write a short informative speech on how to avoid covid 19

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Plan, Prepare & Make the Best Career Choices

2 Minute Speech on Covid-19 (CoronaVirus) for Students

The year, 2019, saw the discovery of a previously unknown coronavirus illness, Covid-19 . The Coronavirus has affected the way we go about our everyday lives. This pandemic has devastated millions of people, either unwell or passed away due to the sickness. The most common symptoms of this viral illness include a high temperature, a cough, bone pain, and difficulties with the respiratory system. In addition to these symptoms, patients infected with the coronavirus may also feel weariness, a sore throat, muscular discomfort, and a loss of taste or smell.

10 Lines Speech on Covid-19 for Students

The Coronavirus is a member of a family of viruses that may infect their hosts exceptionally quickly.

Humans created the Coronavirus in the city of Wuhan in China, where it first appeared.

The first confirmed case of the Coronavirus was found in India in January in the year 2020.

Protecting ourselves against the coronavirus is essential by covering our mouths and noses when we cough or sneeze to prevent the infection from spreading.

We must constantly wash our hands with antibacterial soap and face masks to protect ourselves.

To ensure our safety, the government has ordered the whole nation's closure to halt the virus's spread.

The Coronavirus forced all our classes to be taken online, as schools and institutions were shut down.

Due to the coronavirus, everyone was instructed to stay indoors throughout the lockdown.

During this period, I spent a lot of time playing games with family members.

Even though the cases of COVID-19 are a lot less now, we should still take precautions.

Short 2-Minute Speech on Covid 19 for Students

The coronavirus, also known as Covid - 19 , causes a severe illness. Those who are exposed to it become sick in their lungs. A brand-new virus is having a devastating effect throughout the globe. It's being passed from person to person via social interaction.

The first instance of Covid - 19 was discovered in December 2019 in Wuhan, China . The World Health Organization proclaimed the covid - 19 pandemic in March 2020. It has now reached every country in the globe. Droplets produced by an infected person's cough or sneeze might infect those nearby.

The severity of Covid-19 symptoms varies widely. Symptoms aren't always present. The typical symptoms are high temperatures, a dry cough, and difficulty breathing. Covid - 19 individuals also exhibit other symptoms such as weakness, a sore throat, muscular soreness, and a diminished sense of smell and taste.

Vaccination has been produced by many countries but the effectiveness of them is different for every individual. The only treatment then is to avoid contracting in the first place. We can accomplish that by following these protocols—

Put on a mask to hide your face. Use soap and hand sanitiser often to keep germs at bay.

Keep a distance of 5 to 6 feet at all times.

Never put your fingers in your mouth or nose.

Long 2-Minute Speech on Covid 19 for Students

As students, it's important for us to understand the gravity of the situation regarding the Covid-19 pandemic and the impact it has on our communities and the world at large. In this speech, I will discuss the real-world examples of the effects of the pandemic and its impact on various aspects of our lives.

Impact on Economy | The Covid-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on the global economy. We have seen how businesses have been forced to close their doors, leading to widespread job loss and economic hardship. Many individuals and families have been struggling to make ends meet, and this has led to a rise in poverty and inequality.

Impact on Healthcare Systems | The pandemic has also put a strain on healthcare systems around the world. Hospitals have been overwhelmed with patients, and healthcare workers have been stretched to their limits. This has highlighted the importance of investing in healthcare systems and ensuring that they are prepared for future crises.

Impact on Education | The pandemic has also affected the education system, with schools and universities being closed around the world. This has led to a shift towards online learning and the use of technology to continue education remotely. However, it has also highlighted the digital divide, with many students from low-income backgrounds facing difficulties in accessing online learning.

Impact on Mental Health | The pandemic has not only affected our physical health but also our mental health. We have seen how the isolation and uncertainty caused by the pandemic have led to an increase in stress, anxiety, and depression. It's important that we take care of our mental health and support each other during this difficult time.

Real-life Story of a Student

John is a high school student who was determined to succeed despite the struggles brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic.

John's school closed down in the early days of the pandemic, and he quickly found himself struggling to adjust to online learning. Without the structure and support of in-person classes, John found it difficult to stay focused and motivated. He also faced challenges at home, as his parents were both essential workers and were often not available to help him with his schoolwork.

Despite these struggles, John refused to let the pandemic defeat him. He made a schedule for himself, to stay on top of his assignments and set goals for himself. He also reached out to his teachers for additional support, and they were more than happy to help.

John also found ways to stay connected with his classmates and friends, even though they were physically apart. They formed a study group and would meet regularly over Zoom to discuss their assignments and provide each other with support.

