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Anti-masking groups draw from anti-vaccination playbook to spread misinformation – CBC.ca

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As more regions across the country adopt mandatory masking policies in an effort to minimize the spread of COVID-19, some anti-masking groups are joining forces with anti-vaccination proponents and adopting their techniques to spread misinformation and amplify their message. 

The similarities between organized anti-masking and anti-vaccine movements are striking, said Maya Goldenberg, an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Guelph specializing in vaccine hesitancy. 

At least one anti-masking group, Hugs Over Masks, actively partners with Vaccine Choice Canada, one of the country’s most prominent anti-vaccination organizations. 

Vladislav Sobolev, the anti-masking group’s founder, has repeatedly praised the anti-vaccination group on social media and during protests.

Sobolev also told CBC News that high-profile U.S. anti-vaccination advocate Sherri Tenpenny, an osteopath who wrote Saying No To Vaccines, is providing online leadership training to his group. 

Tenpenny, along with other anti-vaccination advocates in the U.S. and Canada, have embraced the anti-masking cause and opposed COVID-19 lockdown measures. 

As people have emerged from COVID-19 isolation in their homes, the city of Toronto has implemented mandatory masking policies for indoor spaces, including stores, where physical distancing is difficult. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)

Although many Canadians who don’t want to wear masks aren’t opposed to vaccines, the fact that anti-vaccination groups are involved in the relatively new anti-masking movement is concerning to many health experts.  

Despite well-established evidence that vaccines are safe and effective, anti-vaccination groups have become savvy at spreading misinformation that leads people to distrust medical guidance  — something that can have dire consequences during a pandemic. 

‘Harmful outcomes’ 

“It disturbs me when I see people acting on information that I’m quite sure is not only incorrect, but potentially misleading and potentially leading to harmful outcomes,” said Dr. Matthew Oughton, an infectious disease specialist at McGill University. 

As a practising physician at Montreal’s Jewish General Hospital, Oughton has seen first-hand the toll COVID-19 takes. Close to 9,000 people — largely seniors and people with underlying medical conditions — have died in Canada from the virus. 

WATCH | Masks now mandatory in much of England:

Face coverings are now required inside most enclosed public spaces in England. England is also offering most people a free flu vaccine to guard against overwhelming hospitals this flu season. 3:31

Although scientists are continuing to learn about the novel coronavirus, it appears that people with COVID-19 can be most infectious before they show any symptoms, Oughton said.

That’s different from many other viruses — including the first version of SARS. It’s a key reason why it’s important for people to wear masks — even if they feel perfectly healthy — when physical distancing isn’t possible to prevent transmission, medical experts say.  

Mistrust of health authorities fuels misinformation 

Mistrust of government and scientific authorities are key characteristics among both anti-vaccination and anti-masking advocates, Goldenberg said. 

“When you don’t trust the sort of basic infrastructure that’s supposed to support public well being, you’re going to come up with all kinds of tactics to try to resist it,” she told CBC News. 

Those tactics include the “downplaying of how bad the infectious disease is,” Goldenberg said. 

Mistrust of government and scientific authorities is a key characteristic among both anti-vaccination and anti-masking advocates, says Maya Goldenberg, a University of Guelph expert in vaccine hesitancy. (University of Guelph)

Before COVID-19, anti-vaccination groups were making false claims that measles  — a serious, vaccine-preventable disease  — wasn’t a major threat.  A consequence of that misinformation was an increase in vaccine hesitancy, leading to a resurgence of measles cases in Canada, where it had been declared eliminated in the late 1990s. 

Similarly, during the COVID-19 pandemic, anti-vaccination and anti-masking groups have claimed that coronavirus isn’t any more dangerous than other diseases, such as the flu. This is part of an effort to falsely convince people that public health measures to stop the spread of infection —  from the development of a vaccine to physical distancing and wearing a mask — are unnecessary.

Many social media posts from both anti-masking and anti-vaccination groups call the pandemic a conspiracy, citing beliefs that it’s been manufactured to give governments the ability to monitor people through contact tracing and to promote a vaccine agenda. Both groups often target Bill Gates, whose foundation has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to support immunizations globally. 

When asked if Hugs Over Masks opposes vaccination, Sobolev did not answer directly.

