Election candidate apologizes for controversial vaccination comments

WINNIPEG (CityNews) – Addressing controversial comments was one of the main talking points on day 32 of the campaign trail.

A Conservative Candidate in Manitoba is one of those walking back controversial comments he made earlier about COVID-19 and the highly infectious delta variant.

On Tuesday, Ted Falk, incumbent candidate for Provencher, was quoted in a local newspaper, distributed throughout his riding, as saying: “you were 13 times more likely to die from the Delta variant if you were double vaccinated than if you were unvaccinated.”

Falk says, his comment was in reference to a public health study, however, now that the article has been published, he’s issued a written apology.

“I would like to correct erroneous comments I made when referencing a study on COVID vaccines. The statistics I quoted were not correct. Vaccines are safe and effective. I have and will continue to be an advocate for getting vaccines to every Canadian who wants one. I apologize for any confusion caused by my comments.”

Epidemiologist Cynthia Carr says, tons of people are independently researching COVID-19 and receiving data from multiple sources — some good and some bad.

“I think this illustrates again the dangers of misinformation,” she explained. “Interrupting data is not that straight forward particularly when you are comparing changes over time because circumstances have changed.”

However, she says, even when you get your hands on a good scientific study, it can be hard to fully understand what your looking at.

“Cause frankly it’s not all that straightforward, and you know there can be just honest and reasonable misinterpretations of data, but what we don’t need is for those misinterpretations then to be shared as fact, and then to discourage people from doing the best thing for their health and well being which is getting vaccinated.”

CityNews spoke with several people in Falk’s riding about his comments, the majority said they felt like Falk walked back on what he said, but accepted his apology. They also acknowledged Falk’s riding is experiencing issues of divide over the vaccine, and its creating tension within the community, businesses, and between neighbours.