Thanks to his hard work and determination, John was able to maintain good grades and even improved in some subjects. He graduated high school on time, and was even accepted into his first-choice college.

John's story is a testament to the resilience and determination of students everywhere. Despite the challenges brought on by the pandemic, he was able to succeed and achieve his goals. He shows us that with hard work, determination, and support, we can overcome even the toughest of obstacles.

Explore Career Options (By Industry)

Construction
Entertainment
Manufacturing
Information Technology

Data Administrator

Database professionals use software to store and organise data such as financial information, and customer shipping records. Individuals who opt for a career as data administrators ensure that data is available for users and secured from unauthorised sales. DB administrators may work in various types of industries. It may involve computer systems design, service firms, insurance companies, banks and hospitals.

Bio Medical Engineer

The field of biomedical engineering opens up a universe of expert chances. An Individual in the biomedical engineering career path work in the field of engineering as well as medicine, in order to find out solutions to common problems of the two fields. The biomedical engineering job opportunities are to collaborate with doctors and researchers to develop medical systems, equipment, or devices that can solve clinical problems. Here we will be discussing jobs after biomedical engineering, how to get a job in biomedical engineering, biomedical engineering scope, and salary.

Ethical Hacker

A career as ethical hacker involves various challenges and provides lucrative opportunities in the digital era where every giant business and startup owns its cyberspace on the world wide web. Individuals in the ethical hacker career path try to find the vulnerabilities in the cyber system to get its authority. If he or she succeeds in it then he or she gets its illegal authority. Individuals in the ethical hacker career path then steal information or delete the file that could affect the business, functioning, or services of the organization.

GIS officer work on various GIS software to conduct a study and gather spatial and non-spatial information. GIS experts update the GIS data and maintain it. The databases include aerial or satellite imagery, latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates, and manually digitized images of maps. In a career as GIS expert, one is responsible for creating online and mobile maps.

Data Analyst

The invention of the database has given fresh breath to the people involved in the data analytics career path. Analysis refers to splitting up a whole into its individual components for individual analysis. Data analysis is a method through which raw data are processed and transformed into information that would be beneficial for user strategic thinking.

Data are collected and examined to respond to questions, evaluate hypotheses or contradict theories. It is a tool for analyzing, transforming, modeling, and arranging data with useful knowledge, to assist in decision-making and methods, encompassing various strategies, and is used in different fields of business, research, and social science.

Geothermal Engineer

Individuals who opt for a career as geothermal engineers are the professionals involved in the processing of geothermal energy. The responsibilities of geothermal engineers may vary depending on the workplace location. Those who work in fields design facilities to process and distribute geothermal energy. They oversee the functioning of machinery used in the field.

Database Architect

If you are intrigued by the programming world and are interested in developing communications networks then a career as database architect may be a good option for you. Data architect roles and responsibilities include building design models for data communication networks. Wide Area Networks (WANs), local area networks (LANs), and intranets are included in the database networks. It is expected that database architects will have in-depth knowledge of a company's business to develop a network to fulfil the requirements of the organisation. Stay tuned as we look at the larger picture and give you more information on what is db architecture, why you should pursue database architecture, what to expect from such a degree and what your job opportunities will be after graduation. Here, we will be discussing how to become a data architect. Students can visit NIT Trichy , IIT Kharagpur , JMI New Delhi .

Remote Sensing Technician

Individuals who opt for a career as a remote sensing technician possess unique personalities. Remote sensing analysts seem to be rational human beings, they are strong, independent, persistent, sincere, realistic and resourceful. Some of them are analytical as well, which means they are intelligent, introspective and inquisitive.

Remote sensing scientists use remote sensing technology to support scientists in fields such as community planning, flight planning or the management of natural resources. Analysing data collected from aircraft, satellites or ground-based platforms using statistical analysis software, image analysis software or Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is a significant part of their work. Do you want to learn how to become remote sensing technician? There's no need to be concerned; we've devised a simple remote sensing technician career path for you. Scroll through the pages and read.

Budget Analyst

Budget analysis, in a nutshell, entails thoroughly analyzing the details of a financial budget. The budget analysis aims to better understand and manage revenue. Budget analysts assist in the achievement of financial targets, the preservation of profitability, and the pursuit of long-term growth for a business. Budget analysts generally have a bachelor's degree in accounting, finance, economics, or a closely related field. Knowledge of Financial Management is of prime importance in this career.

Underwriter

An underwriter is a person who assesses and evaluates the risk of insurance in his or her field like mortgage, loan, health policy, investment, and so on and so forth. The underwriter career path does involve risks as analysing the risks means finding out if there is a way for the insurance underwriter jobs to recover the money from its clients. If the risk turns out to be too much for the company then in the future it is an underwriter who will be held accountable for it. Therefore, one must carry out his or her job with a lot of attention and diligence.

