Stab Everyone You Love, with Leslie Rosenblood

Vaccinations are one of humanity’s greatest medical innovations, saving over ten million lives since 1962. Given their decades long track record of preventing illness in billions, why are so many skeptical about their safety and efficacy?

In this talk, Leslie will tell the story of how he naively fell into the online vaccination debate (it started with a Facebook post of this video). He will examine the arguments used by the anti-vaxxers, distinguish the denialists from the vaccine-hesitant, provide some do’s and don’ts on how to engage (should you choose to do so), and what the results were of his online debate about vaccines. He will also delve into human psychology and cognitive biases, how to distinguish between objective information and propaganda trying to masquerade as such, some considerations about a potential vaccine for covid-19,and what you can do to educate those in your social circle (in real life or online) on this topic (and many others).

Bio:

Leslie is a staunch secularist and supporter of evidence-based decision making (especially for public policy). He has a Bachelors degree from the University of Waterloo in Mathematics (Computer Science) with a minor in Drama and Speech Communication, from which he learned he didn’t want to code for a living and that he couldn’t live on what acting paid. To postpone making any real decisions, he took an MBA in Science and Technology.

Since that time, he has worked in multiple roles across numerous industries in several countries. Along the way, he has performed in countless plays and improvisational comedy nights, run one marathon, and created four demi-clones. Leslie is the Treasurer of the Centre for Inquiry Canada and a Policy Adviser for the Canadian Secular Alliance. He started his blog, Opinions and Questions, in the hopes that his review of a particularly dishonest book about vaccines would reach a wider audience.

Registration instructions: Registration on Meetup is required. - https://www.meetup.com/CFICToronto/events/272144096