Misjudged messaging

At Friday afternoon's press conference on the country's covid19 status, the Prime Minister and the Minister of Health seemed nonplussed at the contrary response to their continued exhortations to follow the restrictions on congregating.

There's good reason for that frustration, because the consequences have proven dire.

As infections multiply and the death toll mounts, the public health system is lurching towards a breaking point, when incoming cases can't be accommodated by the parallel system that caters to the most severe covid19 cases.

But the government's strategy for informing the public could also do with some oxygen.

The freshest, calmest voice coming from the podium was Stuart Young's (Dr Rowley's chief man-of-business in Cabinet seemed almost buoyant after being relieved of direct responsibility for the Ministry of National Security).

Everyone else (of the far too many speakers) seemed angry and/or frightened, keen to share brooding personal stories of worry about public behaviour, or dishing out a parental lecture to a people apparently too wilful and careless to be trusted to behave themselves.

Unfortunately, a press conference that goes on for hours, slapping people in the face with PowerPoint, battalions of statistics and haranguing them for being foolish is unlikely to evoke the kind of response that the high-level covid19 response team is seeking.

Where were the words of hope, reassurance, leadership?

Given the badly misjudged tone, this is a situation that calls for professional information management, and the Prime Minister and his team desperately need a crash course in crisis communications and behavioural motivation if they hope to get results.

It may be politically expedient to stand at a podium and bombard people with facts and figures, but those figures in themselves show the message is not reaching the people it needs to. Dr Rowley would probably be the first to admit that he has been tasked with herding cats, and scolding them for going their own way isn't working.

This isn't to blame anyone at that unfortunate press conference, each of whom is obviously and sincerely worried about the country's descent into covid19 chaos and who all understand where those spiralling graphs are leading.

But to bring about change, their messaging has to leave tirades and medical technicalities behind and embrace modern approaches.

Those swaths of information need to be broken out into meaningful infographics and bite-sized nuggets of guidance that can be spread across mainstream and social media to filter into WhatsApp threads in words and images that people can grasp.

The opposition’s voice should partner with the government’s in offering a unified message of sense in the face of chaos.

Clear, simple and direct should be the words that inform the government's actions in responding to this surge in infection.