Finance Executive

Product manager.

A Product Manager is a professional responsible for product planning and marketing. He or she manages the product throughout the Product Life Cycle, gathering and prioritising the product. A product manager job description includes defining the product vision and working closely with team members of other departments to deliver winning products.

Operations Manager

Individuals in the operations manager jobs are responsible for ensuring the efficiency of each department to acquire its optimal goal. They plan the use of resources and distribution of materials. The operations manager's job description includes managing budgets, negotiating contracts, and performing administrative tasks.

Stock Analyst

Individuals who opt for a career as a stock analyst examine the company's investments makes decisions and keep track of financial securities. The nature of such investments will differ from one business to the next. Individuals in the stock analyst career use data mining to forecast a company's profits and revenues, advise clients on whether to buy or sell, participate in seminars, and discussing financial matters with executives and evaluate annual reports.

A Researcher is a professional who is responsible for collecting data and information by reviewing the literature and conducting experiments and surveys. He or she uses various methodological processes to provide accurate data and information that is utilised by academicians and other industry professionals. Here, we will discuss what is a researcher, the researcher's salary, types of researchers.

Welding Engineer

Welding Engineer Job Description: A Welding Engineer work involves managing welding projects and supervising welding teams. He or she is responsible for reviewing welding procedures, processes and documentation. A career as Welding Engineer involves conducting failure analyses and causes on welding issues.

Transportation Planner

A career as Transportation Planner requires technical application of science and technology in engineering, particularly the concepts, equipment and technologies involved in the production of products and services. In fields like land use, infrastructure review, ecological standards and street design, he or she considers issues of health, environment and performance. A Transportation Planner assigns resources for implementing and designing programmes. He or she is responsible for assessing needs, preparing plans and forecasts and compliance with regulations.

Environmental Engineer

Individuals who opt for a career as an environmental engineer are construction professionals who utilise the skills and knowledge of biology, soil science, chemistry and the concept of engineering to design and develop projects that serve as solutions to various environmental problems.

Safety Manager

A Safety Manager is a professional responsible for employee’s safety at work. He or she plans, implements and oversees the company’s employee safety. A Safety Manager ensures compliance and adherence to Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) guidelines.

Conservation Architect

A Conservation Architect is a professional responsible for conserving and restoring buildings or monuments having a historic value. He or she applies techniques to document and stabilise the object’s state without any further damage. A Conservation Architect restores the monuments and heritage buildings to bring them back to their original state.

Structural Engineer

A Structural Engineer designs buildings, bridges, and other related structures. He or she analyzes the structures and makes sure the structures are strong enough to be used by the people. A career as a Structural Engineer requires working in the construction process. It comes under the civil engineering discipline. A Structure Engineer creates structural models with the help of computer-aided design software.

Highway Engineer

Highway Engineer Job Description: A Highway Engineer is a civil engineer who specialises in planning and building thousands of miles of roads that support connectivity and allow transportation across the country. He or she ensures that traffic management schemes are effectively planned concerning economic sustainability and successful implementation.

Field Surveyor

Are you searching for a Field Surveyor Job Description? A Field Surveyor is a professional responsible for conducting field surveys for various places or geographical conditions. He or she collects the required data and information as per the instructions given by senior officials.

Orthotist and Prosthetist

Orthotists and Prosthetists are professionals who provide aid to patients with disabilities. They fix them to artificial limbs (prosthetics) and help them to regain stability. There are times when people lose their limbs in an accident. In some other occasions, they are born without a limb or orthopaedic impairment. Orthotists and prosthetists play a crucial role in their lives with fixing them to assistive devices and provide mobility.

Pathologist

A career in pathology in India is filled with several responsibilities as it is a medical branch and affects human lives. The demand for pathologists has been increasing over the past few years as people are getting more aware of different diseases. Not only that, but an increase in population and lifestyle changes have also contributed to the increase in a pathologist’s demand. The pathology careers provide an extremely huge number of opportunities and if you want to be a part of the medical field you can consider being a pathologist. If you want to know more about a career in pathology in India then continue reading this article.

Veterinary Doctor

Speech therapist, gynaecologist.

Gynaecology can be defined as the study of the female body. The job outlook for gynaecology is excellent since there is evergreen demand for one because of their responsibility of dealing with not only women’s health but also fertility and pregnancy issues. Although most women prefer to have a women obstetrician gynaecologist as their doctor, men also explore a career as a gynaecologist and there are ample amounts of male doctors in the field who are gynaecologists and aid women during delivery and childbirth.

