Juno News - City of Toronto pulls child vaccination ad campaign

00:00:00.000 I want to just segue this to another discussion, which is related not to the mandates in general,

00:00:05.580 but this idea of dehumanizing people based on vaccination status. And there's a bit of a

00:00:12.160 victory for True North in here, because all of this has come about in basically the last 24

00:00:17.260 hours. And I'll set the stage here. The city of Toronto launched on Friday, a five video ad

00:00:24.740 campaign. And in these five videos, they were promoting the fundamental message that vaccination

00:00:31.340 is something you should do for your children from six months to five years old. The vaccines for

00:00:36.220 COVID are not, well, against COVID theoretically are now available for infants as young as six

00:00:41.480 months old, right up to age five and then beyond. And they were trying to promote this to communities

00:00:47.720 that have lower vaccination rates. And quite frankly, children at that age have low vaccination rates in

00:00:53.380 part because the vaccines were just approved. But also a lot of parents are thinking that it's

00:00:57.440 just not necessary. The virus is mild enough at this point. The vaccine doesn't protect against

00:01:03.180 transmission. So it's just not necessary to get a six month old or a one year old or a four year old

00:01:08.840 vaccinated against COVID. And the city of Toronto evidently didn't like that. And they ran five

00:01:15.540 videos. And I want to share with you all five videos. They're only about 20 to 30 seconds each.

00:01:21.780 In fact, I think all of them are like just 20 to 22 seconds with the exception of maybe one,

00:01:26.180 but they're all very short. And oddly enough, I agree with like the first 80% of most of them,

00:01:32.940 but they all just go a few seconds too far. And the first one I want to play is the one that went

00:01:37.240 absolutely viral yesterday. And I think triggered most of the backlash. I caught wind of it on Twitter

00:01:42.460 and it was after everyone was tweeting about this, that I actually looked and found there were more of

00:01:47.080 these things which had gone under the radar. But this is one that effectively talks about kids

00:01:53.420 being indoors and the harm of that, which may sound like a message you agree with, but take a look.

00:01:59.440 It's actually rather heartbreaking. A girl who is being

00:02:29.420 kept indoors by her mother, by a government. I mean, it's not quite clear. And the implication

00:02:35.520 is that all her friends are able to play and have fun and have a good time outside, but she can't

00:02:40.580 because she's unvaccinated. Is that why that it's not safe for her to be outside playing?

00:02:46.740 This was the one that really exploded. The one that bothered me the most. And again, I may be alone

00:02:51.960 in this one was this one that actually had an infant in it. And that was why I, I don't know that the

00:02:58.560 girl, I mean, obviously this may just be like a really talented baby. I mean, who knows her facial 0.93

00:03:02.940 reactions were perfect for the message they were trying to convey, but it was telling parents not

00:03:07.600 to miss certain moments. So again, a good message. You don't want to miss moments with your children,

00:03:11.320 but again, take a look.

00:03:14.560 Oh, you're so cute. Yes. Yes, you are. Yes, you're very cute.

00:03:24.760 Oh, when can we see her? We would love to see her and squeeze those cheeks. 1.00

00:03:30.260 Look over here. Look over here. Oh, cutie. 1.00

00:03:33.320 Don't miss those moments. Connect in real life. And again, the only way you can visit that newborn,

00:03:44.200 the only way you can see that little cherub of an angel is if she gets vaccinated at however many

00:03:50.180 months old she is in that shot. No pun intended on shot. And the list went on and on. This one,

00:03:57.500 again, talking about human connection, the importance of human connection.

00:04:03.320 Human connections stronger than internet connections. I agree. It's a shame he can't

00:04:29.660 just go out and see his friend face to face. Well, he can. He can. Oh, but he's not vaccinated,

00:04:35.980 I guess. Oh, yeah, there we go. We have to push the vaccination message six months to five years old.

00:04:41.540 And I have always, as a general rule on this program, steered away from talking about the

00:04:47.640 science of vaccines. And I think the reason is very clear. I'm not a scientist. I'm a civil libertarian.

