“We don’t have a single consolidated voice. “
These are the words of Michael Osterholm, PhD, MPH, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, on NBC’s Meet the Press, approximately 6 months after the COVID-19 pandemic. While everyone focused on the science of remedies and vaccines, it seeks to say a lonely voice, we also want to think about communication.
The challenge has never been addressed. The result has been the “failed” paintings of COVID-19 communication (as described through various sources) followed by a loss of public acceptance as true in government.
This lack of a singular voice can get even worse. As soon as Biden’s management took over pandemic communications, he began televised press conferences, not with a single spokesperson (as Andrew Cuomo did for New York at the beginning of the crisis), but with 3 spokespeople on the screen. And now they seem to have added a quarter for 2022.
As previously illustrated, a recent White House press conference on PBS News Hour featured one, two, three, and up to 4 public fitness officials who shared the most recent data on vaccines targeting Omicron and the most likely transition to annual COVID-19 boosters.
The CDC even admitted to its miscommunication last month when agency director Rochelle Walensky, MD, MPH, stated that its public recommendation on the pandemic had been “confusing and overwhelming. “From the beginning, the focus was on science. , without concentrating on the social side of the challenge.
This can be noticed in a single digit: 1 in 31.
This refers to the two think tanks that Biden’s management has assembled to handle the pandemic: the advisory board and the White House task force. Together, they had 31 members. Among them were 1 five medical doctors, 6 public health teachers, five doctors, but one communications specialist.
This ratio says a lot about general errors in communications. This is in line with comments from Andy Slavitt, the Biden administration’s former senior COVID-19 adviser, who said he would give the White House an “A” on the clinical side. of its response to COVID-19, but an “F” in the “social sciences” aspect of its efforts.
Despite this persistent failure, the challenge can and must be solved.
Broad communication begins with a central guiding principle, which is universally understood and reputable in business and entertainment: the need for a single voice.
In the business world, you can see it embodied in the name of the best-selling book of 2012, “The One Thing,” about the price of focusing on the ultimate task in a given project. Could the point be clearer than the name?
In the entertainment world, screenwriting guru Robert McKee describes in his seminal 1997 book, “Story,” the ancient principles of what he calls “classic design” for telling a story. This goes back at least 4000 years, to Gilgamesh, the first written record of human communication. McKee’s first segment on this topic is titled “Single Versus Multiple Protagonists. “He explains that having more than one main character “softens the narrative. “
A concise and compelling presentation of this precept can be discovered in the 2009 article, “Nicholas Kristof’s Advice to Save the World. “In a brilliantly written essay, the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner describes the experience of social psychologist Paul Slovic, PhD. shows that donors will enthusiastically contribute to famine fundraising efforts if the story of a child at risk is told, but if the story is about two children, the point of interest begins to diminish. By the time the number reaches thousands, the connection is gone.
Communication is maximum with the singular. You can see it in each and every part. There have never been any American co-chairs, companies have a single CEO, and almost every major film is directed by a single director. This is how communication works.
In addition, if in society it is essential that several voices are represented, when communicating it will be necessary to do so with a single voice.
All of this raises the question of why the biomedical network believes it can do so through another set of principles. This is not the case.
Communication cadres have been damaged. So how can we fix things in the future?
First, we want greater participation of non-scientific voices. Doctors and doctors can’t do homework alone. Business and entertainment/media professionals perceive communication in the broadest sense on a daily basis. Their experience will have to play an equivalent role in long-term efforts to deal with the ongoing pandemic and long-term crises.
Second, government in all grades will have to conform to the fundamental precept of the single voice. This is how the brain has been programmed for thousands of years. Breaking this general rule is a laugh for artists looking to provoke, delight and amuse. But for paintings serious about informing the masses about public health issues, there is no room for error.
The audience demands Array and asks for a single voice.
Randy Olson, PhD, is director of the ABT Framework narrative education program, from “Houston, We Have A Narrative,” and recipient of the John P. Award. McGovern to excellence in biomedical communication from the Southwest Chapter of the American Medical Writers Association. .