Audiologist

The audiologist career involves audiology professionals who are responsible to treat hearing loss and proactively preventing the relevant damage. Individuals who opt for a career as an audiologist use various testing strategies with the aim to determine if someone has a normal sensitivity to sounds or not. After the identification of hearing loss, a hearing doctor is required to determine which sections of the hearing are affected, to what extent they are affected, and where the wound causing the hearing loss is found. As soon as the hearing loss is identified, the patients are provided with recommendations for interventions and rehabilitation such as hearing aids, cochlear implants, and appropriate medical referrals. While audiology is a branch of science that studies and researches hearing, balance, and related disorders.

An oncologist is a specialised doctor responsible for providing medical care to patients diagnosed with cancer. He or she uses several therapies to control the cancer and its effect on the human body such as chemotherapy, immunotherapy, radiation therapy and biopsy. An oncologist designs a treatment plan based on a pathology report after diagnosing the type of cancer and where it is spreading inside the body.

Are you searching for an ‘Anatomist job description’? An Anatomist is a research professional who applies the laws of biological science to determine the ability of bodies of various living organisms including animals and humans to regenerate the damaged or destroyed organs. If you want to know what does an anatomist do, then read the entire article, where we will answer all your questions.

For an individual who opts for a career as an actor, the primary responsibility is to completely speak to the character he or she is playing and to persuade the crowd that the character is genuine by connecting with them and bringing them into the story. This applies to significant roles and littler parts, as all roles join to make an effective creation. Here in this article, we will discuss how to become an actor in India, actor exams, actor salary in India, and actor jobs.

Individuals who opt for a career as acrobats create and direct original routines for themselves, in addition to developing interpretations of existing routines. The work of circus acrobats can be seen in a variety of performance settings, including circus, reality shows, sports events like the Olympics, movies and commercials. Individuals who opt for a career as acrobats must be prepared to face rejections and intermittent periods of work. The creativity of acrobats may extend to other aspects of the performance. For example, acrobats in the circus may work with gym trainers, celebrities or collaborate with other professionals to enhance such performance elements as costume and or maybe at the teaching end of the career.

Video Game Designer

Career as a video game designer is filled with excitement as well as responsibilities. A video game designer is someone who is involved in the process of creating a game from day one. He or she is responsible for fulfilling duties like designing the character of the game, the several levels involved, plot, art and similar other elements. Individuals who opt for a career as a video game designer may also write the codes for the game using different programming languages.

Depending on the video game designer job description and experience they may also have to lead a team and do the early testing of the game in order to suggest changes and find loopholes.

Radio Jockey

Radio Jockey is an exciting, promising career and a great challenge for music lovers. If you are really interested in a career as radio jockey, then it is very important for an RJ to have an automatic, fun, and friendly personality. If you want to get a job done in this field, a strong command of the language and a good voice are always good things. Apart from this, in order to be a good radio jockey, you will also listen to good radio jockeys so that you can understand their style and later make your own by practicing.

A career as radio jockey has a lot to offer to deserving candidates. If you want to know more about a career as radio jockey, and how to become a radio jockey then continue reading the article.

Choreographer

The word “choreography" actually comes from Greek words that mean “dance writing." Individuals who opt for a career as a choreographer create and direct original dances, in addition to developing interpretations of existing dances. A Choreographer dances and utilises his or her creativity in other aspects of dance performance. For example, he or she may work with the music director to select music or collaborate with other famous choreographers to enhance such performance elements as lighting, costume and set design.

Social Media Manager

A career as social media manager involves implementing the company’s or brand’s marketing plan across all social media channels. Social media managers help in building or improving a brand’s or a company’s website traffic, build brand awareness, create and implement marketing and brand strategy. Social media managers are key to important social communication as well.

Photographer

Photography is considered both a science and an art, an artistic means of expression in which the camera replaces the pen. In a career as a photographer, an individual is hired to capture the moments of public and private events, such as press conferences or weddings, or may also work inside a studio, where people go to get their picture clicked. Photography is divided into many streams each generating numerous career opportunities in photography. With the boom in advertising, media, and the fashion industry, photography has emerged as a lucrative and thrilling career option for many Indian youths.

An individual who is pursuing a career as a producer is responsible for managing the business aspects of production. They are involved in each aspect of production from its inception to deception. Famous movie producers review the script, recommend changes and visualise the story.

They are responsible for overseeing the finance involved in the project and distributing the film for broadcasting on various platforms. A career as a producer is quite fulfilling as well as exhaustive in terms of playing different roles in order for a production to be successful. Famous movie producers are responsible for hiring creative and technical personnel on contract basis.

