Posted: September 12, 2020
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Article Summary In early July a reporter asked me what I consider the single biggest COVID-19 risk communication failure of public health experts and officials. It took me a month to think through my answer and draft this column. (Along the way I tested out some of my thinking in a telephone interview with Bloomberg reporter Faye Flam.) It’s a five-part answer: (1) First public health over-reassured the public and left us unprepared. (2) Then public health panicked and overreacted, locking down even places without much spread of the virus. (3) Then public health flubbed the rationale for lockdowns, adopting a suppression narrative instead of teaching us how to balance priorities and “dance” with the virus. (4) As part of its defense of lockdowns, public health abandoned the goal of “flattening the curve” in favor of the goal of minimizing transmission in every way possible. (5) Along the way, public health insisted that public policy and individual decisions should be grounded exclusively in “The Science” – that is, in the advice coming from public health itself.

Public Health’s Single Biggest COVID-19 Risk Communication Failure

by Peter M. Sandman
Posted on August 4, 2020 on Dr. Sandman’s website

A Mandarin translation of this column has been posted with Dr. Sandman's permission on both WeChat and Weibo. It's in five parts, as per the chart below. The translator is Andre Shen, CEO of Bridge Consulting, a Beijing-based communications consultancy, who added his own introduction.

 WeChat    Weibo   
Part 1  https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/7slfStkIeGQk6P6KcMtTkQ https://weibo.com/ttarticle/p/show?id=2309404536660485341511
Part 2  https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/rWHvtWBkzUQmS79BqiproQhttps://weibo.com/ttarticle/p/show?id=2309404538955596169679
Part 3  https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/cODLWscrs8uX7ZqTxFG5Vwhttps://weibo.com/ttarticle/p/show?id=2309404542230928162915
Part 4  https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/Xa0GAthK_BiQT_qU16DHzQhttps://weibo.com/ttarticle/p/show?id=2309404544452000874639
Part 5  https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/pwvwpxzm5V_NvXSSVvC3oAhttps://weibo.com/ttarticle/p/show?id=2309404546991261614280

Copyright © 2020 by Peter M. Sandman

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