#BTSpeakingOut – Communicate with me

The views and opinions expressed by the author(s) do not represent the official position of Barbados TODAY.

by Michael Rudder

I have not entered the debate as to whether to get a ‘vaccination’ against COVID-19 or not, except to say that it is our own free will choice.

America is so convulsed with politics that they can no longer be considered the leader of much today. Remember the chest thumping and Donald Trump’s trumpeting about the development of the COVID vaccines at what he called ‘warp speed,’ only to have them made available at warped speed.

It is my understanding that these kind of therapeutic injections – called but not appropriately defined as vaccinations which we are asked to take – were in development and trial for about ten years before Trump made money available to two of the three companies to bring those ‘shots’ to market.

Now however, he and his cohorts – including Fox News – are again downplaying the efficacy of the ‘vaccines’ while celebrating, without evidence, cures for COVID such as hydroxychloroquine and now Ivermectin – an animal deworming drug.

True Ivermectin is basically an anti-parasite drug discovered in 1975 but it’s current prescription use seems
to have very modest benefits or no statistically significant benefits for COVID-19 patients. Some have resorted to
non-prescription use from animal feed stores. Improper use has led to poison center calls spiking in some states
in the US, according to news reports.

As far as the “vaccine” goes, yes, I have had the two shots, thankfully they were not lead. They caused me no physical distress whatsoever. Some people may say, “That’s for now. You are sure to feel the effects in a few months or in a year or so.” Of course, if I drank a lot of alcohol over time or ingested something that might produce harm to my body subsequently, that same person might not be sounding the same kind of alarm today, but because it is convenient to sound the anti-COVID vaccination call there is a lot of ballyhoo.

Indeed, I have to ask whether that person was communicating with me or just giving me some of their information. To have communicated with me what was said should have elicited a response. It did not. Communication is a two-way street and in nature we find that plants which grow thorns are very good communicators.

The appointment of Mr. David Ellis as the COVID-19 Public Advisor reminded me that I participated in a Summer Workshop on Development Communication Message Design at Stanford University some years ago.

Tony Deyal was also a participant. The first question the appointment brought to mind was, which public? Then there is the question of the message design appropriate for that public. Will there be pretesting of the message which would produce feed-forward as well as feedback.

Of course, the communication tools that would have been prescribed at the time of that summer workshop would be far different from those in use today, but the end result should be similar – communication not just information sharing.

I must say I am not clear as to the role of this “Public Advisor” so it is not possible to make suggestions for implementation of any programme of action, even if I had the temerity so to do. My hope is that once I have been identified within a certain ‘public’ the sender of the message shall indeed communicate with me.