This is US Congressman Louie Gohmert.
Unlike many of his colleagues, he often refused
to wear a mask in Congress.
And then he tested positive for Covid-19.
But in an interview, he suggested that he
got Covid-19 because of the times he did wear a mask.
"I might have put some of the virus onto
the mask and breathed it in."
Gohmert’s distrust of masks is actually
shared by a ton of Americans.
A poll in July asked Americans how often they wear a mask.
Among Democrats, almost everyone said they wore a mask in public.
But significantly fewer Republicans said so.
Yet the messaging from public health officials
today is clear:
Wearing a mask helps stop the spread of Covid-19.
So where did this communication break down?
How was something as simple as wearing a mask
allowed to become political?
In October of 2001, the US bungled a different
public health crisis.
Someone sent envelopes of deadly Anthrax to
media organizations and government offices.
First, the Secretary of Health
and Human Services went on TV,
and speculated about how
the first victim might have gotten it.
"We do know that he drank water out of a stream…"
"Why are you giving us that detail?"
"Just because he was an outdoorsman, and there’s
a possibility...
there’s all kinds of possibilities."
"Can you contract anthrax from drinking from a stream?"
We don’t know.
As the crisis continued, different officials
gave different, conflicting information.
No one was really in charge of communicating
to the public.
And it led the US Centers for Disease Control
to make this:
the Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication
guide, or CERC.
It’s a guide to how to communicate during
a public health crisis.
The CERC guidelines are really a reflection
of the lessons that were learned from failures.
Glen Nowak used to be in charge of communications
for the CDC.
He’s used the CERC and even wrote some of
it.
And he says one of the biggest lessons from
the Anthrax attack is what the CERC now calls
"the most important role" in a crisis,
and the key to preventing mass confusion:
having a single person as the spokesperson.
It really
helps to have one primary voice.
One primary face.
The CERC says the spokesperson should be someone
who is familiar with the subject matter, and
can talk about it clearly and confidently.
A lot of communications, particularly in a
public health crisis, is about setting, guiding
and managing people's expectations.
It's important early on to not just talk about
what you know, but what you don't know.
Essentially, the spokesperson needs to be
seen as trustworthy and credible.
Which is one reason you don’t want your
spokesperson to be a politician.
Because it’s really hard for any politician
to be seen as credible by everyone:
They often only resonate with those
who support them, and they don't resonate
with those who did not vote for them.
That doesn’t mean political leaders can’t
be involved in public health communication;
they just can’t take the lead on the
science.
A good example of a government following these
principles during Covid-19 was in New Zealand,
where the Prime Minister was at many of the
daily briefings, but wasn’t leading it.
"As is our usual practice I’ll begin by handing
over to Dr. Bloomfield."
What's important is that everybody is on the
same page with respect to the overall messaging.
But in the US, there hasn’t been a clear
spokesperson.
Or a clear message.
Press conferences were led by President Trump
and would feature politicians as well as public health experts.
And they often contradicted each other.
"We do expect more cases."
"When you have 15 people, and the 15 within
a couple of days,
is going to be down to close to zero."
Especially when it came to guiding those expectations:
"We will have coronavirus in the fall."
"It may not come back at all."
"Developing very rapidly a vaccine..."
"That could be a year to a year and a half."
These conflicts asked many Americans to pick
a side:
Who do you believe - the president,
or public health officials?
"Medical 'experts.'"
"Dr. Anthony Fauci seems to favor
what the Democrats want..."
"Dr. Fauci, who appears to believe he’s in
charge of the country."
"It’s important that we listen to our elected
leaders -- not the medical bureaucracy."
That breakdown between public health officials
and politicians can get especially dangerous
if the information starts to change.
Which it almost always does during a crisis.
You need to remind people very frequently
that you're going to be making changes based
on the growing body of knowledge
and that as a result, it's going to look like
you're being inconsistent.
But more importantly you're learning and you're learning what works best.
Early on, the CDC advised people not to wear
masks.
But as they learned more about the new virus,
they changed the guidelines.
"What has changed in our recommendation?
We now know from recent studies that a significant
portion of individuals with coronavirus lack
symptoms.
CDC is always, always looking at the data.
We've told you that from the beginning — Dr.
Birx says it every single press conference --
we’re looking at the data, we’re evolving
our recommendations."
But this shift wasn’t supported by Trump
personally.
"The masks, it’s going to be really a voluntary
thing.
You can do it, you don’t have to do it, I'm
choosing not to do it."
Soon, masks became the symbol of the war between
Trump and the medical experts.
"I think it’s a political hoax."
"No, I don’t wear a mask."
"Shame on you for voting for a mask.
And I say Trump 2020."
By June, more Republicans trusted Trump than
the CDC for facts about the coronavirus.
It was exactly the scenario the communication
guidelines had been written to avoid.
What's frustrating is knowing that many
of the challenges are self-inflicted wounds
or they're things that, you know, could have
been avoided based on past experience.
In 2001, the US got lucky.
The anthrax attacks eventually stopped.
The problem went away.
In 2020, the US made the same mistakes.
But we haven’t been so lucky.
