How We Can Get the Next Phase of the Coronavirus Right
Six
ways to survive our pandemic summer.
Mr.
Warzel is an Opinion writer at large.
·
May 14, 2020
Heading into our pandemic
summer, my biggest worry is that in the effort to get Americans to flatten the
coronavirus curve, nobody prepared the country for what comes next.
In late February “flatten
the curve” became our collective refrain — stay home, save lives. Charts
showing how social distancing can reduce the spread of the virus and protect hospitals
from overcrowding were simple to interpret and they became a meme. Americans
listened, many at great personal sacrifice.
But, as Vox’s Matt Yglesias noted in
a column last week, flattening the curve is just one part of the response to
the pandemic. It’s a mitigation strategy, which helps keep hospitals from
becoming overwhelmed and drives cases and deaths down. But there’s a second
phase of fighting a virus known as suppression, which aims not to push back the
peak of infections but stamp out outbreaks altogether. Suppression strategies
include mass testing, contact tracing and isolating people who get sick. These
steps are part of the reason places like South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong have
kept cases down and restored some normalcy. Unfortunately, the United States is
far behind on suppression — with no comprehensive federal strategy.
As states debate how to
reopen their economies, the limits of flattening the curve are clear. We have
taken pressure off hospital systems, but few places have brought cases down to
zero. We need to move our focus to the next step. “It’s time to move beyond
‘flatten the curve’ to a new mantra: ‘Suppress the virus,’” Mr. Yglesias wrote.
Which brings me to my big
worry that for some, resentment and distrust is building. I’m not referring to
the lockdown protests or those who’ve politicized the virus to the point where
donning a mask means succumbing to tyranny. The resentment I’m worried about is
distrust in authorities. Months into the pandemic, some people feel as if the
goal posts have been moved. You said to flatten the curve!
We made sacrifices! Now you’re saying it’s not enough?
So far, this argument is
more popular in conservative spheres — The Washington Examiner columnist
Timothy Carney captured the spirit in a column titled “Don’t
make ‘flatten the curve’ be a lie,” and the conservative editor Bethany Mandel
echoed it in her now-infamous “You can call me a Grandma Killer” Twitter thread:
“Remember when we were told we had to flatten the curve and we’d lockdown for a
few weeks to ramp up PPE and free up ventilators or else we’d have to start
death panels? When did that turn into indefinite lockdowns and economic
destruction because ‘if it saves one life’?”
That line of argument is
oversimplified and disingenuous. But the problem with an epidemiological
construct like “flatten the curve” becoming a meme is that it’s inevitably
reduced and simplified into a slogan. And given that so much of the messaging
around the virus has been unclear and hasn’t come from a centralized authority,
it can certainly feel like the metrics for success are changing. That’s a
problem. Public health officials are worried, too. Responsibly moving states
out of lockdown is going to require a great deal of public trust. We lack
adequate testing and tracing capacity, so state governments will need to
communicate uncertainty while carrying out reopening strategies. This will be
harder to do if people are under the false impression that the lockdowns were
the final phase of the Covid-19 crisis.
The next phase of the
Covid-19 response will be fraught. States that open might need to clamp down
again if the virus spreads. Guidance on public gatherings might change with
little notice. Compliance with these shifting guidelines will require public
trust. In a recent New Yorker profile of Seattle’s effective coronavirus
response, Charles Duhigg argued “a
pandemic is a communications emergency as much as a medical crisis.”
So what
can we do to build trust and prepare people for the months to come? A paper
from the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy titled “Effective Covid-19 Crisis
Communication” has six suggestions. Taken together, they’re a
helpful guide for anyone trying to navigate the coming uncertainty — from
public health officials to politicians to the press. Even parents might find
the guide useful in talking to children about the virus. A quick summary:
1. Don’t
overreassure. Candid conversations build trust.
2. Proclaim
uncertainty. False confidence sets people up to feel betrayed if the
authority turns out to be wrong. “We have long noticed that our clients trust
our advice more if we emphasize that we’re not sure,” the paper reads.
3. Validate
emotions — your audience’s and your own. People are afraid.
And rightly so. Don’t tell people they have nothing to fear but instead
acknowledge it and work with it.
4. Give
people things to do. Giving people agency is crucial to keep them from
spiraling into denial. “As psychiatrists and generals have long known, action
binds anxiety,” the authors write. “People who are doing things to protect
themselves and others can bear their fear better.” For reopening, the authors
imagine something like a “social distancing point value” system where tasks
like going to the grocery store are assigned points based on risk. Individuals
and proprietors could be granted an allotment of points and choose how to
exercise them. It wouldn’t be compulsory but would give people a feeling of
control.
5. Admit
and apologize for errors. Self-explanatory, but as
we all know, quite difficult.
6. Share dilemmas. This
is an extension of Rule 2 — admitting you don’t know what to do next and
outlining the possibilities. This is where we live right now, between lockdowns
and full reopenings.
Here, the authors are
blunt: “Before we can share the dilemma of how best to manage any loosening of
the lockdown, we must decisively — and apologetically — disabuse the public of
the myth that, barring a miracle, the Covid-19 pandemic can possibly be nearing
its end in the next few months.”
This is dispiriting. But
it’s also freeing. Once we dispel the notion that life will magically snap back
to normal in a few months, we can start planning how we’ll adapt to life in
coronavirus limbo. If we are honest about what we know and don’t know, we’re
less likely to shame others, causing resentment. People won’t feel as though
they’re being lied to. As Julia Marcus wrote in The Atlantic recently we
can responsibly begin to resume safer activities (like spending more time outside)
and carve out a life inside the pandemic “instead of an all-or-nothing approach
to risk prevention.”
The
next months will be difficult. Right now we have two options. We can project
unearned certainty, offer false reassurance. We can draw hard lines around
lockdowns and scold others for small social-distancing infractions while hoping
that public health guidance doesn’t shift and prove us wrong down the road. Or
we can prepare ourselves and one another for an uncertain future with candor,
empathy and humility and, in the process, try to earn back some trust.