“The right for an individual to have the choice on any medical intervention set forth by the public health departments is especially important when there are undeniable and inherent risks associated with the intervention in question,” he said in an emailed response. “Health Freedom is not something that should be even in question.”

The group actively defies public health guidance during rallies, where people are encouraged to bring their children, reject physical distancing and not wear masks, saying that they refuse to adopt the “new normal” of life during the pandemic.  Anti-masking rallies in Toronto appear to attract anywhere from a couple of dozen to around 150 people.  

Sobolev said his group consider COVID-19 a “scamdemic,” arguing Canada’s hospitals would have been filled to capacity with COVID-19 patients if it were real. 

WATCH | Anti-maskers now making ‘exemption cards’ to skirt bylaw:

As the CBC’s Lorenda Reddekopp explains, anti-mask groups in Toronto are now making their own cards to avoid wearing face coverings in public places. 1:51

When CBC News suggested that the success of the public health measures his group was protesting were a reason more people didn’t become critically ill, Sobolev said he didn’t trust the numbers. He said people should look at South Dakota, which didn’t have a state-imposed lockdown. 

The claim that South Dakota had the lowest coronavirus infection rate in the U.S. is not accurate, according to a recent Reuters fact-check, but misinformation about the state’s infection rates continues to circulate on social media. 

Lawsuit alleges vaccine conspiracy

Vaccine Choice Canada, along with several individual plaintiffs, filed a statement of claim at the Ontario Superior Court of Justice this month against public health and political leaders in several municipalities, as well the province of Ontario and the federal government, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam and the Queen. 

The lawsuit claims COVID-19 public health measures, including lockdowns, physical distancing  and mandatory masking are violations of constitutional rights. It also claims that the pandemic was unnecessarily declared to further “non-medical agendas,” including to establish a “New (Economic) World Order” and a “massive and concentrated push for mandatory vaccines of every human on the planet earth with concurrent electronic surveillance.”

WATCH | U.S. President Donald Trump reverses stance on masks and other pandemic policies:

In the same week that COVID-19 cases increased on average by more than 65,000 per day across the United States, President Donald Trump made some key reversals in White House pandemic policy, including guidance on wearing masks. 1:56

Canadian public health officials have never suggested that a coronavirus vaccine, when developed, would be mandatory.  

The lawsuit also names the CBC, accusing it of “Stalinist censorship” by “knowingly refusing to cover/or publish the valid and sound criticism of the COVID measures.”

It’s not clear when — or whether — the lawsuit will proceed through the courts. 

‘Cherry-picking’ data

Another commonly used tactic by both anti-masking and anti-vaccination organizations is “cherry-picking” research studies that appear to support their viewpoint, but are often outdated or taken out of context, said McGill University’s Dr. Oughton. 

For example, anti-masking groups often incorrectly claim that wearing a mask is harmful because it reduces the supply of oxygen and causes people to breathe toxins back into their own body.

That’s misinformation with no basis in fact, Oughton said. 

“Surgeons wear these kinds of procedural masks in the operating theatre for, sometimes, hours and hours at a time. The surgeons are not dropping [from lack of oxygen]. They simply aren’t,” he said.  

Another piece of false information that anti-maskers have been circulating is the idea that wearing a mask can harm a child’s immune system — a claim Sobolev made to CBC News during a telephone interview.

Those kinds of “alarmist stories” playing into people’s fears about their children’s health are another way anti-vaccine and anti-masking groups try to further their agendas, said Goldenberg, the vaccine hesitancy expert. 

Unlike combating vaccine misinformation, where the science has been clear for years, public health experts trying to correct mask misinformation are dealing with some confusion: their recommendations changed over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Anti-masking groups have seized upon that inconsistency and frequently cite public health officials from before the mask guidance changed. 

Emerging research, changing guidance 

Public health experts say they understand the confusion and how it could foster doubt in the current advice. They emphasize that it’s an example of how quickly they’ve been learning about a new virus. 

Back in March when the pandemic was first declared, there wasn’t much scientific evidence to demonstrate mask effectiveness in preventing COVID-19, public health experts say.

Physical distancing was also a new concept. Public health officials worried people would think using masks meant they didn’t have to pay as much attention to staying two metres apart from others. 

Since then, more studies have been done, said Dr. Lawrence Loh, medical officer of health for Peel Region, near Toronto. 

