Rising Risks Fail to Raise a Professional Response

   One cornerstone of crisis communications is consistency of message. Don’t misunderstand, the message can change as new information emerges. Yet barring a change in the fundamental details of unfolding events, it’s important to stay on message to avoid creating misunderstandings, disputed responses and confusion.

   It has been a hallmark of official pandemic response to do the opposite, it often seems.

   As May 2022 arrived in largely maskless suburban Chicago, the COVID-19 infection rate moved back into “Medium Risk” territory with Chicago proper expected to return to that infamous territory sometime during May’s first week. Even more concerning, we’ve begun seeing upticks in the numbers of people hospitalized—deaths remain low, but in past surges, death increases have trailed hospitalizations by about a month.

   There are no announced plans to restore government-imposed mitigation measures as I write.

   If you were to perform an informal survey of likely gathering spots today, you would discover few masks (despite Medium Risk advising they be worn in indoor, enclosed spaces) and an ongoing attitude that the coronavirus pandemic is as much a part of the remote past as the 1918-1919 flu pandemic or the Black Death.

   It’s impossible not to recall the TV news announcers a month or so ago crowing about “No Mask Monday,” while health authorities actual, almost whispered by comparison, message at the time: “We’re allowing mitigations to lapse, but we still need to be careful.”

   I understand “pandemic fatigue.” I understand that we want life like it was in most of 2019. I understand the nuisance of masks.

   What I don’t understand are leaders who have just given up on trying to get their message across.

   We’ve had a “Pandemic of the Unvaccinated,” a “Pandemic of the Vaccinated,” apparently we’re about to enter the “Pandemic of the Oh-Why-Bother.”