Trump is breaking every rule in the CDC's 450-page playbook for health crisis

[Eugene]

Source: Washington Post

Trump is breaking every rule in the CDC’s 450-page playbook for health crisis

The communication chaos on coronavirus is eroding the most powerful weapon we have: Public trust

By Carolyn Y. Johnson and William Wan
March 14, 2020 at 9:50 a.m. EDT

Amid an outbreak where vaccines, drug treatments and even sufficient testing don’t yet exist, communication that is delivered early, accurately and credibly is the strongest medicine in the government’s arsenal.

But the Trump administration’s zigzagging, defensive, inconsistent messages about the novel coronavirus continued Friday, breaking almost every rule in the book and eroding the most powerful weapon officials possess: Public trust.

After disastrous communications during the 2001 anthrax attacks — when white powder in envelopes sparked widespread panic — the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention created a 450-page manual outlining how U.S. leaders should talk to the public during crises.

Protecting vulnerable people from a virus that, according to some projections, could infect millions and kill hundreds of thousands, depends on U.S. leaders issuing clear public health instructions and the public’s trust to follow directions that could save their lives.

“Sometimes it seems like they have literally thrown out the book,” said Joshua Sharfstein, a former top FDA official and Johns Hopkins University professor who is using the CDC manual to teach a crisis communication class. “We’re studying what to do — and at times seeing what not to do — on the same day.”

-snip-

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/03/14/cdc-manual-crisis-coronavirus-trump/

[Bernardo de La Paz]

1. FReak site is already there:

The CDC looks pathetic, in all this. Political hacks and beaurocrats {SIC} with an unlimited budget. Morons with PhD’s. There seems to be a complete lack of understanding in the CDC of what it’s function even is.
56 posted on 3/11/2020, 10:30:54 AM by Empire_of_Liberty

[Merlot]

2. It's a feature, not a bug.

breaking almost every rule in the book and eroding the most powerful weapon officials possess: Public trust.

republicans are going to see this as an opportunity to profit, to widen the divide between rich and the rest, and to tae even more control while no one is paying attention.

They aren't "fumbling" this outbreak response, they are doing everything exactly the way they want to. People who think this is "the end of the trumpft presidency" are in a for a rude shock.