“The science in respect to COVID-19 has evolved and so has the recommendation around masks,” Loh said. Once scientists learned the virus could be spread by people with no symptoms through respiratory droplets, they began advising the general public to wear non-medical masks when physical distancing isn’t possible, he added. 

Many stores now have clear signage indicating that customers must wear masks before entering. Toronto Public Health says people do not have to provide proof of medical exemptions. If people don’t want to wear masks in stores, the health agency says there are alternatives, such as curbside pickup. (Supplied/David Howitt)

There are legitimate medical issues — including some mental health or developmental conditions — that preclude some people from wearing masks, said Dr. Vinita Dubey, Toronto’s associate medical officer of health. 

City bylaws do not require people to provide proof of a medical exemption, Dubey said, but she hopes people will only claim an exemption if it’s legitimate.

People who simply don’t want to wear masks should pursue alternatives to going into stores, she said, such as curbside pickup. 

As an emergency physician who regularly wears a mask at work, Dubey recognizes that masks take some getting used to and can feel uncomfortable at first, but she recommends people try different types if that’s the case. 

The data is still not clear on how much masks prevent infection for the wearer, public health experts said.

But that’s why it’s important for as many people as possible who can wear masks to do so when physical distancing isn’t possible, Dubey said. The idea is that people protect others — especially those who are vulnerable to critical illness if they become infected — from their own germs given the possibility of asymptomatic transmission. 

“I protect you with my mask; and you protect me with your mask.” 

Like with hard-core anti-vaccination groups, people who are adamantly against masking “are a loud but typically smaller proportion of the population,” Dubey said. 

The key is to combat the misinformation they spread to members of the public who might be “mask-hesitant” — similar to people who are vaccine-hesitant — by providing clear, honest answers to their questions, experts said. 

Some people have medical, mental health or communication issues that are legitimate reasons to be exempt from wearing a mask, says Dr. Vinita Dubey, associate medical officer of health for Toronto Public Health. She hopes people will only seek medical exemptions over masks if they truly need them. (Keisha Mair/Toronto Public Health)

“It’s those who are sitting on the fence who are actually rightly looking for information. We need to reach them and give them the information that they need at the right time,” said Dubey.

“That’s the group that we need to spend most of our energy on,” she said, urging the public to ask health-care providers or public health authorities for information if they have questions. 

It’s important for medical professionals to be respectful when people ask those questions — including when they raise concerns based on misinformation, Goldenberg said. 

“If there’s one way to get people defensive, it is to disparage them and not to take them seriously,” she said. 

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Health Canada approves updated Moderna COVID-19 vaccine

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TORONTO – Health Canada has authorized Moderna’s updated COVID-19 vaccine that protects against currently circulating variants of the virus.

The mRNA vaccine, called Spikevax, has been reformulated to target the KP.2 subvariant of Omicron.

It will replace the previous version of the vaccine that was released a year ago, which targeted the XBB.1.5 subvariant of Omicron.

Health Canada recently asked provinces and territories to get rid of their older COVID-19 vaccines to ensure the most current vaccine will be used during this fall’s respiratory virus season.

Health Canada is also reviewing two other updated COVID-19 vaccines but has not yet authorized them.

They are Pfizer’s Comirnaty, which is also an mRNA vaccine, as well as Novavax’s protein-based vaccine.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17, 2024.

Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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These people say they got listeria after drinking recalled plant-based milks

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TORONTO – Sanniah Jabeen holds a sonogram of the unborn baby she lost after contracting listeria last December. Beneath, it says “love at first sight.”

Jabeen says she believes she and her baby were poisoned by a listeria outbreak linked to some plant-based milks and wants answers. An investigation continues into the recall declared July 8 of several Silk and Great Value plant-based beverages.

“I don’t even have the words. I’m still processing that,” Jabeen says of her loss. She was 18 weeks pregnant when she went into preterm labour.

The first infection linked to the recall was traced back to August 2023. One year later on Aug. 12, 2024, the Public Health Agency of Canada said three people had died and 20 were infected.

The number of cases is likely much higher, says Lawrence Goodridge, Canada Research Chair in foodborne pathogen dynamics at the University of Guelph: “For every person known, generally speaking, there’s typically 20 to 25 or maybe 30 people that are unknown.”

