Quick thoughts about how to get us out of this mess. We know that Twitter is an echo chamber. We tune our threads to hear reinforcing opinions. What is clear, is that the majority of Albertans are reasonable and pretty damn considerate. They support vaccination and passports.
The problem is that in a pandemic, minority behaviour sets the bar for all of us. So how do we reach them? First is understanding our audience. In reality, very few are immovable, and it’s the moderates that need to be swayed.
Passports may motivate people to seek out more mainstream information, and that’s why education and access to truthful and peer reviewed information is essential. We also must open up our hospitals to vetted media. Health care professionals can only do so much to show the truth.
Throughout the pandemic it’s always been a fine line between patent confidentiality and the public’s right to know. Let me be clear, our patients right to privacy are paramount, but in a conversation with @carolyndunncbc, she told me about her war time experiences.
She reminded me that it was the real pictures and stories coming out of Vietnam that turned the public opinion against this “police action.” It made those star spangled coffins sons and daughters. I think AHS is realizing this. Photos are coming out from their media sites.
The fourth wave has been largely hidden. It’s behind the walls of the hospital. It’s no surprise that who did the right thing and got vaccinated find it so painful to look at what’s going wrong as they again see their lives shrinking. I understand the transferred anger.
I get that their tired of our continued pleas. That it is far easier to turn a deaf ear to us. Our throats are sore. Our voices are hoarse. We want to stop crying out as well.
I am sure this may be viewed as extreme, or “unprecedented”, but let’s face it, so is airlifting our patients to Ontario while preparing our triage protocols. I’ve avoided war analogies to respect those who have been in them, but the similarities are too obvious to ignore.
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