Copy Writer

In a career as a copywriter, one has to consult with the client and understand the brief well. A career as a copywriter has a lot to offer to deserving candidates. Several new mediums of advertising are opening therefore making it a lucrative career choice. Students can pursue various copywriter courses such as Journalism , Advertising , Marketing Management . Here, we have discussed how to become a freelance copywriter, copywriter career path, how to become a copywriter in India, and copywriting career outlook.

In a career as a vlogger, one generally works for himself or herself. However, once an individual has gained viewership there are several brands and companies that approach them for paid collaboration. It is one of those fields where an individual can earn well while following his or her passion.

Ever since internet costs got reduced the viewership for these types of content has increased on a large scale. Therefore, a career as a vlogger has a lot to offer. If you want to know more about the Vlogger eligibility, roles and responsibilities then continue reading the article.

For publishing books, newspapers, magazines and digital material, editorial and commercial strategies are set by publishers. Individuals in publishing career paths make choices about the markets their businesses will reach and the type of content that their audience will be served. Individuals in book publisher careers collaborate with editorial staff, designers, authors, and freelance contributors who develop and manage the creation of content.

Careers in journalism are filled with excitement as well as responsibilities. One cannot afford to miss out on the details. As it is the small details that provide insights into a story. Depending on those insights a journalist goes about writing a news article. A journalism career can be stressful at times but if you are someone who is passionate about it then it is the right choice for you. If you want to know more about the media field and journalist career then continue reading this article.

Individuals in the editor career path is an unsung hero of the news industry who polishes the language of the news stories provided by stringers, reporters, copywriters and content writers and also news agencies. Individuals who opt for a career as an editor make it more persuasive, concise and clear for readers. In this article, we will discuss the details of the editor's career path such as how to become an editor in India, editor salary in India and editor skills and qualities.

Individuals who opt for a career as a reporter may often be at work on national holidays and festivities. He or she pitches various story ideas and covers news stories in risky situations. Students can pursue a BMC (Bachelor of Mass Communication) , B.M.M. (Bachelor of Mass Media) , or MAJMC (MA in Journalism and Mass Communication) to become a reporter. While we sit at home reporters travel to locations to collect information that carries a news value.

Corporate Executive

Are you searching for a Corporate Executive job description? A Corporate Executive role comes with administrative duties. He or she provides support to the leadership of the organisation. A Corporate Executive fulfils the business purpose and ensures its financial stability. In this article, we are going to discuss how to become corporate executive.

Multimedia Specialist

A multimedia specialist is a media professional who creates, audio, videos, graphic image files, computer animations for multimedia applications. He or she is responsible for planning, producing, and maintaining websites and applications.

Quality Controller

A quality controller plays a crucial role in an organisation. He or she is responsible for performing quality checks on manufactured products. He or she identifies the defects in a product and rejects the product.

A quality controller records detailed information about products with defects and sends it to the supervisor or plant manager to take necessary actions to improve the production process.

Production Manager

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How Is America Still This Bad at Talking About the Pandemic?

America’s leaders could stand to learn four lessons on how to communicate about COVID.

A public-service announcement that includes a drawing of a person wearing a mask and the phrase "Do it right."

With cases decreasing, well more than 65 percent of the eligible population inoculated with effective vaccines, and new COVID therapeutics coming to market, the United States is in very different circumstances than it was in early 2020. Life is currently feeling a little more stable, the future a good deal more clear.

But one thing about the pandemic has remained largely unchanged: Political and scientific leaders are still struggling to communicate recommendations to the American public. Are mask mandates warranted at work and school? First we were told no; then, yes; now the answer, for good reasons this time, is changing again. Are fourth mRNA shots necessary for the most vulnerable? First the CDC said no; then, to get one five months after the third dose; and now the waiting period has been reduced to three months.

The Omicron surge that the country is now exiting may not be our last of this pandemic, and SARS-CoV-2 will surely not be the last virus to cause a pandemic . If we are to get through whatever lies ahead without more unnecessary mass death, we need to reflect on how pandemic communication has fallen short and how the country can get better at it. Over the past six months, I have planned and led a small faculty seminar at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health on the pandemic, the press, and public policy. I’ve gleaned four lessons about transmitting clear, practical information in changing circumstances. Our leaders would be wise to heed them.

1. The conventional wisdom about avoiding ambiguity and uncertainty is wrong.

A former local public-health official told me last year that aides to the elected official for whom they worked had advised them that the key to pandemic communications was to “keep it simple; never say ‘on the other hand.’” This may (or may not) be good practice in an election campaign, but it has proved both common and exceedingly bad counsel in a pandemic, when officials frequently need to offer guidance from a position of uncertainty.

