‘It leads to mistrust’: Experts weigh in on Ontario’s COVID-19 communications

Confusing. Contradictory. Convoluted. Communications and public-health experts say that the Tories’ strategies have largely been a failure — but that there’s a chance to change course

From the TVO article:

Farah Mawani, a social and psychiatric epidemiologist with the hospital network Unity Health Toronto, says that the government would have benefitted from not just releasing a policy but also communicating “what can prevent us from moving in the more dangerous stages of the plan — how can we stay in Stage 1, assuming we can.”

…Mawani says the government could also choose to adopt a community-based and trauma-informed approach. That could mean doing more consultations with community leaders to keep the message in line with the reality on the ground — and communicating in a way that “recognizes that we are experiencing a collective trauma.”

“If you’re communicating as if you’re all in this together and you’re actually working together, that has a different tone than if you’re communicating an order to people to do things,” Mawani says. “The type and tone of communication that takes into account the trauma and impact on various different communities looks very different to what we’ve seen so far.”

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