give you an entirely different perspective than what you all have incorrectly assumed to be definitively factual. Your willingness to engage in a productive dialogue will demonstrate to the public that you do listen to opposing evidentiary facts with an open mind. Premier, you and you alone can end the current destructive course, and in the process affirm yourself as a true leader in this time of crisis..Respectfully,.Dennis L Modry, BSc, MD, FRCS, FACCP, FACS,.Clinical Associate Professor, Cardiovascular & Thoracic Surgery,.Founder and Director of the Heart/Lung Transplantation Program & Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit. RETIRED
Good Day Premier Kenney:.Thank you for your letter of March 11, 2021 responding to my “Open Letter” to you of December 11, 2020. .I accept your apology for your delay in responding, but not all Albertans accept your rationale for lockdowns given the evidence that refutes the necessity. .While we are both interested in the health and well-being of all Albertans, as your response implies, the purpose of my Dec 11, 2020 letter to you was to give you an off-ramp from using lockdowns to contain COVID-19 based on new evidence. I am acutely aware many in your caucus have been and still are advocating to hear an alternate narrative from professionals who disagree with your “Dr. Hinshaw-led COVID experts panel”, who convinced you to accept “conventional”, but misguided thinking on how to manage the “COVID‘flu”. .At the same time, I applaud you for challenging on March 26, 2021 the latest federal modelling prediction in which you stated that, “Dr. Tam’s office released modelling 3 weeks ago which has been proven to be completely inaccurate. Constantly publishing models which time after time prove to be spectacularly wrong is not a great way to instill public confidence”. Bravo! .https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBIab9Y0h-A..This is your first foray into challenging conventional thinking publicly on the management of COVID-19, and it must be acknowledged. .The purpose of my response to your response is to provide further rationale for targeting only the vulnerable and fully opening up Alberta for the rest of us..Thus far you have never questioned the veracity of “lockdown dogma” and have ignored evidence to the contrary provided by esteemed physicians and scientists from many prestigious medical centers and universities around the world. .Conventional thinking, Premier, is not always correct. .Prior to 1982, “conventional thinking” preached that gastric ulcers and gastritis were caused by hyperacidity. However, in 1982, Brent Marshall and Robin Warren from Australia provided evidence that the majority of peptic ulcer disease was actually caused by a bacterium, Helicobacter pylori. For many years afterward, the medical community stubbornly would not accept Marshall and Warren’s thesis. In 2005, Marshall and Warren were both awarded the Nobel Prize for their discovery. I think you see my point. It is not too late for caucus to hear from another multidisciplinary panel, and for you to change course, regardless of the damage already done by lockdowns. .Your 2nd paragraph in your response asserts that the evidence I referenced is “worthy of consideration—(but)—-is incomplete”. Your comment is a classic case of “cognitive dissonance”—–the inability to accept new evidence that is contrary to your accepted belief. Although all of the considerable evidence that I provided to you was irrefutable, timely and published within a few days and weeks of my December 11, 2020 Open Letter to you, it was certainly not incomplete, especially in the context of evolving knowledge. .Now, there is even more evidence to discredit lockdowns as a means to prevent COVID-19. A recent international study from Stanford published January 5, 2021 in the European Journal of Clinical Investigationproves that lockdowns have no significant benefit. .And from Oxford University, a worldclass Professor of Epidemiology explains that “lockdowns have done nothing to protect people from Covid-19, and that they have caused a great deal of harm”. .Closer to home, Dr. Ari Joffee, a specialist in pediatrics, infectious disease, and critical care, has also provided evidence on December 18, 2020, that lockdowns are the wrong response to COVID-19 using an analysis of Quality-Adjusted Life Years lost due to COVID-19 versus lost due to the lockdowns. .More recently, on Feb 9, 2021, Dr. Joffe and Colonel David Redman provided Alberta evidence on the futility of lockdowns. Contraryto your claim that “we (government) monitor all available evidence when making decisions about public health restrictions”, it would be more accurate to state that “We monitor all available evidence and ignore that which does not fit our predetermined narrative………….”