Consider Your Source

• 

In the (developing) grand tradition of animals and birds running away from me and my camera, I have some shots of a shag’s great escape. Oh and another bird, but more on that later. Shags are not particularly graceful but I find them fascinating in their clumsiness. Take-offs from the water are bizarre and the landings even more so. Someday I’ll get shots of those aspects of their journeys. 🙂

I’ve been amusing myself lately in the rabbit holes of vaccine misinformation, however it really isn’t funny. The more outrageous the theory, it seems, the more credence is given to it.

• 

Now, Campobello is a great place for rumours. They abound. I try when I am on the receiving end to ask the other person to question where the information came from.

One recent story was quite serious. A friend, it seemed, was dying of cancer and only had 6 months to live. I doubted this because, as far as I knew, this individual hadn’t seen the doctor in months and had a test scheduled for a few weeks later. I suggested that the person passing me the rumour go talk to the man. The story wasn’t true but it upset an awful lot of people. I’m baffled at the motivation for even starting that nonsense.

• 

On another occasion I got a phone call saying that 1,000 people in St. Andrews had to quarantine because of exposure on one of the cargo ships in the harbour. Where did that come from?, I asked. The answer was Facebook. Who said it on FB, I then queried. It was the Mayor of St. Andrews.

Now, I’m not on that particular site (for lots of reasons) but it didn’t take much research to find out that the Mayor at the time didn’t have a Facebook account. In fact it’s one of the things he was known for.

So I went back to my caller and told him that and the reply was that it came from a local radio station. This would be a big story so I went to that station’s website and nothing was there.

• 

I then reminded my caller that St. Andrews has a total population (in the data I can find) of 772. He said well there are contractors working there. I said, yes, but it would still require every man, woman, and child in the town to be officially in quarantine. This would be a big news item.

At the time of our conversation we were not locked down. In addition, the Provincial Chief Medical Officer of Health reported our quarantine/isolation totals every day and there weren’t 1,000 in the whole Province under those orders. sigh

I had another call yesterday. This one told me that 8 eagles were feeding off the Jackson Breakwater – highly unusual but I believed it. There was only one left when I got there. It took a sideways look at me and headed out to sea.

Figures. 🙂

•