The U.S. has no clear vision of how to reach a postpandemic world. Over the past two years, we have developed extraordinary scientific tools for the mitigation, treatment and prevention of COVID. But we’ve stumbled badly in implementing them. Many of these failures happened because our public health messages were not clear about how to use those tools, which include vaccines, masks, tests, antiviral drugs and temporary activity restrictions.
Why have we failed to protect ourselves? A major reason is that federal agencies focused on a vaccination-only strategy when inoculations became available. Their erratic efforts to pursue other safety measures have been infrequent, and slow, and have often been rejected by the courts. On the local level, governments have rushed to abandon almost all mitigation strategies, from mask mandates to vaccination requirements.
In some cases, changes of CDC positions were prompted by shifts in our scientific understanding of the disease. But in many others, the changes appear to be arbitrary or to be driven by public pressure and business interests. In December of 2021, the agency reduced recommended isolation periods for infected health care workers from 10 days down to seven, adding that “isolation time can be cut further if there are staffing shortages.
A new and successful communications campaign has to start by defining how much death and disease, going forward, that the country can accept from this virus. The administration must bring together public health experts to set these targets at low, achievable numbers. Then Congress—which has recently balked at spending money on prevention and treatment—must commit resources to match them.
amandalhu Quibbling about messaging seems real intellectual, but actually... it's not. The government authorities are overly deferential to racists and capitalists. These people want the virus to spread to fulfill their genocidal goals.
Leave it to bacon and eggs to keep bitching about Covid.
scientific(ly), showing off your communication degrees? pathetic. a once proud and respected science journal. rico/nuremberg2.0
Intelligence is the ability to adapt, education helps us identify ourselves (Know thyself) to help overcome these issues and roadblocks to success
I hate the phrase “new normal”
Propaganda rag
FauciFiles fauci CDCgov joebiden potus under joebiden biden over ONE MILLION DIED with covid covid19 deaths with no outrage PfizerFiles Pfizer maddow MSNBC BillGates
You used to be my source of all news scientific. Get off the Cool-Aid.
We don't need 'smarter' communications, we need honest and truthful communications. That is why nobody believes health agencies any longer. It's not covid fatigue, it's the lies we are fed.
Yeah, it turns out when you lie and lie and lie, eventually people stop listening to you and it ruins your ability to organize. But that's what you get.
The trust is broken.
Smarter communication? How about more honest communication. As soon as the top officials start 'lying for a good cause', they lose their credibility, never to regain it.
This piece is worthless without you regaling us with the copious findings of your knee-jerk racism-detector, your only remaining expertise.
It's the total corruption and lies told to the masses that got them in trouble. They forced people to take a shot that doesn't work and is harmful to some. Elitist scumbags as far as I'm concerned.
Or 'COVID-19: The End of Democracy' Or 'Lying To The Public: The End of Democracy' Or 'Trust Dies in The New Age of Propaganda(tm)' Or 'How Propaganda Ruined Democracy' Or '2019-2022 - The Lies Your Government Forced On You'
Or 'Weaponizing Government to Silence its Critics is A Bad Idea(tm)'
How about the title 'Weaponizing Government to Denounce Science is A Bad Idea(tm)'
By 'smarter' do you mean 'better propaganda'? Because - obviously - the government 'health agencies' have engaged in propagandizing and censoring discourse, and merely forcing them to STOP doing BOTH would be a huge win for scientific debate. It would also begin to rebuild trust.
Delete your page 🤡 🤡
*sigh* hiding data, violating the oaths medical professionals take, falsifying and altering data, misrepresenting data, and preventing honest dialogues between patient and provider; also preventing second opinions... please, dont become weekly world journal.
Can we anticipate real science being presented in Scientific American at some point? For someone that grew up with your publication reading Martin Gardner your decline is painful. Why are you doing this?
'Bad COVID Public Health Messaging' Masks stop transmission Debunked✔️ Vaccines stop to/from transmission Debunked✔️ Vaccines stop illness/death Debunked✔️ Fauci knows what he is talking about Debunked ✔️
🖕🏽
You lie about covid. You should stop that and become decent human beings.
Lying is bad, because it reduces trust? Who knew...?
Is “smarter communication” code for “stop lying to public”?
Bottom line. Mask up. We have little else to help as variants outstrip vaxxes & nada has been done about air quality (get vaxxed & boosted, but masking is also critical). Biggest mistake POTUS has made in office was to say people could ditch masks. CDC is compounding it.
Good opinion piece, thoaidngo