What happens when public health leaders are more concerned about avoiding panic than avoiding pandemics?
"Should you be worried?" is the wrong question for the media to be asking about public health issues. We need good information to make good decisions. But global public health leaders seem more concerned about avoiding panic than avoiding pandemics. When a virus started spreading human-to-human on a cruise ship in May, public health communication faltered as panic-management took the helm.
All aboard, friends! We're dissecting a New York Times piece on hantavirus transmission.
Hear what MJ and Daniella have to say about hantavirus coverage, public health misinformation, and how reporting on science desperately needs improvement. "Better safe than sorry" seems like common sense but public health leaders and the media still haven't learned from COVID pandemic comms mistakes (or the others before that). What will it take?
Transcript here
RESOURCES:
NYT Hantavirus article - Hantavirus Doesn't Spread Easily, but Officials May Be Downplaying Risks
VOX Today Explained ft. Lawrence Gostin
BMJ article - Hantavirus outbreak should reset WHO’s default approach to airborne risk
RELATED EPISODES:
The Airborne Transmission Error - Something's in the Air - Public Health is Dead
PHMC is edited by MJ of Everything is Public Health
Daniella: Welcome to Public Health Media Club. I'm Daniella.
MJ: And I'm MJ.
Daniella: Hi. How are you?
MJ: I'm not doing well. You know, full transparency, not doing well at the time of recording. The dumpster fire that is the US has gotten to another level. It's now blue hot. Mm-hmm. It was red hot before, now it's blue hot, and that's background stuff we don't have to worry about.
Daniella: The constant fires in the background, yep.
MJ: Yeah. So today we're covering The New York Times.
Daniella: Mm-hmm.
MJ: I have major beef with The New York Times, how about you?
Daniella: Oh, yeah. It's a problem.
MJ: Yeah, it is. So we're doing a New York Times article about something that's relatively timely, arguably the most timely we've ever been on this show.
Daniella: We'll probably be late, but that's okay.
MJ: Less late than usual. So what is the article we're talking about today?
Daniella: Okay, so The New York Times, the United States paper of record.
MJ: Stop. I hate that it's the paper of record.
Daniella: The prestigious New York Times.
MJ: No.
Daniella: This article is called Hantavirus Doesn't Spread Easily, But Officials May Be Downplaying Risks.
It was published on May 14th of 2026.
MJ: Yeah, so peak hantavirus situation.
Daniella: Mm-hmm.
MJ: Published around that time. It was published by Apurva Mandavilli, I think. If I mispronounced that name, I, I apologize. For once, not a white person.
Daniella: Have all of our pieces?
MJ: Yeah.
Daniella: They have.
MJ: Every single one have been a white man, not even a white woman.
Daniella: Interesting. Apurva,
MJ: I have high hopes.
Daniella: Um, I don't know if I have high hopes
MJ: Because you still work at The New York Times, so our hopes are not that high. But the fact that you're not a white man means you cleared at least the bare minimum of representation.
Daniella: Maybe you have a different way of approaching this or looking at the world. We hope.
MJ: We hope. So we picked this obviously because it's timely. Not only that, but it's a very public health topic, another infectious disease that is spreading.
Daniella: Of which there will be many as the climate heats up.
MJ: We picked this because of the title, Hantavirus Doesn't Spread Easily, But Official May Be Downplaying the Risk. How does that make you feel?
Daniella: Mm, this one I was interested in because it sounds a bit different from what we typically see.
MJ: Yes.
Daniella: Where so much of what I saw was, "Should we panic about hantavirus? Should you be worried about hantavirus?" All this, like, framing that I'm sure we'll talk about a lot in the second half.
But this one seems a bit different, that it actually highlights that officials may be downplaying the risks, which we saw happen so much with COVID. And I, yeah, I wonder what they have to say about this.
MJ: The pessimist in me feels like a replay of COVID, where it's like, "No, don't worry. It's fine."
Daniella: “It doesn't spread in the air. Kids don't get this.”
MJ: And it doesn't have long-term consequences. Like, come on.
Daniella: Don't touch the economy, please.
MJ: We'll see what this article has to offer. We are cautious because while the title is not immediately jarring, it is from The New York Times, which has a terrible track record.
Daniella: Mm-hmm. I'm very wary. But the image that I'm seeing already is people in a bus-
MJ: Okay ...
Daniella: wearing respirators.
MJ: True.
Daniella: So that's like, okay, are we thinking about things differently maybe this time?
MJ: Yeah, we'll see.
Daniella: I'm skimming. I'm seeing names. Jay Bhattacharya. Oh,
MJ: no. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Apurva, you've already fucked up. Why is his name in here?
Daniella: She probably has to talk about what he's saying.
MJ: Do you have to? I don't think you have to. Guess we don't know what her, her purpose of quoting him is. Maybe she's critiquing him.
Daniella: Right. We see Tedros Ghebreyesus, WHO director.
MJ: Tedros of mixed reviews.
Daniella: Yes. Oh, I see Joseph G. Allen from Harvard. He's an interesting character.
MJ: He sure is.
Daniella: Oh, Lindsay Marr. Love her. Okay.
MJ: Okay.
Daniella: Oh, Maria Van Kerkhove. I did an interview with her, surprisingly. The WHO will talk to me, and other people in BC will not talk to me, so that's funny.