.Your 3rd paragraph asserts that you have “resisted imposing unnecessary restrictions on Albertans…..”, but that is exactly what you did. You claimed there was a “significant threat to the capacity of our healthcare system”, which is debatable. You knew and admitted that you could increase ICU capacity from 272 beds to 1081 beds. By the 2020-year end, there were only 156 patients in ICUs diagnosed with COVID-19, of which the diagnosis of COVID-19 itself is questionable given the high incidence of false positives with PCR testing. .Out of an abundance of caution in the event of a real surge in cases, you were also persuaded to create a field hospital in the Edmonton Butterdome which, as I have been informed, did not accommodate a single case. .Finally, you claim that “the situation required more stringent health measures to preserve access to the healthcare services that Albertans rely on”. Those more stringent measures did no such thing. What you caused was a massive reduction in hospital-required diagnostic and therapeutic procedures for other illnesses, which has caused many deaths and will cause more deaths and disabilities in the future..Your 4th , 5th , and 6th paragraphs come closest to what I and many others have been advocating, which is to target the vulnerable, particularly those greater than 70 and anyone with predisposing conditions, such as obesity, dementia, diabetes, etc..Where you failed, and continue to fail, is by applying restrictions across the board to all Albertans, which has caused vastly more physical and economic harm than the COVID-19 ‘flu ever could. .In addition, how is it sensible for an asymptomatic octogenarian who has survived COVID-19 and had received both Pfizer inoculations to be kept isolated from family members? How can you support taking asymptomatic people off flights to Alberta and putting them in “hotel jail”, especially since there is irrefutable evidence that there is trivial to no risk of asymptomatic individuals transmitting COVID-19? .There is no logic to these usurpations of people’s civil rights. Yet, you continue to accept the flawed PCR test as the sine qua non to diagnose COVID-19 based on cycle thresholds of 35 or greater, at which cycle rates are frequently falsely positive. .Recently the CDC on February 13, 2021 stated that it is extremely difficult to detect any live virus at cycle thresholds greater than 33. Why is it that AHS does not report PCR cycle thresholds which would validate whether patients were admitted to hospital or ICU due to Covid-19 as opposed to with Covid-19?.For patients who die purportedly with or due to COVID-19, PCR cycle thresholds should be defined. This would better distinguish those who died from COVID-19 as opposed to those who died from their underlying disease who coincidentally tested positive with a non-pathogenic PCR cycle threshold. There is an opportunity here that should not be missed..You also stated that you have been widely criticized for “highlighting the negative effects of restrictions”. Those criticisms are trivial compared to what is coming when Albertans fully understand the futility of COVID-19 lockdowns and the corresponding harm from them. And that additional scientific evidence is coming like a freight train. Believe it or not, I and several others would like to help you get out of the way. .Your 7th ,8th and 9th paragraphs require special attention. First, you “assert that at the height of the restrictions in the “Spring of 2020, 85 per cent of businesses representing 96 per cent of our economy continued to operate safely”. However, as of Jan 21, 2021, according to the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB), only 60% of small businesses are fully open in Alberta, and 1 in 5 small businesses (34,500) are contemplating permanently closing, which would result in 625,000 job losses in the private sector (41% of all private-sector jobs)..Presently, “only 20 per cent of small businesses in Alberta are making normal sales” according to the CFIB. The truth is uncomfortable, isn’t it?.Second, you once again claim that the restrictions were necessary to prevent overwhelming the hospital system, yet you provide zero evidence to support your claim. In fact, the numbers that you cite prove that your claims are “demonstrably false”! .Your 10th -13th paragraphs are maddeningly illogical regarding overwhelming the healthcare system. You know that you have 8,500 beds in the province and 272 ICU beds. As of March 31, 2021, there are 301 “supposed COVID-19 patients” in the hospital (3.5 per cent of the 8,500 beds) and 58 in the ICU (21.3 per cent of the 272 beds). .You also admit that you could ramp up to 1,081 ICU beds, but you then claim that you would only do so in a “worst-case scenario”. Really! What could be more of a worst-case scenario than cancelling thousands of patient’s access to healthcare, for whom many lives have already been lost, and other patients whose quality of lives have been severely compromised, along with others whose businesses and livelihoods have been shuttered forever? .You have set yourself, Dr. Hinshaw, the AHS, and your government up for