00:04:52.600 I can talk about this issue. And I find it more interesting and more important to talk about

00:04:57.040 in the context of civil liberties and the right to make the decision for yourself.

00:05:02.100 So the reality is most people who comment on this are not scientists. So they're relying on

00:05:06.580 the scientific expertise of others. And you can find scientists saying conflicting things. So

00:05:11.280 it's a matter of which person in the white lab coat you trust more than the other person in the white

00:05:16.880 lab coat. But the one area where I do have more confidence speaking authoritatively, because the

00:05:21.960 science is so clear, is on the effect of vaccinations on children. And the risk that is really at the

00:05:31.080 core of why someone gets vaccinated is negligible for children. If you look at the numbers for the

00:05:38.260 entirety of the pandemic, for the entire country of Canada, 39 children, 39 children have died and have

00:05:44.940 been logged as COVID deaths since the very beginning. Now, I do not want to diminish those deaths. Any

00:05:50.380 death, any death of a child, any death of a person is tragic. But it's worth noting that in many of those

00:05:57.800 cases, most of those cases, it is a death after a COVID diagnosis. It's not even by the record keeper's own

00:06:04.820 admission, a case where it's a COVID caused death. If you're talking about a healthy child that doesn't have

00:06:12.220 underlying health issues, that doesn't have comorbidities, their risk of serious, serious ailment,

00:06:18.020 hospitalization, death from COVID is not what it is in an elderly person, a very obese person, someone with a

00:06:24.480 lot of underlying health conditions that we shouldn't pretend it is. Denmark, as just one example, a few weeks

00:06:29.860 back decided to ban COVID vaccination of anyone under 18, unless they had an underlying health condition, because they

00:06:37.100 said, in Denmark's case, they said that the risks outweighed the benefits. The UK has gone a bit of a

00:06:42.680 different direction. They've said it's available to kids as young as five, but they're saying it's

00:06:46.740 non-essential. And they're saying that you can't take a one size fits all position on this, which is

00:06:52.400 effectively what the city of Toronto is trying to do here, say that every child must receive the jab and

00:06:58.140 cannot live a normal life, cannot engage with the world around them, cannot do kid-like things without

00:07:03.360 it. Now, the little glimmer of good news here is that pretty much everyone thought those videos were

00:07:09.880 awful. Even the city of Toronto has acknowledged those videos were awful. Brad Ross, who is the

00:07:15.960 chief spokesperson for the city of Toronto, he has said they've been pulled. The city right now has

00:07:22.020 paused the campaign and is trying to go and reevaluate the meaning. Originally, he had said that they were

00:07:28.800 retracted, but they didn't really apologize for them. But I've seen some other reports. There's

00:07:33.680 one in particular here where he acknowledges that the message itself is just wrong. I'm reading an

00:07:39.840 article in the, I think it's Global News or it might've been CBC, but he said that the message is

00:07:47.540 not sending, or it's not sending the right message here. He's saying that even public health officials

00:07:52.560 were unhappy with them and hadn't seen them and hadn't reviewed them. I did a little bit of digging and

00:07:57.520 the videos, which cost $4,000 each, I think they should be demanding a refund on that, but it's

00:08:02.640 neither here nor there, were produced by some Toronto film program that mentors black, indigenous people

00:08:09.800 of color and LGBTQ2S, I think that's it. There might be another one in there, filmmakers. And they do this

00:08:17.840 in a way to, you know, try to foster the development of the media and arts industry. And they're the ones

00:08:24.000 that made the video. So at least it wasn't like some really expensive $100,000 contract to an ad agency.

00:08:29.920 But even so, the core message of this plays to parents that are so fearful, fearful of the world

00:08:37.440 around them, that either furthers them trying to keep their children isolated from the world,

00:08:41.680 or it shames parents, shames parents who, for whatever reason, have decided that vaccinating

00:08:46.560 their children against COVID is not something they want to do.

00:08:54.000 And therefore, the influence here was turned around. So also, today, the

Juno News - September 23, 2022

City of Toronto pulls child vaccination ad campaign

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