MJ: This might be the first one going in and we truly have no idea where this will swing.
Daniella: Yeah, I don't know, I don't know what this is gonna look like.
MJ: This'll be fun. Let's see how it goes. So for listeners, it will be a few seconds for you, but it will be a few days for us, and we'll see you on the other side.
Daniella: Talk to you soon.
MJ: We're back.
Daniella: We are.
MJ: How are we feeling?
Daniella: Annoyed.
MJ: On par with reading a New York Times article, I think.
Daniella: I think so, yeah.
MJ: You know what? It could have been worse.
Daniella: It could have. You're right. It wasn't the worst thing I've ever read.
MJ: The praise kind of stops there.
Daniella: Yeah. I have lots of things to say.
MJ: Oh, so do I.
Daniella: What did you think of the title?
MJ: I had just a smidgen of hope- ... when I read the title. Tiny, tiny bit of hope.
Daniella: Mm-hmm.
MJ: Cause the title is Hantavirus Doesn't Spread Easily, But Official May Be Downplaying Risks. And I'm like, okay, maybe the New York Times has finally enlightened a little bit-
Daniella: Yeah ...
MJ: about how public health should be more cautious than, like, not, and maybe they're gonna question the compromised CDC, which is in fact very compromised, the CDC in the US.
Daniella: Mm-hmm.
MJ: I had a little bit of hope.
Daniella: Yeah, me too, and then slowly, slowly it went downhill.
MJ: The hope just drained out of me like bloodletting- ... in the medieval times.
Daniella: I bet that's gonna be RFK Jr.'s next proposal.
MJ: Bloodletting?
Daniella: Oh, yeah.
MJ: Honestly, it might be too new for him. It's too advanced. He's gonna think that's, like, woke science.
Daniella: Oh, no. The leeches. The leeches are too woke.
MJ: Anyway, I'll let you take point on this. How do you wanna approach this?
Daniella: Okay, yeah. We can just go through in order, I guess. I have notes all the way down the side. But I think the first thing that stood out to me was the images. They actually chose images of people wearing respirators, and I was like, "Cool, okay. Maybe this is gonna be, like, useful information." It was not.
MJ: The first image was people wearing mask and respirators. And along with the title, I was like, "You know what? Maybe, maybe the New York Times came to its senses." But it was a real bait and switch.
Daniella: Yeah, so basically they start off by challenging what a lot of public health leaders are saying, that, "Oh, you have to be symptomatic and be in close contact with people before we would worry about this being spread person to person."
And they challenged that, which was like, okay, cool. Yes. We don't need to just take what people say at face value without interrogating it, as a journalist should. And Bhattacharya, whatever, we've already talked about how annoying he is. But yeah, it's funny how people who don't have a lot of expertise in an area feel so confident making these declarations about diseases and disease transmission.
Um, and I think we've seen that a lot throughout COVID, especially with public health leaders being so adamant that this is not airborne, and being so adamant about things that, like, if you talk to someone who actually studies aerosol transmission, you wouldn't be so certain. So they do challenge that. I liked that.
And I really liked the quote that they lead with from Stephen Bradfute. I don't know if that's how you pronounce his name. And I found myself being like, "Yes, exactly, this is what public health should be doing."
MJ: Yeah. What's the quote?
Daniella: The quote is, "It's important to be honest scientifically and communicate that," that it's not certain, "because otherwise you lose credibility."
Like, it's not hard. Yes, you can say that you're unsure. The world isn't gonna fall apart. So I like that. You said you also liked it. What did you like about it?
MJ: I like that quote because that should be the guiding principle for public health communication. That quote is immediately juxtaposed with Dr.
Tedros- Mm,
Daniella: being so confusing ...
MJ: can you say the last name? I actually don't know how to say his last name, nor do I care about him enough to learn. But what is his name?
Daniella: It's Ghebreyesus.
MJ: That guy. The director general of the WHO immediately juxtaposed with his quote, which is, quote, "'It's very difficult to explain to people, okay, this is the exception, this is the norm,' he said.
'When you say the exception, they might still think that that's something frequently happening as well.'"
Daniella: What does that even mean? It's just nonsense.
MJ: First of all, it makes no sense, and immediately he denies the public health principle of like we should be honest in our communication. We should be clear about where the evidence stands on these things.
And he's like, "No, no, no, no, no. It's too complicated. People won't get this. We should just lie to them."
Daniella: He also seems to focus so much on avoiding panicking people. I've said this a million times before, but it's not public health’s job to manage panic. It's public health's job to give clear information so that people don't panic with, like, half-truths and confusion.
Yeah, so I also write that. I wrote on the side, "Does he think people are not able to understand this? What does this even mean?" Very confusing, and it's not the first time he's done something like this. At the beginning of COVID, he was sitting next to Dr. Michael Ryan giving a press conference. Dr.
Ghebreyesus said that COVID is airborne, and then Dr. Michael Ryan, like, scribbled something on a note next to him and, like, pushed it across the table, and then he was like, "Oh, ha ha, just kidding. That's a military term. It's not airborne. We mean droplet." And it was just this, like, wild, in front of our eyes, what is even going on here thing, and it feels like he's doing a similar thing here of being intentionally confusing.
