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Barbara T's avatar

Look who showed up in my "In Box" from Politico Pulse! "LOOKING FOR THE WORDS — Public health experts, from CDC officials to leading epidemiologists and doctors, say they need better ways to communicate with the public, citing trust issues and ineffective messaging through the pandemic.

Now, new approaches are emerging, though some experts worry they’re uncommon and not always taken seriously in larger pandemic preparedness discussions.

Still, widespread dissatisfaction over Covid-19 messaging means scattered new initiatives could hold clues to the future of public-facing health communications — particularly a move to more local, accessible, regular interactions with the public.

Starting a conversation

Katelyn Jetelina, epidemiologist and professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center, is among the scientists and doctors who seem to be making breakthroughs.

Since creating a much-read newsletter, Your Local Epidemiologist , during the pandemic to explain public health issues, Jetelina has been part of health communications conversations with government officials in the U.S. and abroad.

The newsletter started as an email to faculty, students and staff to explain the data trickling in early in the pandemic. It eventually moved online and now has a Spanish-language version. She estimates it’s gotten about 300 million hits so far.

Approaches like Your Local Epidemiologist’s — proactive, explanatory and conversational — have been eyed by CDC officials as it considers how to move beyond pandemic messaging missteps .

But Jetelina said messaging changes will likely need to go beyond governments (though she said far more needs to be done on that front) to health systems more broadly, especially at the local level."

Congratulations, while I still think you/she are/is writing just for me, it's nice to read about your impact.

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BayDog's avatar

According to the CDC's website, only 15.3% of the population has gotten the bivalent booster (link below).

Is this low uptake because of mis-information and dis-information? Or is it because the American people have concluded - for a variety of reasons based on truths they see with their own eyes - that the current generation of vaccines just aren't living up to their promise? This disillusionment cuts across all age groups, geographies, races, political parties, genders, education, you name it. The vast majority of Americans are DONE with the current generation of vaccines.

From a policy standpoint, if the vast majority of Americans are DONE with the current generation of vaccines, what good is it to blame low uptake on the dis/mis-informationists? Wouldn't it be better for our country for policy makers to focus on the future, taking in to account the reality that the American people have spoken and their minds aren't likely to be changed? We need BETTER vaccines and BETTER therapies for when people do get covid.

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#datatracker-home

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