Occasional blood shotages?
The media wants you to think that it’s a national emergency!
You don’t get paid in Britain either… A cup of tea and a biscuit is the usual rate here, I believe (I’m unfortunately a bit too prone to anaemia to be a suitable donor, so I’ve not tested that personally).
Do you have any cites that “the media” claim that this is an ongoing national emergency?
What I see, on the local news, is when the organizations and companies which provide blood to hospitals (in this area, the American Red Cross and Vitalant) have a particular shortage in donations (usually around the holidays), and put out an urgent call for blood donors right now. This also sometimes happens when there is a natural disaster in an area, or a short-term need for large quantities of blood in an area (like a major accident, or a mass shooting).
What I also see is regular PR campaigns, mostly by the Red Cross, generally encouraging people to become blood donors.
Yes!!! In a previous post I cited a national TV commercial about a desperate man on a sidewalk begging and pleading with passers by to give blood to save his child’s life!
The message this commercial was trying to get accross to a national audience was that if you don’t give blood, you could be responsible for someones death!
Was this commercial accurate? Was this claim based on any real research?
Or, was it simply propaganda?
If so, why would the national media lie about the urgency of blood donations by deliberately makeing people feel guilty about not giving blood?
If you could share a link to that ad, it would be so very useful.
Here is my educated guess (and, yes, I work in advertising): that was a public service announcement ad, from either the Red Cross, or another blood service, trying to demonstrate the general need for people to give blood, and it was a dramatization of why giving blood is so important. I highly doubt that it was an actual “news item” about a real man whose actual child was needing blood at that moment.
And, that is exactly the sort of “raise general awareness about the importance of giving blood” ad that I mentioned in my previous post.
You are confused about the role of the “national media” and their role in ads that run on their stations. An ad is not a news story.
The “national media” does not, as a rule, choose which ads to air on their stations; generally speaking, unless an ad is particularly distasteful or promotes something illegal, as long as the advertiser is paying for it, it gets run. (In the case of “public service announcements,” which the ad you describe may be, commercial TV stations are required, as part of their license from the FCC, to devote a small percentage of their commercial time to running such ads, free of charge.)
Yes, overall, not enough Americans give blood regularly. That’s a fact, and no one here is denying it.
Yes, there are times when, due to either lower-than-usual donations (holidays, COVID), or higher-than-usual need, blood supplies can become critically short. That, too, is a fact, and no one here is denying it.
Getting people to donate blood is difficult. We, as a society, have pretty much the same problem with getting people to sign up for organ donation, getting people to register to donate bone marrow, etc.
You are absolutely correct that we need to figure out how to get those who are eligible to donate to do so. The ad you reference is almost undoubtedly an effort to do just that.
But, you’re a dog with a bone with your insistence that the solution is to pay people to give blood, despite the issues that a number of us have pointed out regarding this.
Whole blood must be drawn but machines now draw the blood, separate the plasma, and return the remaining blood products back to your body. It is a slow process taking about an hour.
I stand corrected, the example I cited was a public service announcement, possibly from the Red Cross. It was not an adverisement. Circa 1980’s I believe.
But in this case, why did this public service announcement, that was distributed by the national media, have to resort to so much drama to get a point accross?
Drama and embellishment are characteristics of works of fiction for entertainment value.
There is nothing fictional or entertaining about giving blood.
I guess the real disconnect here, unless you are a conservative like me, is that we believe that the mainstream media has alterior motives than can be downright nefarious.
For example, the mainstream media has spent the last two years demanding that everyone, not just high risk demographics, should be living in a state of fear and deathly afraid of this invisible thing called the Covid 19 Corona virus.
I am not going to be afraid of something living in fear and panic just because the mainstream media tells me to.
I am not saying that the virus isn’t real, but the response to this virus overall has had nothing to do with public health.
It was a litmus test, not in the context of chemistry, but social experimentation to test just how much B.S. the general public will believe at any given time, and for how long.
There is a difference between dieing OF Covid, and dieing WITH Covid. The death count is well over one million nationwide. But it is clear to me that these numbers are criminally inflated for the purposes of scaring people.
Regardless of people who had core morbidities or not, people who died of something completely unrelated to Covid were added to this list.
Enough said about Covid.
For the same reason that the Wildlife Foundation and the SPCA runs heart rending ads with clips of dead or mistreated animals, or the various feed the children organizations run ads with starving children in them. It makes people focus and pay attention. In a world where we’re drowning in information, they’re trying to make enough of an impression that people will remember and then give.
Also, people relate better when they see a few individual cases rather than being told large numbers. You know, the old saying about a single death is a tragedy, but thousands or millions is just a statistic.
Also, for future reference:
It’s spelled “whether”, not “wether”.
It’s spelled “ulterior”, not “alterior”.
It’s “comorbidities”, not “core morbidities”
And the claim about dying of COVID versus dying with COVID has been thoroughly debunked. It’s a talking point used by people who don’t want to learn better because it’s too inconvenient for them.
Wow! Technology has certainly come a long way over the past 20 years.
As a phlebotomist, we used those great big needles to draw blood from the anecubital vein.
These days, they use those small butterfly needles for all outpatient blood draws.
Do they use smaller needles for arterial blood gas tests?
My educated guess: to drive more response than whatever other approaches they had been trying, by (I am sure they hoped) getting potential blood donors to imagine themselves in the shoes of the father in that ad.
FWIW, if the ad was, indeed, 30+ years old, I’m not sure how well it supports the point you’re trying to make today, other than (a) that trying to get people to donate blood is a continuing issue, and (b) you, personally, don’t trust “the media.”
And, again, “the media” did not make that ad. The Red Cross, or some similar blood supply organization, did.
Will also point out that you can easily sell plasma but plenty of it is still donated for free just like whole blood. I would donate plasma except I have a blood disorder and they’ll only use my blood for testing. I don’t think it’s illegal to sell blood in the US but apparently it’s not practical any more.
Moderating:
You have taken your own thread off topic far beyond what is allowed in this forum and politicized it to boot. Accordingly, I’m closing this thread. If you want it reopened in the Pit, please let us know.