class action lawsuits by all of those families who have lost loved ones, those whose conditions have deteriorated beyond curative medical intervention, those who have permanently lost quality of life, as well as the thousands of patients who could not access diagnostic studies, who will find that their illness is beyond life-saving curative treatment..What is especially troubling is that you were previously informed that more people have died from lockdowns than from COVID-19, yet you locked down the province again..Your 12th and 13th paragraphs highlight the fundamental problem with yours’ and Dr. Hinshaw’s interpretation of “cases”. Asymptomatic COVID-19 “cases” are no such thing. In medicine, cases refer to individuals who become ill with something. .Your costly testing of large numbers of the asymptomatic public has not provided any useful information but has unnecessarily sewn fear and apprehension of a ‘flu-like illness which has a 99.97 per cent overall survival rate for those under 70 years who test positive for COVID-19. Further, you knew from the first lockdown last spring that the elderly and those with predisposing conditions were at the greatest risk. .This should have informed you to target the vulnerable and let herd immunity, along with vaccinating first those at risk, rather than implement your 2nd lockdown, for which there was and still is zero evidence justifying your decision. .On the contrary, lockdowns actually delay natural herd immunity from developing in the 90 per cent of the population not at risk..“Dr. Hinshaw’s-panel-of-experts” will try and convince you that ‘another reason justifying lockdowns is that the virus has mutated, is more transmissible and possibly more lethal, and the spread must be stopped’. By now you must know that RNA viruses such as COVID-19 mutate all the time. .That is why there is a new vaccine every year to treat seasonal ‘flu. Further, there is no confirmed evidence yet that any new strain of COVID-19 is more or less lethal. But let’s assume that it is twice as lethal. This would mean the mortality would increase from 0.03 per cent to 0.06 per cent for those under 70 years of age. Conversely, this also means that instead of survivability being 99.97 per cent, survivability would negligibly decrease to 99.94 per cent..Recent data reported in Nature on March 21, 2021 suggests that for males aged 55-69 years, the B117 variant is 55 per cent more lethal, meaning that the mortality risk would increase from 0.6 per cent to 0.9 per cent with survival probability being 99.1 per cent..At present, the average age of death in Alberta from all causes (excluding COVID-19) is 82 years, and the average age of death from COVID-19 is 82 years. In other words, COVID-19 has not negatively impacted overall average survival in Alberta, further questioning the rationale of pan-lockdown measures. .Given that people die for many reasons, we all understand that life carries many risks which we are prepared to accept, or not, such as mountain climbing, skiing, driving, over-eating, etc. What we don’t need is death from lockdowns, which is totally in your control..Finally, you state “In the future, our government will continue to focus efforts on protecting the vulnerable and minimizing restrictions on the rest of Albertans. However, we must keep in mind that when the capacity of our health system is in jeopardy, we are all vulnerable”. .Instead, why not focus exclusively on the vulnerable, as you have stated. Permit the rest of the Alberta population to function unfettered by lockdowns, for which there is now considerable evidence to be a more effective strategy to minimize deaths, disability, despair, and economic devastation. And if you are really concerned about overwhelming the healthcare system, invest in another 100 or more ICU beds and show Albertans that you meant it when you said that “lockdowns were a mistake last spring”, for which you apologized. Albertans need to be reassured, not locked down. .In conlusion, I would like to make an overture to you and your caucus. Given your willingness to challenge Dr. Tam’s modelling, I and other interested professionals would very much like to present the case to end lockdowns. At the very least, our presentation to you and Caucus privately or in a public forum, followed by a Q & A will give you an entirely different perspective than what you all have incorrectly assumed to be definitively factual. Your willingness to engage in a productive dialogue will demonstrate to the public that you do listen to opposing evidentiary facts with an open mind. Premier, you and you alone can end the current destructive course, and in the process affirm yourself as a true leader in this time of crisis..Respectfully,.Dennis L Modry, BSc, MD, FRCS, FACCP, FACS,.Clinical Associate Professor, Cardiovascular & Thoracic Surgery,.Founder and Director of the Heart/Lung Transplantation Program & Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit. RETIRED
