If there is anything most of us can agree on about the Covid-19 pandemic, it is that it was a singular event for all who lived through it. It is something that people will be talking about for years—what it was like to live through 2020-2022 and the Covid pandemic.
While many might talk about the medical and personal aspects of the Covid years, as a public relations professor I think there are some important lessons about professional communications that we can consider. Now is a good time to do it, when memories are fresh but the heat of the situation is past.
Focus should be on truth, not anticipated reaction or politics
When the pandemic was first reported, some of the first official messages from the medical/political authorities was that it won’t spread to humans. Then we were told it won’t spread beyond China. When the virus did exactly that quickly, people were already suspect of future statements.
It is also interesting how quickly the messaging around the pandemic became politicized. Some in the U.S. saw yet another opportunity to criticize Trump and veered from fact to do so. I did a scan of the Covid-related headlines in the New York Times in the first three months of 2020 and many articles were proclaiming the very things Trump had said later for which the Times criticized him. Nancy Pelosi went to San Francisco’s Chinatown to virtue signal Chinese people and criticize Trump for banning flights from China, where the virus originated. Later such isolation was universally considered prudent. Kamala Harris, the eventual vice president, said she would not take the vaccine because it was developed by Trump’s ‘Operation Warp Speed” initiative to rapidly develop a Covid vaccine. Assertions that the virus leaked from a lab in China were ruled out and called xenophobic, but recently several independent studies by US government agencies have come to the conclusion that a lab leak was probably or possible. All of this created a chaos of messaging that the public interpreted as more political than prudent and led to growing mistrust.
Statements should be transparent and not get ahead of data
Early public guidance in the pandemic is now fodder for jokes. “Two weeks to stop the spread” was intended to express that a short-term inconvenience of lockdown would lead to achievement of a united goal. But we all know now that lockdowns happened for more than a year and the spread continued regardless.
You don’t need to wear a mask was soon replaced with wear a mask, wear a particular type of mask, wear two masks and more. It was maddening and laughable, and the net result was minimal public safety and significant public annoyance and mistrust.
The biggest problem was when authorities falsely claimed the vaccines are “safe and effective” when in fact they were not entirely either. The problem here is that the words used are absolute and don’t have important modifiers, such as “mostly” or “largely” or for certain conditions or populations.
I teach a law class and cover the FDA regulations for advertising new drugs. My wife is a stage 4 cancer survivor and we have read many drug information sheets. New drugs must have two independent, long-term trials. There must be disclosure of potential side effects. Any effectiveness claims must have due diligence verifications. The Covid vaccines had none of the above. Most drugs my wife has taken come with several pages of information listing side effects that are ranked likely, possible and rare. We considered all of them, factoring in my wife’s personal medical history, and made judicious decisions. She did not take certain drugs as a result and has been better for that.
The Covid vaccines were not vaccines. They were shots. A vaccine actually prevents the disease, such as with measles/mumps/rubella (MMR), shingles, or tuberculosis. The covid shot kept requiring repeated boosters. The shots did not work. Many people know other people who had two doses and two boosters and still got Covid. There are subsequent studies that show the vaccinated can still spread the virus.
The Covid shots, which were not just a new drug but a new mRNA technology, had not been out long enough to test. But statements such as “we would know by now” were replete in public messaging about the efficacy and safety of the drugs, all in the effort to encourage people get “vaccinated.” However, there were significant and severe side effects, even deaths. While many in power tried to silence and discredit those who claim vaccine injury, the numbers are significant. A group of patients and doctors have formed the non-profit React19 to share science about Covid vaccine injury where the government and media will not. The fact that they have to do this independently and not jointly with government and media encourages mistrust of future health statements by the government and media.
There is no such thing as “the” science
Among the many dubious statements during covid was that people should follow “the” science. But there is no such thing. What should have been encouraged was to follow the scientific method, which considers all data, acknowledges limitations, and keeps working with dispassionate rigor toward conclusions that are valid and reliable.
Instead, the public was given a single authoritarian view. Those with honest objections and alarming personal experiences to contradict statements were gaslighted, labeled as misinformation and deplatformed. If this is science, it is mad science. Among those silenced were doctors and researchers with expertise in infectious diseases and vaccines. The reason they were blocked from discourse? They wanted to communicate potential side effects of the covid shots and/or share evidence of effective and efficient early interventions or the benefits of herd immunity versus mandatory vaccines and lockdowns.
Smart people disagree on all of this. But we should hear from all the smart people. I was at an academic conference two months ago and sat down to hear a young scholar present a paper about communication and “vaccine hesitancy.” My advice to her during discussion is she may have a validity problem. That means she is not studying what she thinks she is studying. What I meant is that vaccine hesitancy is a general term, but many people are only wary of the set of Covid vaccines because it is new technology and not tested long term in multiple trials like other drugs. These same people may well have taken other vaccines, and many opponents to Covid protocols preface their objections by saying they are not “anti-vaxxers” to forestall the bias that would prevent them being fully heard.
After this research session, another researcher came up to me and thanked me for speaking up, and then showed me on his phone a CDC website with current data about deaths from Covid vaccines. Interesting that so many are afraid to speak alternative perspectives because of the unthinking and unscientific climate that has emerged around discussion of Covid pandemic response.
If officials had been honest, transparent, humble and nuanced in communication, they may have been more trusted and effective. Many people resisted lockdowns and vaccines because of the communication coming at them with multiple error adjustments, over-simplified absolute language, lack of transparency, and disregard for their and others views and experiences. The communication would have been more ethical and effective if it were based on all data and respectful dialogue.
As it is, attempts to force people to swallow suspicion, negate bad experiences, ignore other science and blindly comply was bad medicine for the health communications industry. The side effects of mistrust and doubt will be long term. The prescription for recovery is communications characterized by transparency with data and multiple opinions in honest dialogue.
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