Let the Vaccine Games Begin!
Edmonton, August 11, 2025
Today, the Government of Alberta has announced that, as part of its Make Alberta Healthy Again initiative, it is launching the First Annual Alberta Vaccine Games.
At noon today, in every electoral district that voted NDP, all the seniors will gather in the town square for the Reaping. Two names will be drawn, and the Tributes will travel to Edmonton, where the Butterdome has been specially adapted for the First Annual Alberta Vaccine Games.
The seniors will compete in tests of strength and agility until only one is left standing (with or without their assistive device). The lucky residents of their electoral district will be guaranteed access to make an appointment to pay $110 for a COVID booster!
May the odds be forever in your favour! Make Alberta Healthy Again!
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All joking aside, today is the day Albertans can visit bookvaccine.alberta.ca to register, which will later enable them to book an appointment at a public health center, where they can pay $110 to receive a COVID-19 vaccine.
This process is what the public administration folks call an “administrative burden” — a process so complex and, well, burdensome that it discourages people from taking up a public benefit. Just in case the economic disincentive wasn’t a sufficient deterrent.
According to Andrew Nikiforuk’s reporting in the Tyee last week, “Last year the province administered 750,000 doses — largely to people over 50 years of age. This year the province has ordered only 485,000 doses, a 30 per cent reduction. That means a quarter of the population, again mostly the elderly, that wants the vaccine will not find it available.”
This actually raises some ethical questions for me: if supplies are scarce, should I elbow out a health care worker or senior? Does my concern (I teach a class with 250 germy young adults twice a week) warrant a scarce shot?
These are the kinds of questions we would ideally want government to answer, as it did when COVID vaccines first became available. Of course, we would also want government to be making enough doses of the vaccine available. But here we are.
Is Robert Kennedy Jr. now running the Alberta health system?
I just tried to sign up for a Covid jab. I registered yesterday--step one of two--and this morning, got onto the "book an appointment" web page. Guess what? Three vaccines were listed, and Covid wasn't one of them.
It says the list was selected to be "appropriate to your age group." I'm 64. this means either:
1) the programmer, or his boss, was incompetent and the Covid button hasn't been added yet, or
2) Smith's UCP government is deliberately rationing the Covid vaccine.
If 1, there's no excuse. If 2, it's a clear violation of the Canada Health Act.
Time to complain to Smith at https://www.alberta.ca/premier-contact.cfm . Time to complain to the Federal government about Smith cutting off health care services for no better reason than "Because I can!"