MJ: We gotta pull up that clip and then share it as, like, a screenshot or something because that was iconic anti-public health moment.
Daniella: Yeah. I'm like, what are you guys doing?
MJ: The avoiding panic thing also pisses me off. I just wanna highlight, the avoid panicking people concern is not genuine because what constitutes a panic is when people are inappropriately responding to a risk. That's panic. For example, remember when people started buying toilet paper- Mm-hmm ... in the beginning March 2020? That, in my opinion, that's panic because you are exhibiting an inappropriate response to the risk. But it's not panic if people are like, "Oh, I'm kind of afraid of being infected with this serious deadly disease."
That's not panic because that is an appropriate response to the risk. Imagine the actual panic that it would cause if you tell a bunch of people that they need close contact to be infected, whatever that means, we'll get into that later, and then someone got infected out of nowhere. That would be a real panic because you tell people that you need close contact, and then when someone gets infected without it, what are you gonna do to tell people then?
Daniella: Mm-hmm.
MJ: Right? You've lost the credibility- Exactly ... if that happens. There's other expert quoted later that it does happen sometime. Mm-hmm. We don't know why it happens, but it does happen. So that to me is the real panic you should be preventing-
Daniella: Yeah ...
MJ: is what happens when you tell people one thing and another thing happens.
Daniella: Absolutely. People would not panic if they had appropriate information…that has consistently frustrated me in public health communications. Like, if you can tell people how something may be transmitted, then they're far less likely to be hyper-aware of everything. I don't know. It just seems so counterproductive to be like, "Don't panic. Also, we're not gonna be clear."
MJ: I fully disagree with the it's too complicated so we'll lie to the public approach, which is what they're saying.
Daniella: But then on the other hand, all they talk about is like, "How do we rebuild trust in public health?" Stop lying to people!
MJ: Stop lying to people! So that was the first thing that flagged my attention, among other things.
I'll talk about all of it sort of at the end when I gather my thoughts. But that quote I really like from Dr. Bradfute. But yeah, like, that should be the guiding principle for public health communication. At no point should public health justify misinformation.
Daniella: Mm-hmm. On to the next. I've made some comments also on, like, the instructions that this article says people were given to avoid spreading the virus.
Take your temperature daily, don't fly commercial, and try to use your own bathroom. These are... What? Why are those the instructions?
MJ: Who wrote this?
Daniella: How does any of that, like, avoid spreading the virus? Like, take your temperature daily, and then do what? Don't fly commercial. Many of these people are trying to get home. I don't know exactly what happened for all of them.
MJ: So can I take a boat? Is, is that the message?
Daniella: Right. Can I take a boat? Can take public transit home. Okay. And try to use your own bathroom. Like, okay. Like, how do... People don't often have control over that. One thing that really stood out to me throughout this was the significant lack of any actual, like, steps people could take or things that people should know about blocking transmission.
Those instructions are just an example of how silly this approach was without giving further information.
MJ: If they are actually genuine about this, they would at least give more steps. For example, instead of saying, "Don't share bathrooms," what you should be telling people is, "Hey, these are the modes of transmission. For example, when you share the same toothbrush..." I don't know why anyone would do that, but I'm just spitballing here. But if you do X activity, you're increasing exposure. If you share food, you're increasing exposure. Like, that's the level of specificity that public health should be aiming for, and not, "Don't share the same-" I know.
What does that mean? Like, can you use the same toilet? Can you shower in the same place? Like, what does that mean?
Daniella: Do you wanna get into close contact now?
MJ: Yes. My God. I'm pretty sure you have a lot to say about this, so I will let you take point, but I also have a lot to say.
Daniella: Yeah, I'm, I'm interested in your thoughts because, oh my God, how frustrating this has been in public health in general. I remember even being in public health school, and having that be presented as a legitimate mode of transmission was so confusing to me because it doesn't tell you anything about what happens in that close contact, and I've been saying this for a long time. People have also been writing about this.
There's an opinion piece in the British Medical Journal that was published in response to this ridiculous sort of close contact advice from the WHO called Hantavirus Outbreak Should Reset WHO's Default Approach To Airborne Risk. Basically making the point that, like, close contact encapsulates so many things. It's a subjective measure of distance. It's not even like the nonsense six feet thing, two meters thing people were trying to do around COVID. It's really subjective. Like, close contact, what is that? I was listening to Science Vs episode about this too, which, ugh, another thing. We don't have time for that.
But they were talking about close contact being deep kissing. As one of the examples that they had, because it was so confusing. Like, what does that even mean? Is that breathing close to people? Is that droplets? Is that aerosol? We don't know.
MJ: Is that, like, intercourse, right? How close are we?
Daniella: Yeah.
MJ: Like, there's STIs. “Is that close contact”, right?
Daniella: Yeah. Like, it doesn't tell you much at all, and so this opinion piece basically was making the point that, like, that is an outdated and unclear term if you're trying to actually reduce the risk of transmission. Like, we need to think about all of the ways that this could be transmitted, and we'll talk a little bit about that later, and the precautionary principle.
I feel like a broken record. But their point essentially was we need to intercept this at all possible points of transmission, and that requires being clear about what the hell you mean by close contact, because that means nothing.
MJ: Good communication, folks.
