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Originally Posted by someone123
Here in BC our premier directed some pretty nasty stuff at 20-39 year olds in a public health address. How is this for unmasking?
https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1879178819924
"The cohort from 20-39 are not paying as much attention to these broadcasts and quite frankly are putting the rest of us in a challenging situation ... do not blow this for your parents and neighbours and others who have been working really really hard."
The younger people (is 39 really that young? I am waiting for baby boomers to infantilize 45 year olds) who I know have been very careful and have made the biggest sacrifices for the least personal gain. Many of them have either lost their jobs or are essential workers who must show up in person and are at much higher risk. They generally live in more cramped conditions, rentals with roommates around here. They had the greatest financial hardship going into the pandemic.
The reality of BC's case numbers and covid spread is that if the typical 20-39 year old really were partying it up and then visiting older family members things would have gotten completely out of control here long ago. Cases in the 20-29 cohort are not even 2x what they are in 50-59 and that's without correcting for unavoidable risk in workplaces and households.
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As someone in the 30-39 cohort I didn't like Horgan's approach, but he is right about one thing, people my age don't watch those news conferences, which are carried on cable TV and on radio stations like CBC and CKNW. Not only are they're during work hours when people are otherwise occupied, but a lot of people under 40 don't have cable or listen to AM radio.
I have also found a lot of people my age to be disengaged with local news (even before the pandemic) and social media, although this is not unique to BC. I still remember talking to a guy I know weeks after Dr. Henry announced the gathering restrictions in November, and he was completely unaware of the new restrictions, just because he's occupied working 80 hours a week, doesn't consume news, and does not use Facebook.
But that's just the media habits of the generation. I don't blame my age cohort, I blame the government for not getting its messages out properly to segments of the population who don't have cable TV, don't listen to medium wave radio and don't use social media. You can't force people to consume media forms that they don't want to consume.
Text messages or the emergency broadcast system (not Amber alerts, but the same system) might be the best way to reach some younger people, and I know Saskatchewan has done this during the pandemic. When I drove through Saskatchewan last year when I moved to BC, I received an alert on my phone advising of the restrictions that were in place at that time in the province. BC has not done this once, at least since I've been here.