I have said many many times on here, that the province’s communications on COVID-19 is just as vital as the vaccine. We need to know what to do and how to do it to keep ourselves save. Its a lesson our provincial government is still struggling to learn.
A few months ago, we were coming out of the second wave. Lockdown restrictions were being lifted and the hope was we’d be getting vaccinations soon to help prevent another situation from arising like we’d just experienced. I had hoped that lessons had been learned, that plans would’ve been adjusted to encourage behaviour that would prevent the need for a third lockdown.
It appears that is not to be the case.
In today’s episode of The 905er, we go off on the status quo in Ontario. Listen to it here:
We are faced with a provincial government trying to come up with a plan and a communications strategy to go with it. Do you remember this claim for Education Minister Stephen Lecce earlier in the week:
“Every indication we have from the chief medical officer of health is that students will continue to go to school,” Education Minister Stephen Lecce said.
— Read on globalnews.ca/news/7727140/ontario-education-minister-schools-open-covid/amp/
This was followed up by school boards across the province sending out emails to parents urging them to start planning for the possibility that we would be going to online learning in the coming days. A fact that was understated by the news that the cabinet is going to make a statement indicating we are going back into lockdown starting this weekend.
The provinces communications is further compounded by confusion as the bumbled vaccine roll out is leaving more and more vaccines on the shelves than in people’s arms. At my best estimate, the population of an Ontario city sits on the shelf waiting to be injected. This is a logistical problem that needs to be solved ASAP. Rather than focus on doing the work, we have the Premier fumbling and trying to deflect blame towards the federal government. Blaming them for vaccine shortages. Going so far as to tout out a shocking claim that the province was shorted 800,000 vaccines from their scheduled shipment. This claim was clearly part of a coordinated communications campaign on the part of the government. Last night my MPP, Jane McKenna sent out her weekly email. The text was clearly campaign to reiterate this point.
This narrative is compelling. Only problem is it’s false:
We need better than this. We need to work on the problem not the blaming. Canada doesn’t work unless we all cooperate. We aren’t a union, we are a confederation. That means we all need to agree to move forward. The part of this pandemic where we can say we are learning and finding out what works best has passed. This is the third wave. The third time we’ve been in this situation. We should know by now how to deal with this and save lives. Instead we have a government that is still acting like this new territory. That no one could’ve predicted we’d be here. Except expert in the field made this prediction. Months ago. This failure to take the advice of medical experts and professionals is starting to drift from misunderstanding into willful negligence. We need better.
Joel MacLeod.ca 