Daniella: Oh, imagine.
MJ: This coming from the WHO is very concerning. Like, coming from the CDC, I'm not surprised, because the CDC is compromised. The America's public health infrastructure is fully nuked by RFK Jr., but this coming from the WHO is very frightening, because they are supposed to be the last line of defense. Like, we already lost CDC.
Daniella: I know. Just to interject very briefly, sorry to interrupt. It's so indicative of how we got here.
MJ: Mm-hmm.
Daniella: The people who were supposed to prevent the RFKs from happening did not, and continue to do the same things that allowed for that to happen in the first place.
MJ: Yeah. So to talk about some actual public health stuff, won't get too much into this, but when we talk about types of transmission, there's only two things that you need to know.
One is the mode of transmission. The other one is how contagious. And I understand the how contagious part. That one's hard to define, like, I will grant them that, but mode of transmission and how contagious. So for, for example, for STIs, the mode of trans- transmission is bodily fluids. That's a mode of transmission.
Uh, skin-to-skin contact is a mode of transmission. Aerosols, that should be the defining term to use when you're describing how infectious something is. And then how contagious it is, that one's harder to define.
Daniella: Yeah, and that requires measurements and, like, experience.
MJ: But even then you could be like, "This is highly contagious."
Even that is more clear than close contact, because what does that mean?
Daniella: Yeah. And so part of that is the confusion, and you mentioned this earlier, that there hasn't been that much study into, like, the transmission piece and, like, the different ways that it can transmit. However, there has been some evidence that the virus can spread without close contact.
Again, not being clear about what that means means that that's kind of confusing. But in a published study, people have potentially gotten this through airborne transmission. And then when public health comes anywhere close to airborne transmission, everybody freaks out.
MJ: You're right. There's not a lot of data on this because it's a relatively rare virus, unlike flu, where we have, like, ample data on flu, for example.
However, there are several cases where people got infected seemingly out of nowhere from the source. And this is one of my several critiques of this article, and also mainstream media in general, is how they portray science. There's a difference between uncertainty and unknowing. Mm-hmm. Science is uncertain.
Science is always uncertain. That is just the nature of science. We build evidence piece by piece, and obviously, there's different range of evidence. It's very rare that we know something for certain. It's all building of a body of work. That's how science works. So there's always uncertainty in science.
However, science is not unknowing, and mainstream media consistently mixes the two.
Daniella: Good point. Yeah, they do.
MJ: In this piece as well, where they would just say, "Okay, and this scientist said this, and this scientist said this, and this scientist said this, and this scientist said this," and shrug.
Daniella: Who knows?
MJ: It gives the reader the impression that science doesn't know anything. It gives the reader the impression that science has no consensus, which is not true. Scientific consensus is not a debate. It's not, let's put all the scientists in a room, we'll throw them a knife, and whoever wins the fight- ... that person's opinion is correct. No. Like, science is like, "Here's my evidence. Here's my reasoning for why this evidence supports this. Here's yours." And then we come together, we discuss together, and then using the evidence that's presented, we form, like, a new consensus, right? That's how science work. And there is uncertainty, but the way mainstream media, including The New York Times, covers this is kind of throwing quotes out there and giving the people the impression that, ah, science don't know anything.
We can't trust science, and that pisses me off.
Daniella: Absolutely. You're right. That is so problematic. And then I think an additional layer to that when it comes to public health specifically is, for some reason- Basic science like physics and chemistry seem to not apply. Like even if we don't have a randomized control trial looking at how things are transmitted, we know from physics and chemistry that this is clearly possible.
MJ: There are cases.
Daniella: Mm-hmm. Why not intervene at all possibilities to avoid a potential further problem? Yeah, so it's confusing that journalists and outlets still have trouble expressing what you've just expressed because there should be more of an understanding than just Scientist A said this, Scientist B said this. Who knows?
MJ: Science is not a debate. Science is a discussion, but they keep portraying science as a debate, which is very problematic, especially when, this is my another point that I'll bring up later, especially when you don't bring context to who the scientists are. You can't be like, "Here's an anti-vaxxer scientist and here's a vaccine-supporting scientist. Here are their points." That is not an honest portrayal of scientific consensus because the anti-vax scientist has no credibility in the world of science, but you're presenting them as like, "Here's debate person one, and here's debate person two."
Daniella: Yeah. So they did then talk to someone who is literally, he's the director of the Healthy Buildings Program at the Harvard School of Public Health, Joseph Allen.
And he said, like, it's not close contact, the examples that were in the study. It's also not prolonged contact. But they didn't talk to him or get him to say or didn't include anything about ventilation in this entire thing. They talked to the guy who's known for ventilation and talking about healthy buildings and clean air, and that doesn't come up at all.Like, what?
MJ: If you count the word counts, their word count does not represent the level of expertise that they have in this area. Like, everyone got similar word counts, which is, again, not how you're supposed to report on science. This is not how science works.
Daniella: Yeah. What else did I say? Oh, I made a note that he said some weird things about, like, kids, schools, and COVID, just because that's kind of the world that I'm in right now, making a new series about that. But he does say sensible things about ventilation in buildings, so that should have come up as a potential way to interrupt transmission, and it didn't, which I think was a huge failing of this article. Okay, what else do I have here? Oh, okay, and then Dr. Ghebreyesus, WHO director, said, "You can see how the virus actually is not really as efficient as COVID," which I have seen various variations of in different articles speaking to public health leaders about hantavirus.
