Yesterday I popped into a TikTok Live event related to the pandemic, and I was horrified by the comments. The live event was a spokesperson from the Canadian government and put on by a news outlet account. I get it if there are a few hecklers unsatisfied with the way things are going, but these were the kinds of comments being shared:
“Are the side effects as low as ivermectin?”
“All these people need to be charged with Crimes Against Humanity.”
“You don’t need any shots”
“There’s no pandemic it’s a scam.”
“Wake up people.”
“Health Canada shifted to primarily pharmaceutical funding in 2018.”
“We listen to Malone!!!! Not you filthy animals!!!!”
“Time for a new government.”
“Not true!”
“The government is corrupt”
“I’m sick of these lies!”
“Evil pieces of 💩”
“We need to hire a hit team to take them all down.”
“There is no science, it’s called being bought by Pfizer”
“How can anyone believe there’s a pandemic?”
“this segment of propaganda brought to you by Bill Gates.”
“none of the vaccines work, it’s all a scam!!!”
“Hurry up you only have a 98.5% chance of survival.”
“Sorry, I don’t play medical Russian roulette.”
“Oh hey! It’s a terrorist speaking! Listen to your overlords, slaves.”
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I cleaned up the punctuation a bit, and I didn’t put a few of these in all capitals, the way they were written. I also didn’t share them all, but none of them were positive. None.
How did we get here?
Hi Dave
Very disturbing. I think the pandemic has shown some cracks in the educational system (which is expected to be everything to everybody by everyone). We need to focus on scientific literacy as a necessary knowledge base and skill/competency In my mind, Simply put, a large portion of the population (even those who agree with vaccines) do not understand how science works. Science is a process. I could get into a long comment on epistemology but will spare you that. We also need to invest more efforts into developing media literacy, particularly given the rise of social media. Social media makes the communication environment much more complex and ambiguous and people do not approach social media content critically (we need to develop critical thinkers). I recall my older sister sending me posts she received on FB from friends, asking me if they were true (they were not). The third areas is understanding we live in a world of “wicked problems” and complexity. There are no technical fixes for wicked problems and they require interventions that are value based. Epidemiologists view the world through one lens, health care professionals through another lens and economists through another lens. Each of them see the world of wicked problems differently, Part of the challenge is we cannot separate these dimensions as they are all interrelated and an intervention into one has an impact on other dimensions. And while some politicians have done a better job than others in managing the pandemic, I do not envy them the task of having to make decisions, recognizing there are tradeoffs regardless of what decision they make. Gee, I guess I am pitying politicians which is not my usual stance. I guess there is enough here to get my “drift”.
More than enough here to catch your drift Al!
The many perspectives that come from different stances and world views really makes the wicked problems more like impossible problems, when you put them all together.
I agree that education is a necessary part of the solution, because when I watched these comments flow, taking screenshots to record them above, I really felt like there was no immediate solution to this kind of social media spamming by a loud minority… A minority that is so loud that they are the only voice heard, and that seem like a larger group than they are. But education is a long term fix, and until then, we are kind of stuck here. That’s more than a little sad.
Yes, the ignorance is very disturbing. The only consolation to me is that it is not just here in the US. The crack pots are truly part of a world wide conspiracy (network).
Yes, ever since the 2016 US election, I’ve been keenly aware that the crackpots are in Canada too. I’m not surprised, they/we are fed 95+% of our news and social media from the US, and while I think the quality of our education system is more evenly distributed than in the US, I think the access to disinformation is too great, even ‘up here’.
🙁