The case count has remained unchanged over the last month, but the Public Health Agency of Canada says it won’t declare the outbreak over until early October because of listeria’s 70-day incubation period and the reporting delays that accompany it.

Danone Canada’s head of communications said in an email Wednesday that the company is still investigating the “root cause” of the outbreak, which has been linked to a production line at a Pickering, Ont., packaging facility.

Pregnant people, adults over 60, and those with weakened immune systems are most at risk of becoming sick with severe listeriosis. If the infection spreads to an unborn baby, Health Canada says it can cause miscarriage, stillbirth, premature birth or life-threatening illness in a newborn.

The Canadian Press spoke to 10 people, from the parents of a toddler to an 89-year-old senior, who say they became sick with listeria after drinking from cartons of plant-based milk stamped with the recalled product code. Here’s a look at some of their experiences.

Sanniah Jabeen, 32, Toronto

Jabeen says she regularly drank Silk oat and almond milk in smoothies while pregnant, and began vomiting seven times a day and shivering at night in December 2023. She had “the worst headache of (her) life” when she went to the emergency room on Dec. 15.

“I just wasn’t functioning like a normal human being,” Jabeen says.

Told she was dehydrated, Jabeen was given fluids and a blood test and sent home. Four days later, she returned to hospital.

“They told me that since you’re 18 weeks, there’s nothing you can do to save your baby,” says Jabeen, who moved to Toronto from Pakistan five years ago.

Jabeen later learned she had listeriosis and an autopsy revealed her baby was infected, too.

“It broke my heart to read that report because I was just imagining my baby drinking poisoned amniotic fluid inside of me. The womb is a place where your baby is supposed to be the safest,” Jabeen said.

Jabeen’s case is likely not included in PHAC’s count. Jabeen says she was called by Health Canada and asked what dairy and fresh produce she ate – foods more commonly associated with listeria – but not asked about plant-based beverages.

She’s pregnant again, and is due in several months. At first, she was scared to eat, not knowing what caused the infection during her last pregnancy.

“Ever since I learned about the almond, oat milk situation, I’ve been feeling a bit better knowing that it wasn’t something that I did. It was something else that caused it. It wasn’t my fault,” Jabeen said.

She’s since joined a proposed class action lawsuit launched by LPC Avocates against the manufacturers and sellers of Silk and Great Value plant-based beverages. The lawsuit has not yet been certified by a judge.

Natalie Grant and her seven year-old daughter, Bowmanville, Ont.

Natalie Grant says she was in a hospital waiting room when she saw a television news report about the recall. She wondered if the dark chocolate almond milk her daughter drank daily was contaminated.

She had brought the girl to hospital because she was vomiting every half hour, constantly on the toilet with diarrhea, and had severe pain in her abdomen.

“I’m definitely thinking that this is a pretty solid chance that she’s got listeria at this point because I knew she had all the symptoms,” Grant says of seeing the news report.

Once her daughter could hold fluids, they went home and Grant cross-checked the recalled product code – 7825 – with the one on her carton. They matched.

“I called the emerg and I said I’m pretty confident she’s been exposed,” Grant said. She was told to return to the hospital if her daughter’s symptoms worsened. An hour and a half later, her fever spiked, the vomiting returned, her face flushed and her energy plummeted.

Grant says they were sent to a hospital in Ajax, Ont. and stayed two weeks while her daughter received antibiotics four times a day until she was discharged July 23.

“Knowing that my little one was just so affected and how it affected us as a family alone, there’s a bitterness left behind,” Grant said. She’s also joined the proposed class action.

Thelma Feldman, 89, Toronto

Thelma Feldman says she regularly taught yoga to friends in her condo building before getting sickened by listeria on July 2. Now, she has a walker and her body aches. She has headaches and digestive problems.

“I’m kind of depressed,” she says.

“It’s caused me a lot of physical and emotional pain.”

Much of the early days of her illness are a blur. She knows she boarded an ambulance with profuse diarrhea on July 2 and spent five days at North York General Hospital. Afterwards, she remembers Health Canada officials entering her apartment and removing Silk almond milk from her fridge, and volunteers from a community organization giving her sponge baths.

“At my age, 89, I’m not a kid anymore and healing takes longer,” Feldman says.

“I don’t even feel like being with people. I just sit at home.”

