An excellent summary on the importance of communication in a public health crisis and how to do it right. One of your points that I'd like to emphasize is this: "Communicating uncertainty is a must. What do you know? But more importantly, what do you not know?" Speaking as someone who studied COVID-related messaging across the political …
An excellent summary on the importance of communication in a public health crisis and how to do it right. One of your points that I'd like to emphasize is this: "Communicating uncertainty is a must. What do you know? But more importantly, what do you not know?" Speaking as someone who studied COVID-related messaging across the political spectrum, I believe that the relative lack of clear and repeated explanations by the most prominent US public health spokespersons of the extent to which the government's well-intended actions and guidance was based on hypotheses (as opposed to sound facts) was perhaps the single largest factor in the wave of distrust of authorities that has swept over the American sociopolitical landscape since 2020, and that will continue to undermine public health for years to come.
An excellent summary on the importance of communication in a public health crisis and how to do it right. One of your points that I'd like to emphasize is this: "Communicating uncertainty is a must. What do you know? But more importantly, what do you not know?" Speaking as someone who studied COVID-related messaging across the political spectrum, I believe that the relative lack of clear and repeated explanations by the most prominent US public health spokespersons of the extent to which the government's well-intended actions and guidance was based on hypotheses (as opposed to sound facts) was perhaps the single largest factor in the wave of distrust of authorities that has swept over the American sociopolitical landscape since 2020, and that will continue to undermine public health for years to come.