Juno News - The media is failing Canadians when it comes to COVID-19

00:00:00.000 One of the things that I think is really holding back us making progress on tackling with and

00:00:09.840 thinking about COVID-19 in Canada is media amplification. What do I mean by that? Well,

00:00:16.740 I have an iPhone, an Apple product, and I have that Apple news thingy on the phone. I should

00:00:20.820 probably turn it off, turn off the notifications, but the default is that it's on. I imagine that's

00:00:25.220 default for many people. So I get this ping when big news happens, when a celebrity dies or a big

00:00:31.360 piece of government legislation is introduced and so forth. And I've been getting pings about

00:00:35.720 certain coronavirus news. For instance, I got a ping to say Quebec introducing vaccine passports

00:00:41.540 a few weeks ago. Now, if something is going to ping right on your phone screen, it's clearly

00:00:46.420 really bringing it to people's attention. I mean, everybody, whether or not they want to be plugged

00:00:50.780 into the news, there it is right in the front screen of their phone. And it sort of provokes

00:00:55.040 them to think about it and maybe start talking to the person beside them. Oh, look at this. Look

00:00:58.720 what Quebec did. Why aren't we doing it in Ontario? Maybe we should do it in Ontario and so forth. And

00:01:03.100 then they did do it in Ontario. And that's the stuff that is amplified. That's the news that is really

00:01:09.460 pushed in front of people's faces. And it's telling about the things that are pushed in front of people's

00:01:15.060 faces. And then the news that is not. There's a lot of stuff about COVID-19, very factual based

00:01:22.040 government statistics, things various medical experts have said that I think are really important

00:01:26.980 to us understanding how to learn to live with COVID as a number of chief medical officers of health

00:01:31.660 have said throughout Canada, how to make positive progress, how to get on with our lives,

00:01:36.280 information that would be so helpful to help us with that and to help the public understand why it's

00:01:42.860 okay to do that stuff and help them understand why it's important. But that information has not hit

00:01:49.040 critical mass. It is not being amplified. There's one thing that I used to write about. I wrote about

00:01:54.940 several times. I wrote a number of columns about it coming up almost a year ago now, which is about

00:01:58.780 the Alberta comorbidity data. I say Alberta data because other provinces don't disclose as well as

00:02:04.980 Alberta does. But right there on their government website, their COVID-19 fact sheet website,

00:02:10.580 they break down the comorbidities. So the serious underlying conditions connected with people who have had

00:02:16.680 serious outcomes with COVID and tragically, the people who have died from it. And it has pretty

00:02:20.980 much been consistent throughout dealing with COVID-19 that three quarters of the people who have died of

00:02:28.160 COVID-19 have not just had an underlying condition, but have had three or more underlying conditions.

00:02:36.040 Currently, as I record this, the statistic is 76.2% of the people who have died of COVID-19 in Alberta

00:02:43.620 had three or more underlying conditions. The percentage of people who did not at all have

00:02:49.680 any underlying conditions is 3.2% of Alberta's deaths. So that's an interesting statistic that I

00:02:57.460 would say most people in Canada do not know, but they should know because that information just helps

00:03:04.880 us understand a bit more about how COVID-19 is being experienced, how it's unfolding here

00:03:11.940 in the hospitals, in the ICUs among Canadians. It can perhaps inform us to better help people who are

00:03:17.800 having serious outcomes and perhaps also inform ways for low-risk persons to go and get on with

00:03:23.080 their lives. But that is information that is not being encouraged in the media amplification stuff.

00:03:29.420 That news is not pinging on your phone and being presented to you as, hey, here's something we think

00:03:34.160 you must know. In fact, as some of you may know, I was bizarrely attacked for reporting

00:03:39.140 that basic rudimentary data. And Patty Hadju, health minister actually in the House of Commons,

00:03:44.780 denounced that reporting is fake news, even though it's just Alberta government data. So

00:03:48.600 they were very hostile to that information being discussed. So some info being amplified,

00:03:54.600 being rammed down your throats, and other information, completely accurate or important

00:03:59.500 information that is just not really being discussed out there as much as it should. Other people aren't

00:04:05.320 sending it out there, picking up the ball and running with it. I'm not just talking about my own work.

00:04:08.700 I'm not trying to say, complain why it wasn't my own reporting on the comorbidity data more

00:04:14.200 amplified and so forth. I mean, that's just one example. There are many other examples and many

00:04:18.520 news outlets who are reporting things that you go, hey, that's really important. More people should

00:04:22.380 know that. And they just drop it. And it just fizzles away. And yet some of the information that

00:04:28.000 fizzles away is the most integral information for people to understand. So very disturbing how media

00:04:35.420 amplification is working or failing Canadians when it comes to COVID-19.

Juno News - September 02, 2021

The media is failing Canadians when it comes to COVID-19

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