In March 2020, for example, public-health officials needed to tell people whether they should avoid contact with suspect surfaces and whether they needed to wear masks outside clinical settings. In an excess of caution and based on experience with other pathogens, the CDC advised Americans to wipe things down. But when it came to masks, the agency seemed to abandon that precautionary approach. The situation was complicated: The best masks were in terribly short supply and urgently needed by the health-care system. Rather than receiving an explanation of the situation and advice to improvise cloth masks, the public was told to forgo masks altogether because they were unnecessary.

Read: How to talk about the coronavirus

Public-health officials’ failure to trust Americans with the truth was not sophisticated or even practical. When the advice was belatedly revised in a manner that revealed it had always been faulty, an erosion of trust began and has only accelerated over the ensuing two years.

Moreover, this mistake has been repeated again and again in new contexts. Last summer, for instance, advice was given to take off your mask outside, only to be sort of retracted for fear that people would not wear them in crowds, or inside, especially as Delta struck. Throughout the past year, there has been far too much reluctance to offer varying advice to the vaccinated and unvaccinated, and to the very young and very old.

Officials (and the press responsible for critiquing and distilling their advice) need to be more candid about uncertainty, more open about asking people to mitigate risks temporarily until our knowledge increases, more willing to vary guidance for different groups without worrying that this constitutes “mixed messaging.” In the short run, such an approach may be challenged as weakness, but in the long run it will be revealed as building credibility, trust, and thus strength.

2. In a pervasive crisis, science must adjust to politics.

Over and over in the pandemic, public-health officials have been both surprised and disappointed to find out that concerns they consider “political” have trumped scientific knowledge. Not only their surprise but even a measure of their disappointment is worth reconsidering.

This is not to say that public health should be held hostage to conspiracy theories or sheer mendacity, as was sometimes the case in the first year of the pandemic, when President Donald Trump was promoting quack cures and stubbornly resisting masking. But if “Follow the science” was once a watchword of public-health resistance, it later came to sometimes embody naivete. In a well-functioning system, science is not oppositional to politics, but neither does it supersede politics . Both are essential in a democratic society; they must coexist.

Jay Varma: Not every question has a scientific answer

When a public-health concern becomes a pervasive national crisis, under any leadership, it is inevitable—and actually proper—that what may be narrowly in the interest of optimal medical outcomes will be weighed against impacts on the economy, equity, educational imperatives, national security, and even national morale. In our democratic system, that weighing is left to our elected officials. Those officials have a duty to arm themselves with the best public-health advice, and public-health experts are obligated to make sure that both leaders and the public have access to that advice, whether the politicians wish to know it or not.

In retrospect, the United States might have been wise to impose fewer restrictions on elementary and secondary schools over the past two academic years—not because school closures didn’t help stop the spread of the virus, but because the educational and economic losses from widespread remote schooling might have outweighed the gains in reduced cases. The question is clearly more than scientific.

Top officeholders and scientists alike can do a better job of accommodating each other. On the one hand, political leaders would do well to remember that many of the most senior officials in relevant agencies, even those with appropriate professional training, have likely been selected (by them!) for political reasons, and may or may not be the most expert in a particular situation. It can be a grave error, particularly in a place like the White House, to make the leap from “We have our own doctors” to “We have the best doctors.”

Matthew Algeo: Presidential physicians don’t always tell the public the full story

On the other hand, scientists (and even amateur epidemiologists) would do well to formulate their advice to political executives with empathy for their perspective. This does not mean shading the truth or telling someone what you think they want to hear, but it does mean safeguarding a leader’s credibility and acknowledging the political or practical constraints they face. It also means understanding that, once decisions are made, as President John F. Kennedy reportedly observed, leaders must live with them while advisers can move on to other advice. President Joe Biden, for instance, has too often found himself personally announcing conclusions that were not yet certain and guidance that was likely to soon change.

3. Speak the same language the public does.

Communication is difficult when people are not speaking the same language . In the pandemic, we have seen this play out in two major ways. First: Scientists use words they think their listeners understand, only to find out much later that they don’t. Some researchers concluded early on that SARS-CoV-2 was what they term “airborne.” When many people responded by limiting the big change in their behavior to standing six feet apart, the scientists were enormously frustrated. That’s because by “airborne,” they didn’t mean merely that the virus was borne through air, but that it was aerosolized, and thus highly contagious, especially indoors . They wanted the public to stop interacting closely, especially indoors and unmasked. Recognizing earlier that the scientific and colloquial understandings of airborne didn’t match in this context would have made a difference, at least in messaging and possibly in consequences.