It's been really fascinating to me that now is the time they have been able to talk about how transmissible COVID is. Uh, they still stop short of saying airborne, but I found myself r- in response to that quote that he had, I was like, how is COVID efficient? You know the goose meme?
MJ: Yes. The goose is chasing you.
Daniella: That's what I feel like. So, like, we can say this now, but he still won't say airborne. Yeah, did you, did you have anything about that in particular?
MJ: I knew you were gonna talk about it, so I was like, okay, I'll let you, I'll let you go off on this. It is interesting how six years after COVID first started, now we can talk about, oh, it's actually very infectious.
Daniella: Right? You're like, "Oh, don't worry, it's not like that other thing we've let-"
MJ: Where was this four years ago?
Daniella: Right? It's not like that other thing we let run rampant. Don't worry. It's not like that thing.
MJ: Oh, wait, how did that run rampant again?
Daniella: Oh, I don't know.
MJ: Don't think about
Daniella: the past. Oh, God. Ah. M- and then, uh, the author talks about how, uh, hantavirus typically infects people through aerosolized virus particles from rodent droppings, and then says, "Raises the possibility that perhaps it could be spread through the air, too." The possibility exists. Okay.
And then I was happy to see that they did talk to Linsey Marr, who is an expert in airborne transmission of viruses, and she makes a point that many of us have been frustrated about. Like, I don't understand why we are so reluctant to acknowledge the inhalation route when we're talking about person-to-person transmission.
And it's been this, like, frustrating piece to the whole COVID conversation to being able to talk about transmission that is not droplet. I wrote that establishment public health people seem to tie themselves into knots to avoid saying airborne or to avoid addressing that. She says it's, like, the simplest explanation in some of these cases, but it's like we can understand Occam's razor, the simplest explanation is the most likely for anything except airborne transmission.
MJ: Yeah. My current theory is that airborne transmission prevention would require kind of an overhaul of infrastructure-
Daniella: Mm-hmm ...
MJ: which costs money.
Daniella: But that's our job.
MJ: Right, but they're not doing their job. That's the thing. Like, if they were actually about public health, they would see this and be like, "Well, it's time to overhaul our infrastructure because this is a mode of transmission that we need to account for."
Daniella: Yeah.
MJ: But, you know, I hate to do this every episode, but capitalism says no.
Daniella: Capitalism says no, we cannot do it. Exactly. I was talking to somebody for my other podcast project that I'm working on right now-
MJ: Spoilers ...
Daniella: about kids and COVID in schools. Yeah. And he was saying that he thinks that the reason that we can't do this is because understanding the air as the commons, as something that we share, that everybody needs to access, fundamentally is at odds with public health being able to do anything because of, like you're saying, capitalism and the systems we exist in, that the air as the commons makes it impossible for us to address this. And I think, yeah, you're right. He's right.
MJ: If capitalism could commodify the air, it would.
Daniella: Mm-hmm.
MJ: But it's really hard to commodify something that expands to fill the volume of the container, right? And they're commodifying water, which is a really impressive feat of capitalism to commodify water, and air is like the last bastion of the commons.
Daniella: Mm-hmm.
MJ: Honestly, I would not be surprised if this is, like, something that they're working very hard on, to commodify the air.
Daniella: I know. I feel like that would be a fascinating dystopian horror movie.
MJ: I'm sure someone's written it.
Daniella: Yeah. Air commodification.
MJ: I think there are some sci-fi novels that tackles it because there's no air in space, so air becomes like water.
Daniella: Mm-hmm.
MJ: But it's hard to do... I mean, you know, knock on wood. Capitalism always finds a way. It's hard to do now, and because it's the commons, you need infrastructure investment, and capitalism hates investing in anything public because that's lost revenue.
Daniella: So that's why we are where we are.
MJ: Well, someone checked the mention capitalism box.
Daniella: Yeah. Okay, what else do I have here? I think there's also a level of men being unable to admit when they are wrong. Yeah, it's a very common problem. In public health, like there are some players who have done things like invent a term. Have you ever heard of dropsol?
MJ: I hadn't until now, and now I hate it. Why did you curse me with that knowledge?
Daniella: I'm sorry for cursing you, but it's because men will do anything except go to therapy.
MJ: Yes.
Daniella: So John Conly, who is a professor at the University of Calgary, I think. He's a longtime sort of WHO collaborator, and he has been one of the like aerosol doesn't exist kind of dudes. And now that the evidence is just so undeniable, he wrote this paper, published this paper about, "Oh, actually, I meant like dropsol." It's like aerosol and droplet.
MJ: My God.
Daniella: “I was right the whole time” kind of vibe. Very interesting behavior. But I feel like there's a lot of people who just want to save face, can't figure out how to admit that what they were doing in the past was incorrect.
But like that's part of science. It's part of learning and changing, and we're at, I think, a paradigm shift around understanding disease transmission. But yeah, there's so many people in the way who just can't let go because they don't wanna be wrong, and that's so sad.
MJ: Science is uncertain, but it's not unknowing, and part of that uncertainty is changing your mind when new evidence comes up.
