(NBC)
Facing a worldwide pandemic the kinds of which no one alive has even come close to experiencing, it was vital to have effective communication at national, regional, and local levels.
In order to have had effective communication, there needed to be good organizational communication that would have allowed the United States to listen to a leader and to follow what they said. This however, needed a consistent message to work, and this was not and continues to not be the case leading to mass confusion, a general lack of trust, and false information which in turn leads to political division, chaos, and spikes in cases.
(AXIOS)
Much of this inconsistent information and political division comes from the different media that was used. Tweets sent out by Trump for example telling people that COVID was not a big deal and that wearing masks and social distancing was not a priority influenced many of his supporters to put themselves, their families, and their communities at risk and to ignore public health officials and guidelines. Republican news outlets like Fox also acted as if COVID was not a big deal and censored certain statistics and facts in order to prevent backlash from Trump. CNN and other more liberal news outlets on the other hand treated COVID seriously and showed the true statistics and facts that the public needed to know. Because they were saying the opposite as Trump however, and even calling him out on his mishandling of the pandemic, many people refused to believe them and even called it fake news. This division of parties therefore created a very serious health concern of people debating over official guidelines that were set up for their protection. The only thing that was left to do was for community based organizations to try to increase health communications and give people better health literacy by putting up public service announcements like the one shown below by the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, wherever people may see them such as subways, or inside stores that help to reinforce social distancing and wearing masks.
In the ideal scenario there would have been a president who respected science, facts, and actually listened when the world health organization had input on a serious pandemic he personally knows nothing about. Twitter would not be influencing the publics opinion on whether or not to take COVID seriously and keep their communities safe. Political parties would be able to put aside their difference of views and accept that there is a deadly virus going around killing many of the people closest to them. They would be able to form an alliance and work together in overcoming it, making sure that the people who needed urgent care and medical equipment were seen, and dealt with properly leading to a massive decrease in the number of fatal cases. In this ideal situation, Donald Trump would not be anything more than a twitter obsessed lunatic celebrity. Until then the only things that we can do to prevent cases from rising like they currently are and to finally get back to normal is to accept that COVID is real and poses a serious threat, and respect the public health guidelines of wearing a mask, and social distancing. If we do this until we get a vaccine, we can rest assured knowing that we contributed to the end of this awful pandemic and get on with our lives.
(AXIOS)
