There is a playbook in America for how leaders should communicate with citizens in a crisis: that could be a hurricane, a terror attack, or even a pandemic.
Dr. Matthew Seeger of Wayne State University knows all about that playbook, as he was one of the experts who contributed to writing the CDC's 450-page manual for how U.S. leaders should communicate during a health crisis
"I've worked my entire career in the field of disasters and crises. I've worked for CDC and WHO," Dr. Seeger said. "I helped the CDC develop some of their crisis communication plans."
Sadly, he says, America’s leaders did not follow this playbook back in the early part of 2020, but that they should get back to it now as we approach an uncertain winter and COVID-19.
"Pretty much every public health official in the country was trained in crisis and emergency risk communication using the CDC materials. Sadly, we did not follow that protocol with the COVID 19 pandemic," he said.
While we can argue about why that was, we cannot change what was. The missed chance of having a consistent and clear message to all Americans, is missed; but, we are still in crisis, so Dr. Seeger says it's time to communicate still, and aim to be consistent in messaging
"The principal way in which we manage COVID 19 is through human behavior," Seeger said. "That requires that we inform and we persuade people using communication, messaging to get them to change their behavior."
And right now is more important than ever, as whatever officials said in their plea to get folks to stay home for Thanksgiving -- didn't work for millions of Americans.
With another major holiday approaching, Dr. Seeger says we have to try again, but leave shaming and yelling at people, at the door. That doesn't work.
"It actually may persuade people to continue those problematic behaviors because they may feel that they are being attacked; and they really need to double down on their behaviors because then it becomes us vs. them," he said.
So what should leaders do? Dr. Seeger says, tell the human story of COVID, and tell ALL of them.
"Personalize this to say these are your friends, this is your family, your children, your brothers your sister. It's harder to demonize individuals when we recognize these people are part of our lives," he said. "I also think it's important we tell the story of the individual who was skeptical and try to allow them a space to express themselves rather than demonize that attitude."
Think of it like your social media feed when it comes to ads, the ones that work that target your lived experience. So far, with mixed messages, confusing messages, misinformation and mandates, it's left too much room.
So has, in his opinion, only one message for everyone.
"One of the challenges with some of our messaging is one size fits all," Dr. Seeger said. "We tell people to wear masks and stay away from others. If I live in a multigenerational household or I have to go to work, it's much more difficult for me to comply with some of those recommendations, so we need to be more sensitive and nuanced in what we are saying to people and how we are saying that to people."