Daniella: Mm-hmm.
MJ: That's a part of science. And I will say this, though. These men, I can say this, men, right? These men, when they don't wanna, like, admit that they're wrong, and a lot of people will use that as example of, like, see, like, this is why science doesn't work. And I would just like to say something that I've always said on my show, which is every example of bad science is an example of not science. So these men, they're not a representation of science. These men are a representation of a departure from science and the scientific process.
Daniella: Hmm.
MJ: Because a part of the scientific process is admitting that you're wrong when new evidence comes up. And if you're talking about rebuilding public trust- that's a part of it, right? How do you build trust except, like, "Hey, we were wrong. Here's the new thing, what evidence and data tells us, and we will try to do better in the future," right? That's how you rebuild trust. Instead of saying, "No, no, no, drop us all." "droposol" is the is the new term. Like, come on, please. I was always right.
Daniella: Come on.
MJ: I hate that I know that.
Daniella: I'm sorry for ruining your, ruining your afternoon.
MJ: It's okay. It's already ruined.
Daniella: What else? I mean, I have a ton of notes, and we don't have a billion years. But I have the precautionary principle, like, written in huge red letters. We've talked about this, but essentially, you don't have to have perfect evidence in order to act to protect people.
MJ: Better safe than sorry.
Daniella: Exactly. And so yeah, that's kind of the ultimate thing I have for all of this, is we don't need to have this airborne debate when there's an active, an active issue. Just fucking put on the respirator. Yeah. It'll be okay. I promise your world won't end, and it might actually, it might actually help
MJ: It's always better to start cautious and then pull back instead of saying, "Ah, we won't do anything.
We'll see if any disaster happens," which is something that people can't understand, it seems.
Daniella: Exactly. In Canada, we had the whole SARS disaster that happened, and the hospital in my city, Vancouver, they definitely don't do this anymore, but there was this whole, like, legal commission into what happened, how this messed up, and how it didn't happen in Vancouver.
And the hospital's response, there's a quote in there from someone, and I really wish that it had been much more widely implemented. But basically, they're like, "We start at the highest level of precaution and scale back if warranted."
MJ: As you should.
Daniella: Like, that is the most sensible thing to me. But public health leaders today are just like, "Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
We can't ask people to do anything. We're just gonna hope that this doesn't become a big issue."
MJ: The thoughts and prayer strategy of preventing gun violence.
Daniella: Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's exactly what public health is doing. And then they're like, "Oh, no. RFK Jr. has destroyed public health himself."
MJ: …has risen.
Daniella: Like, no, you set this up.
MJ: Fully compromised. Everything's bad now. If we're gonna rebuild public health, we have to, like, go back to these principles because ultimately, this is how you rebuild trust.
Daniella: Yep. And then they talk about Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, who's the WHO's director of Epidemic and Pandemic Preparedness. And I actually got to talk to her, and it was really...
It was a weird conversation because she was willing to talk to me for my podcast when she was in Vancouver for, um, a global health security conference. And what was so weird was her presentation said, the title of it was In a Post-COVID, post-pandemic something. And I asked her, like, "So much framing around COVID is that it's over.
Is it over?" And she was like, "Well, uh, it's hard to say. It's not over. It's not over for, like, people who have long COVID. Like, it's still transmitting. It's being spread, and, like, vaccination rates are so low. Like, no." And then she changed her presentation after I had asked her that question to be post-COVID crisis or, like, the post-crisis of the pandemic, which was interesting framing.
But yeah, it's just like these leaders, if they're pressed, will, like, kind of say what they mean. But otherwise, there would've been, like, a presentation at this global health security conference that said that we were post-COVID, which is wild. Anyway, that's just, like, a side note about her. But she says in here, "We're learning, and we continue to learn about, like, different modes of transmission."
And I don't think they are because they would have communicated so differently if they had been learning and they had changed. They had so much time to learn from COVID. They literally had an entire six years to be able to be like, "Okay, we know that modes of transmission are not as cut and dry as we were, we were thinking, so let's communicate this differently."
And they didn't, so I don't think they are learning. And, like, the next time some highly transmissible disease comes along, I think we will be screwed. That's why my podcast is named what it's named. Like, we're not ready because leaders refuse to listen and change.
MJ: Public health is still dead.
Daniella: Yeah. I was listening to the Vox Hantavirus podcast episode.
MJ: Mm-hmm, Today Explained.
Daniella: Yeah, yeah, Today Explained. They had, like, a one about hantavirus. Um, and they had this guy come on who, he's involved with, like, a bunch of stuff at the WHO. His name is Lawrence Gostin, and he actually had, like, bars. Nice. He had things to say. But they shoved him at the end of the episode, which I found really interesting.
But he was basically saying that if this hantavirus issue had been a different virus, not hantavirus, that was- Much more easy to transmit. He's like, "We would be screwed. Like, we didn't learn anything from COVID. We should have." And it was just interesting to hear, like, kind of this old white guy who's been involved with the WHO forever basically just be like, "No, we're not ready. We didn't learn anything, and, like, it was just luck that made this not be a huge problem."
MJ: Pretty much, yeah. It's probably not as contagious as, again, other viruses. It's luck. It could have been... What's a contagious virus? I don't know. It could've been measles.
