Given all that’s happened in the last year – over 500,000 people dead more sickened and families wounded forever, ships and soccer fields turned into hospital words, endless lines for Covid testing and vaccination chaos, Black Lives Matter, QAnon, hoaxes and conspiracy theories – how is it even possible that the very public health messages promoted at the start of the pandemic in 2020  are essentially unchanged (added the vaccine directive) now in March 2021? 

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/prevention.html

CDC March 8 2021

Another example 

the NYC website – NYCDOHMH is one of the largest public health departments in the world. 

https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-prevention-and-care.page

And how is it that the ubiquitous posters we saw for SARS & H1N1 were essentially recycled for Covid19 (the classic public health hygiene message of the 20th century)

How do we explain this?    

   

Lack of skill, Lack of will. Lack of imagination?  

Since we haven’t,  nor likely ever will  “close the book on infectious diseases” as US surgeon-general William Stewart proclaimed in 1969, I think it’s critical to look at what things must change in the public health communication playbook.           A year of Covid has shown me that public health officials and experts, particularly those tasked with communicating with the public, are collectively responsible for benign language disguised as information – the endless dump of scare tactics, mask and social distancing directives, persuasion through repetition and  shaming have yielded  confusion, mistrust, anger and worse.

 

It’s long overdue for public health to re-examine its old playbooks.