Read: Nine pandemic words that almost no one gets right

Second: Only a distinct minority of the population has a firm grasp of statistics, but many scientists communicate as if everyone does. In addition to emphasizing the rarity of vaccine side effects or the significant protection offered by the shots, officials must give the public a lens through which to understand the exceptions some of them are sure to encounter in their daily lives.

If a particular finding, for instance, applies to 99 percent of Americans, scientists and public officials need to acknowledge—clearly, candidly, right up front—that more than 3 million people will have a different experience from that norm. To duck this reality is to risk the sheer number of counterexamples seeming to “disprove” the valid conclusion. This is especially important in communicating to and through the press.

4. Never forget the heroes.

The darkest early days of the pandemic were redeemed somewhat by the national rallying around health-care professionals, first responders, and other essential workers. That focus on the heroes among us underlined the fact that, in a pandemic, we are fundamentally in the fight together, and the virus is our common enemy.

Leaders made a crucial communications mistake in not extending this lesson to the rollout of the vaccines, which were the result of both the genius and the hard and astoundingly fast work of another set of heroes. Greater celebration, beginning in late 2020, of these innovators, inventors, and even manufacturers could, I think, have made widespread division over the vaccines less likely and less pervasive.

From the January/February 2021 issue: How science beat the virus

It would, for instance, have helped if the editors of Time magazine had felt compelled to name the inventors of the mRNA vaccines as the 2021 “People of the Year,” rather than deeming them runners-up to Elon Musk. Glorifying pharmaceutical companies may be a stretch, but why not loudly praise the workers who churned out the “Warp Speed” vaccines as modern-day Rosie the Riveters?

In the absence of these sorts of celebrations, the division over vaccines remains the greatest failure of the U.S. experience of the pandemic. More than a quarter of a million deaths were likely directly preventable by available vaccination. Undervaccination contributed to the horrible strength of the Delta and Omicron waves, lingering economic pain, and remote schooling, which might also have been avoided. Next time, the communication breakdown may or may not center on vaccines. But we’d all be much better off if we didn’t have a breakdown at all.

Students’ Essays on Infectious Disease Prevention, COVID-19 Published Nationwide

As part of the BIO 173: Global Change and Infectious Disease course, Professor Fred Cohan assigns students to write an essay persuading others to prevent future and mitigate present infectious diseases. If students submit their essay to a news outlet—and it’s published—Cohan awards them with extra credit.

As a result of this assignment, more than 25 students have had their work published in newspapers across the United States. Many of these essays cite and applaud the University’s Keep Wes Safe campaign and its COVID-19 testing protocols.

Cohan, professor of biology and Huffington Foundation Professor in the College of the Environment (COE), began teaching the Global Change and Infectious Disease course in 2009, when the COE was established. “I wanted very much to contribute a course to what I saw as a real game-changer in Wesleyan’s interest in the environment. The course is about all the ways that human demands on the environment have brought us infectious diseases, over past millennia and in the present, and why our environmental disturbances will continue to bring us infections into the future.”

Over the years, Cohan learned that he can sustainably teach about 170 students every year without running out of interested students. This fall, he had 207. Although he didn’t change the overall structure of his course to accommodate COVID-19 topics, he did add material on the current pandemic to various sections of the course.

“I wouldn’t say that the population of the class increased tremendously as a result of COVID-19, but I think the enthusiasm of the students for the material has increased substantially,” he said.

To accommodate online learning, Cohan shaved off 15 minutes from his normal 80-minute lectures to allow for discussion sections, led by Cohan and teaching assistants. “While the lectures mostly dealt with biology, the discussions focused on how changes in behavior and policy can solve the infectious disease problems brought by human disturbance of the environment,” he said.

Based on student responses to an introspective exam question, Cohan learned that many students enjoyed a new hope that we could each contribute to fighting infectious disease. “They discovered that the solution to infectious disease is not entirely a waiting game for the right technologies to come along,” he said. “Many enjoyed learning about fighting infectious disease from a moral and social perspective. And especially, the students enjoyed learning about the ‘socialism of the microbe,’ how preventing and curing others’ infections will prevent others’ infections from becoming our own. The students enjoyed seeing how this idea can drive both domestic and international health policies.”

A sampling of the published student essays are below:

Alexander Giummo ’22 and Mike Dunderdale’s ’23 op-ed titled “ A National Testing Proposal: Let’s Fight Back Against COVID-19 ” was published in the Journal Inquirer in Manchester, Conn.

They wrote: “With an expansive and increased testing plan for U.S. citizens, those who are COVID-positive could limit the number of contacts they have, and this would also help to enable more effective contact tracing. Testing could also allow for the return of some ‘normal’ events, such as small social gatherings, sports, and in-person class and work schedules.