Daniella: Or something new, you know, like-
MJ: Yeah, or something new, right? God forbid.
Daniella: People were off the boat already just, like, flying around, and it could have been a problem.
MJ: That was wild to me. We didn't even get into, like, that process.
Daniella: Anyway, do you have anything else you'd like to say before we get to the rating?
MJ: Yeah. So this is a short piece, and I think I wanna comment on the pattern of this entire piece, 'cause it's not long enough for me to do, like, a paragraph for paragraph breakdown.
This is something that I'm seeing in New York Times and, like, other similar mainstream media, where they have this approach to journalism that some people call it, like, the just reporting the facts approach or, like, the show, don't tell approach. Like, this article is doing, like, very dryly just saying, "Here's what this person said.
Here's, this is what happened. CDC says something, but it was contradicted by this person." And that is, in my opinion, especially when reporting on public health stuff, one of the most insidious threats in public health communication. Because when Fox News says something crazy, it's very easy to attack them because they're Fox News.
They say, like, the most outlandish, just the most unbased, ridiculous things, so it's very easy to be like, "Fox News, you're bad."
Daniella: Ridiculous things, yeah.
MJ: However, what the New York Times is doing, and they have done for years, and other similar mainstream outlets, is that they will report on the Contradiction between, for example, what Bhattacharya and the CDC said, and they immediately juxtapose it with like, "Actually, this scientist doesn't agree."
And on the surface, you can read that and interpret that as saying, "Oh, they're being critical of the CDC. They are doing, quote-unquote, the job of journalist of being critical and critiquing the CDC." However, that is, for lack of a better term, a facade. It's plausible deniability, maybe. They could hide behind that veneer because what they're doing with this just reporting the facts is that they are not providing the adequate context to these sort of critiques.
So for example, if there's a journalistic term that exists that I'm not using, I apologize, I didn't go to journalism school, but to me, the term that I can think of is flattening. So for example, this paragraph. "On CNN's State of the Union on Saturday, Dr. Bhattacharya could not recall when some passengers were disembarked on April 24th in St. Helen, an island in the Atlantic Ocean, had arrived on American soil. None had symptoms at the time of travel, he said, so officials had not seen the need to alert the public or trace contacts. The virus doesn't spread unless someone has active symptoms, he said. That, too, is uncertain," and again, a direct contradiction.
When you report something like this and then you said, "That is uncertain," you're pointing out a mistake that Bhattacharya is making. However, by refusing to provide additional context, there is no information directed to the reader to describe what level of mistake this is. For example, did he make an honest mistake, or is this a different perspective that he has, or is this guy completely incompetent?
Daniella: Last one. Last one.
MJ: Last one, right? But there's a three-level mistake, and if you don't provide the additional context, the mistake and contradiction gets flattened into an unknown. If I were a journalist writing an article that a lot of people are reading, every time Bhattacharya's name come up, I would be saying, "This guy is a health economist with no public health training whatsoever behind his name," every single time.
But the author didn't do that here. The author didn't provide any additional context to what the CDC is currently doing, which is compromised. So when they point out that mistake, they could hide behind that facade of, like, "We did our jobs. We're criticizing this administration." Mm. But not really, because if the reader doesn't know, the reader can be like, "Oh, maybe he made an honest mistake.
Maybe it's just a different perspective." Mm. "Maybe they disagree on, like, approaches." There are several moments in this article where they do that, where by providing no additional context, you flatten everything into this dry, seemingly critical, but actually not really, article, and I think that's very insidious.
I think when mainstream media do this, you're not providing the actual information that the readers need to understand the context of this, which is the CDC is fully compromised. Jay Bhattacharya is not a public health person. He has an MD but never completed residency, which if you ask any doctor, does not make you a doctor.
You are a doctor on paper because you never did residency, and he's a health economist by training. Why is he the head of the CDC, right? These are all the things that the reader should have in their brain when they read this, but the readers don't because the author did not put that in.
Daniella: Yeah. I agree that there could've been more of a critique, but I think in an outlet like The New York Times, that perhaps this is the degree of, like, flexibility that journalists are allowed to, and I think it's a common thing to sort of point out contradictions in this way.
But yeah, like, if you didn't know much about who this person was or what the hell is going on at the CDC, you're right, I think it could be just an error. But I think with kind of maybe her word count and what she was allowed to say, maybe this is like the only way that they can sort of point out inconsistencies. But like, that shouldn't be an excuse too.
MJ: Yeah. I wanna be clear, I don't know this author, and I don't think it's entirely on her. If anything, it's on The New York Time's editing standards. I do think she's limited by what The New York Times allows her to publish, and at the end of the day, I would rather her point out these contradictions than not.
Daniella: Yeah.
MJ: However, I think my point still stands, which is: it's flattening.
Daniella: Yeah.
MJ: When you point out these contradictions but you don't provide added context, you are essentially giving these people an out, and you can hide behind that, "Oh, I did my job. I reported the facts." I personally don't think that approach to journalism is correct.
I think the truth is not neutral, so when you present something neutrally, you're actually doing a disservice to the truth. Like, can you imagine, "Hey, I'm gonna neutrally report on this genocide"?
Daniella: I mean, they do.
