Have you noticed the sudden flood of feel-good news stories around the arrival of a few vaccine doses? I have lost count of the vaccine photo ops from loading on the plane to touch down- just wait and we will see the first Canadian injection, the first Ottawa injection and on and on.
It always interests me when the media does a 180 degree turn on a story. From attacking the government for a vaccine program that will not see most Canadians inoculated until the summertime, to wow it is here! Has anyone asked how much extra the government paid to rush a shipment here and get themselves of the hook of negative publicity?
I could say it is a slow news week, but it most certainly is not. There are lots of stories out there which have for the government at least been conveniently buried by vaccine photo ops, including Chinese troops were scheduled to train with Canadian troops (can someone find out who the dimwit was who suggested that bright idea- inquiring minds want to know), to the two Michaels; to a new Carbon Tax and another broken Liberal promise and many more.
Instead, every news anchor must breathlessly blabber on about a few doses of a drug arriving on Canadian soil. Also, most TV news bobble-heads continue to spout COVID-19 statistics without giving any details. Why? What are we not supposed to know or is it what are they too lazy to research?
It seems to me, if you want the public to support the measures (including lockdowns) that the government feels it should put in place, you need to give the public more, not less information.
To its credit CBC Ottawa has been doing that with our local numbers. Why can’t we get the same information provincially or nationally?
Being in an at-risk age category and in a business with frequent public contact- I would like to know what parts of the city to avoid and which age groups are driving the uptick in numbers.
CBC Ottawa on Sunday identified the numbers by Ottawa community, plus the age groups which breaks down as follows.
80s: 1 70s: 1 60s: 4 50s: 5 40s: 8 30s: 8 20s: 28 10-19: 11 0-9: 4
It is pretty easy to see the problem group, perhaps Ottawa Public Health needs to have some targeted messaging.
What passes as real news often gets lost on Twitter, a platform on which it seems far too many reporters spend their day regurgitating other reporters’ stories and announcing it on their personal Twitter feed as “BREAKING NEWS.”