Jasmine Jiles and three-year-old Max, Kahnawake Mohawk Territory, Que.

Jasmine Jiles says her three-year-old son Max came down with flu-like symptoms and cradled his ears in what she interpreted as a sign of pain, like the one pounding in her own head, around early July.

When Jiles heard about the recall soon after, she called Danone Canada, the plant-based milk manufacturer, to find out if their Silk coconut milk was in the contaminated batch. It was, she says.

“My son is very small, he’s very young, so I asked what we do in terms of overall monitoring and she said someone from the company would get in touch within 24 to 48 hours,” Jiles says from a First Nations reserve near Montreal.

“I never got a call back. I never got an email”

At home, her son’s fever broke after three days, but gas pains stuck with him, she says. It took a couple weeks for him to get back to normal.

“In hindsight, I should have taken him (to the hospital) but we just tried to see if we could nurse him at home because wait times are pretty extreme,” Jiles says, “and I don’t have child care at the moment.”

Joseph Desmond, 50, Sydney, N.S.

Joseph Desmond says he suffered a seizure and fell off his sofa on July 9. He went to the emergency room, where they ran an electroencephalogram (EEG) test, and then returned home. Within hours, he had a second seizure and went back to hospital.

His third seizure happened the next morning while walking to the nurse’s station.

In severe cases of listeriosis, bacteria can spread to the central nervous system and cause seizures, according to Health Canada.

“The last two months have really been a nightmare,” says Desmond, who has joined the proposed lawsuit.

When he returned home from the hospital, his daughter took a carton of Silk dark chocolate almond milk out of the fridge and asked if he had heard about the recall. By that point, Desmond says he was on his second two-litre carton after finishing the first in June.

“It was pretty scary. Terrifying. I honestly thought I was going to die.”

Cheryl McCombe, 63, Haliburton, Ont.

The morning after suffering a second episode of vomiting, feverish sweats and diarrhea in the middle of the night in early July, Cheryl McCombe scrolled through the news on her phone and came across the recall.

A few years earlier, McCombe says she started drinking plant-based milks because it seemed like a healthier choice to splash in her morning coffee. On June 30, she bought two cartons of Silk cashew almond milk.

“It was on the (recall) list. I thought, ‘Oh my God, I got listeria,’” McCombe says. She called her doctor’s office and visited an urgent care clinic hoping to get tested and confirm her suspicion, but she says, “I was basically shut down at the door.”

Public Health Ontario does not recommend listeria testing for infected individuals with mild symptoms unless they are at risk of developing severe illness, such as people who are immunocompromised, elderly, pregnant or newborn.

“No wonder they couldn’t connect the dots,” she adds, referencing that it took close to a year for public health officials to find the source of the outbreak.

“I am a woman in my 60s and sometimes these signs are of, you know, when you’re vomiting and things like that, it can be a sign in women of a bigger issue,” McCombe says. She was seeking confirmation that wasn’t the case.

Disappointed, with her stomach still feeling off, she says she decided to boost her gut health with probiotics. After a couple weeks she started to feel like herself.

But since then, McCombe says, “I’m back on Kawartha Dairy cream in my coffee.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.

Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.

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B.C. mayors seek ‘immediate action’ from federal government on mental health crisis

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VANCOUVER – Mayors and other leaders from several British Columbia communities say the provincial and federal governments need to take “immediate action” to tackle mental health and public safety issues that have reached crisis levels.

Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim says it’s become “abundantly clear” that mental health and addiction issues and public safety have caused crises that are “gripping” Vancouver, and he and other politicians, First Nations leaders and law enforcement officials are pleading for federal and provincial help.

In a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Premier David Eby, mayors say there are “three critical fronts” that require action including “mandatory care” for people with severe mental health and addiction issues.

The letter says senior governments also need to bring in “meaningful bail reform” for repeat offenders, and the federal government must improve policing at Metro Vancouver ports to stop illicit drugs from coming in and stolen vehicles from being exported.

Sim says the “current system” has failed British Columbians, and the number of people dealing with severe mental health and addiction issues due to lack of proper care has “reached a critical point.”

Vancouver Police Chief Adam Palmer says repeat violent offenders are too often released on bail due to a “revolving door of justice,” and a new approach is needed to deal with mentally ill people who “pose a serious and immediate danger to themselves and others.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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