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When this is all over there will be a lot of post-mortems on how and where this field failed the public. One of the biggest failures was in understanding the importance of public perception and messaging in the midst of a PH crisis when compliance with govt PH agency... https://twitter.com/gregggonsalves/status/1340605340346363907
...recommendations is critical to save lives. For e.g., it was, to put it mildly, unwise to interject something like "fighting racism" as a PH justification for conduct that anyone with half a brain could see presented a *potential* risk of increasing spread at a time when we...
...did not fully understand virus transmission. Ofc, the protests were going to happen anyway, but PH experts rushing to defend the conduct of protesters as "on balance" necessary and "good" was terrible messaging. Why? B/c too large segment of the population wasn't going...
...to accept the implicit argument in these defenses that the time to protest racism/police brutality was in the midst of a deadly pandemic. It came across to people (myself included) that PH types were willing to argue that using methods to treat a chronic condition (police...
...brutality) that interfered with our ability to cure an acute one (pandemic) was justifiable b/c people were righteously angry about the chronic condition, even if the prescribed treatment was not going to be effective in preventing anywhere near the number of deaths being...
...caused by the acute condition. What then was the right move if you as a pH expert believed both that racism is a PH problem and that the protests were "good"? Keep your mouth shut. And why? B/c it is in essence a "profession" on which the public depends, and like lawyers...
...or other professionals, what you say impacts the public's perception of the profession as a whole, and of the institutions with which such professionals are charged with running. As a PH professional, you must take into account the perceptions of all, not just...
...the segment of the population you think will be inclined to agree with you. That is, you *must* give the appearance of neutrality because the paramount objective of your profession is getting as many people as possible to listen to what you have to say. If you have failed...
...in this effort, then you have failed the public and at your profession, no matter how great an impact your recommendations might have had if the public had followed them.