MJ: Which is a problem. Like, how do you neutrally- Yeah ... report on a genocide? You can't. Yeah. There are certain things, obviously there's a range, right? Sports you could probably report pretty neutrally and no one's gonna get hurt, but things like public health where people have died, things like war, things like, I don't know, fascism, attack on democracy, slavery, racism, where there's like a very clear moral component in there. If you report on it neutrally, that's wrong.
Daniella: Yeah.
MJ: You can't report on that neutrally, and I would argue the same for public health in this case. When you try to be neutral about Jay Bhattacharya-
Daniella: Mm-hmm. Oh, God, I know
MJ: - it just doesn't make sense.
Daniella: Yeah, no, I think you're right. There's a piece that I'm just seeing my notes on as well that kind of indicate Bhattacharya's, like, leanings, 'cause he was involved in that nonsense Great Barrington Declaration where they were just like-
MJ: He was a part of the Brownstone Institute or whatever
Daniella: It's all messy over there. But he sort of betrays what he thinks about old people- In this as well. He said that, "Oh, the, the couple who died were in their 80s." And then the journalist points out that that was incorrect. They were 70 and 69. But I think he just has such a history of-
MJ: Eugenics ...
Daniella: yeah, like, "Oh, they're old. They can die.That's okay. They were in their 80s. Nobody cares. We already established that through COVID."
Most people are really on board with eugenics if you don't call it eugenics.
MJ: Going back to my point, either the author or The New York Times, we don't know, did not provide additional context for why that statement is problematic.
Daniella: Mm-hmm.
MJ: Everything is a choice, and by not providing that context, you flatten that statement-
Daniella: Yeah ...
MJ: into an error.
Daniella: Mm, into, "Oh, it's just a mistake."
MJ: That statement is not an error. That statement is eugenics. Like, that statement is not like a innocent, "Oh, he got the facts wrong." Just really sick of these false neutrality, "I'm just being objective."
And I'm like, "No, you're not."
Daniella: Just asking questions, man.
MJ: God. The New York Times, disappointing.
Daniella: What would you give this?
MJ: Uh, I don't know, -2, 3. The bar with journalism is so low. Wait,
Daniella: wait, wait, wait. What was our... We always forget our-
MJ: It's, uh, 0 to -10 ...
Daniella: where -10 is the Alex Jones worst thing you've ever read.
MJ: Maybe 10 shouldn't be Alex Jones. Maybe, like, the, our scale needs to be a little bit more reasonable.
Daniella: We can't do this every episode. We can't reestablish. Yeah. Okay, what if we give it, like, a letter grade this time? I, I gave it a letter grade because I wasn't thinking.
MJ: Okay, go ahead. What's your letter grade?
Daniella: Uh, my letter grade was B-minus.
MJ: Okay. I would've said C-plus, B-minus. Like, technically passing.
Daniella: Mm-hmm.
MJ: Tons of room for, uh, improvement. And here's the thing. We know that it's possible to report something honestly without being emotional. There are journalists who do this very well, so I know it's possible, and with just a few more lines, the author could really convey, like, "Hey, what this person said contradicts this person, who, by the way, is an expert in aerosol transmission," right? Just very subtle. It could be very subtle, and you can sort of direct a reader to be like, "Oh, this person has more ethos than that person."
Daniella: Yeah, this person has, yeah, more gravitas to what they're saying. Yeah, for sure. I gave them C-plus/B-minus because- It did show, if you know, uh, it did show Bhattacharya being incompetent.
There was no mention of interventions, though, no cleaning the air or ventilation, even talking to someone who specializes in that as a public health intervention. They did talk to aerosol specialists, so I think that was a point to them. And yeah, overall, I think it does introduce the possibility that public health leaders are not doing their jobs.
MJ: Competently.
Daniella: You're, being kinder, but yeah, not competent and are not dealing with this changed landscape of disease transmission in the way that they should, and didn't learn a single thing about how to better communicate.
MJ: The previous pandemic, which just happened. I'm willing to chalk up the lack of discussion about intervention to word count.
I feel like that's, like, a reasonable explanation, 'cause maybe this is meant to be a shorter piece. But still, yeah, that's a minus point for them by not talking about any intervention. The bar is low, so C+.
MJ: But yeah, lacking a lot of things.
Daniella: Yeah.
MJ: And has that iconic New York Times dryness, shall we say.
Daniella: Can I end with what, um, Lawrence Gostin said in that Today Explained? The journalist asked him, "Well, do you think we're waking up?" And he said, "Well, if COVID didn't do it, I don't know what would. So it certainly caught people's attention, but if all the death and suffering of COVID wasn't enough to really wake us up from our lethargy and really prepare to have pandemic preparedness and good response, if it didn't put us all behind a strengthened WHO, if it didn't pull us together as a coordinated global community, I don't know what will.”
Haha like, damn, sir.
MJ: This is what happens when you don't have the burden of appealing to the establishment.
Daniella: Yep.
MJ: Good on him for spitting bars.
Daniella: Yeah.
MJ: And, uh, someone please watch out for him and his safety.
Daniella: Right? Jeez
MJ: Because capitalism says no.
Daniella: Well, there we go. Thank you for listening to Public Health Media Club.
MJ: Thank you, and we will see you next time, where we will get even madder, because we know what's coming up.