Thread by @Mikeggibbs, 1. We're all insane. Especially right now.If you're not, you're lying or [...]

1. We're all insane. Especially right now.

If you're not, you're lying or high.

2. Before social media the only people who had platforms for their opinions and grievances were...

This guy. https://twitter.com/UrbanAchievr/status/1334305706439303168

https://twitter.com/UrbanAchievr/status/1334305706439303168

And people like this.

3. Pre Social Media, the most you could hope for was getting a letter to the editor published.

For the vast majority of Canadians, your chances were slim to none.

And stupid letters were published all the time.

Even experts can be stupid and get it horribly wrong.

4. Other than that, the only people allowed to talk regularly were politicians.

More often than not they didn't represent people who needed a voice the most.

Canada's discourse was an echo chamber of birth lottery winners, or nouveau riche who literally created homelessness.

(Homelessness as we know it today did not exist in Canada until the Mulroney govt slashed housing and social supports in the 1980s leaving huge numbers of people with nowhere to live. Read Jack Layton's book.)

Our elected chambers are not exactly bastions of reason and knowledge.

Every parliament contains big doses of idiots, liars, crooks, frauds, racists and purveyors of disinformation who get a huge platform.

It always was.

Starting with our first Prime Minister who was rarely not falling down, blackout drunk. A blood thirsty racist who inspired Adolf Hitler.

His Commons oratory was usually limited to spewing chunks of vomit. That was a good day bc at least the PM was conscious.

Are we still clutching to the myth social media is to blame for stupid and bad people and all disinformation and societal ills and therefore life was better when almost no one in Canada had a prayer of ever being heard unless they were powerful rich elites?

Or shall I go on?

Social media is a hugely positive advance for Canada, and humans on this planet.

The pitfalls are vastly outweighed by a limitless list of positives.

For the first time the horrors of police violence is nakedly exposed. Daily.

*Everywhere*

Even Police Union power seems shaky.

Consider this.

Try to imagine the AIDS epidemic if social media was invented in 1980.

Imagine if the scores of sick gay men dying alone, ignored bc most people decided they deserved to die...

Had Twitter and Facebook?

Many of them would be alive today.

If they had a platform to talk to us early free of any news media and political filter, public opinion would have swung hard. It would have fixed many hearts.

Research money would have been flowing YEARS earlier.

Absolutely.

Some humans are bad.

Irresponsible.

Liars.

Disinformation spewers.

Conspiracy fanatics.

Social media technology didn't make them.

They are lost humans.

Most of them are not insane or bad.

*They are innocent victims of clever frauds. During pandemic they need our help.*

Starting in a few weeks, lasting many months, this country will be locked in a struggle for public acceptance of vaccines.

It will be intense. Like an election campaign.

We will have to persuade and earn the hearts and minds of skeptics and anti-vacs.

Because WE NEED THEM.

I'm a vaccination PR war vet

At PHO I developed Ontario's media strat for an explosive public debate on vaccination in 2015. PHO filled some of the void left fr a Harper gagged PHAC.

We were losing support at times.

I underestimated skeptics. They can move public opinion fast.

Long story short.

Don't belittle and insult skeptics and anti vacs.

Just stop it.

Now.

If we don't we might as well forget about ending pandemic in Canada this year.

"This year" = I meant 2021.

We ultimately prevailed with holding public confidence in vaccines because our approach and messages was non-aggressive, respectful, two-way
discosure.

Respect.

Empathy.

Sharing.

Learning.

That's how a successful Covid vaccination effort will happen in Canada.

OPTION 1

Respectful discourse = Vaccination coverage