You Can’t Build Trust on a Foundation of Lies
Friday, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that Illinois hospital admissions from COVID-19 infections jumped more than 26% in one week—putting about 1,500 people in the hospital. They estimate the state will reach a 10-month high for coronavirus hospitalizations this week. That’s still below the 2,500 people hospitalized in December 2021 and under a fourth of the 7,300 hospitalized in January 2022 during the worst surge of the pandemic.
But there’s more to the health scene than COVID-19 infections this season.
Tuesday, epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina, who writes on Substack as Your Local Epidemiologist, reported that for the first time infection numbers for influenza, Respiratory Syncytial Virus and COVID-19 were all rising at the same time across the U.S.—the so-called “Triple-demic” or “Tri-demic” that many experts predicted.
The CDC reports 14 children have died from the flu so far this season, which got off to an early start. Normally, flu season peaks in January-February. There were 44 total pediatric flu deaths during the entire 2021-2022 flu season.
While you hear many stories of RSV and flu, and even an occasional item about COVID-19 still, one thing you don’t really hear is officials offering guidance to the public. There was a brief public service announcement campaign in the Chicago area urging people to get vaccinated with the bivalent vaccines that became widely available this fall. Those vaccines combine defenses against both the original strains of coronavirus and more recent variants.
A rare exception is in Los Angeles County, Calif., where public health officials urged people to voluntarily resume wearing masks in crowded indoor situations, and warned on Thursday that mask mandates might have to return if the current surge and accompanying hospitalizations (now almost 1,200) continue.
Daily deaths are still relatively low, 14, but COVID-related fatalities tend to lag a few weeks behind case and hospitalization increases, according to Barbara Ferrer, L.A. County Public Health Director. “There is this common line of thinking,” she told ABC News, “that the pandemic is over and COVID is no longer of concern, but these numbers clearly demonstrate that COVID is still with us.”
This was not popular news. It was met by immediate naysaying, mostly by the usual suspects who still believe more than a million dead people are part of a hoax.
Ferrer, whose degrees include a master’s in public health from Boston University and a doctorate in social welfare from Brandeis University, knows something a good leader should know: You have to be truthful in order to earn trust.
Nobody likes to deliver bad news. Sometimes you must.
A good percentage of the trouble America has had in responding to the pandemic, and the current triple-threat of coronavirus, flu and RSV, stem from the early lies officials made early in 2020—“masks don’t work” (told to give hospitals time to increase their supplies, that’s still repeated when someone like Ferrer discusses resuming mask mandates, and masks do work, especially the N95-equivalents), “it’s just the flu” (that ones’s particularly foul with a million dead from COVID-19 and already 14 children dead from this season’s flu), and a raft of stupid “cure” suggestions.
The truth often isn’t pretty, but if you want people to believe you, remember that you can’t build trust on a foundation of lies.
Amanda Schleede is founder and CEO of Attend Safe, which helps people attend to life with safe, secure and sensible protocols. Her leadership allows important events to proceed with safety-conscious protections. With Tuesday Tutor, she hopes others will benefit from her experience. Visit Attend Safe online at AttendSafe.com.