“We propose a national testing strategy in line with the one that has kept Wesleyan students safe this year. The plan would require a strong push by the federal government to fund the initiative, but it is vital to successful containment of the virus.

“Twice a week, all people living in the U.S. should report to a local testing site staffed with professionals where the anterior nasal swab Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test, used by Wesleyan and supported by the Broad Institute, would be implemented.”

Kalyani Mohan ’22 and Kalli Jackson ’22 penned an essay titled “ Where Public Health Meets Politics: COVID-19 in the United States ,” which was published in Wesleyan’s Arcadia Political Review .

They wrote: “While the U.S. would certainly benefit from a strengthened pandemic response team and structural changes to public health systems, that alone isn’t enough, as American society is immensely stratified, socially and culturally. The politicization of the COVID-19 pandemic shows that individualism, libertarianism and capitalism are deeply ingrained in American culture, to the extent that Americans often blind to the fact community welfare can be equivalent to personal welfare. Pandemics are multifaceted, and preventing them requires not just a cultural shift but an emotional one amongst the American people, one guided by empathy—towards other people, different communities and the planet. Politics should be a tool, not a weapon against its people.”

Sydnee Goyer ’21 and Marcel Thompson’s ’22 essay “ This Flu Season Will Be Decisive in the Fight Against COVID-19 ” also was published in Arcadia Political Review .

“With winter approaching all around the Northern Hemisphere, people are preparing for what has already been named a “twindemic,” meaning the joint threat of the coronavirus and the seasonal flu,” they wrote. “While it is known that seasonal vaccinations reduce the risk of getting the flu by up to 60% and also reduce the severity of the illness after the contamination, additional research has been conducted in order to know whether or not flu shots could reduce the risk of people getting COVID-19. In addition to the flu shot, it is essential that people remain vigilant in maintaining proper social distancing, washing your hands thoroughly, and continuing to wear masks in public spaces.”

An op-ed titled “ The Pandemic Has Shown Us How Workplace Culture Needs to Change ,” written by Adam Hickey ’22 and George Fuss ’21, was published in Park City, Utah’s The Park Record .

They wrote: “One review of academic surveys (most of which were conducted in the United States) conducted in 2019 found that between 35% and 97% of respondents in those surveys reported having attended work while they were ill, often because of workplace culture or policy which generated pressure to do so. Choosing to ignore sickness and return to the workplace while one is ill puts colleagues at risk, regardless of the perceived severity of your own illness; COVID-19 is an overbearing reminder that a disease that may cause mild, even cold-like symptoms for some can still carry fatal consequences for others.

“A mandatory paid sick leave policy for every worker, ideally across the globe, would allow essential workers to return to work when necessary while still providing enough wiggle room for economically impoverished employees to take time off without going broke if they believe they’ve contracted an illness so as not to infect the rest of their workplace and the public at large.”

Women’s cross country team members and classmates Jane Hollander ’23 and Sara Greene ’23 wrote a sports-themed essay titled “ This Season, High School Winter Sports Aren’t Worth the Risk ,” which was published in Tap into Scotch Plains/Fanwood , based in Scotch Plains, N.J. Their essay focused on the risks high school sports pose on student-athletes, their families, and the greater community.

“We don’t propose cutting off sports entirely— rather, we need to be realistic about the levels at which athletes should be participating. There are ways to make practices safer,” they wrote. “At [Wesleyan], we began the season in ‘cohorts,’ so the amount of people exposed to one another would be smaller. For non-contact sports, social distancing can be easily implemented, and for others, teams can focus on drills, strength and conditioning workouts, and skill-building exercises. Racing sports such as swim and track can compete virtually, comparing times with other schools, and team sports can focus their competition on intra-team scrimmages. These changes can allow for the continuation of a sense of normalcy and team camaraderie without the exposure to students from different geographic areas in confined, indoor spaces.”

Brook Guiffre ’23 and Maddie Clarke’s ’22 op-ed titled “ On the Pandemic ” was published in Hometown Weekly, based in Medfield, Mass.

“The first case of COVID-19 in the United States was recorded on January 20th, 2020. For the next month and a half, the U.S. continued operating normally, while many other countries began their lockdown,” they wrote. “One month later, on February 29th, 2020, the federal government approved a national testing program, but it was too little too late. The U.S. was already in pandemic mode, and completely unprepared. Frontline workers lacked access to N-95 masks, infected patients struggled to get tested, and national leaders informed the public that COVID-19 was nothing more than the common flu. Ultimately, this unpreparedness led to thousands of avoidable deaths and long-term changes to daily life. With the risk of novel infectious diseases emerging in the future being high, it is imperative that the U.S. learn from its failure and better prepare for future pandemics now. By strengthening our public health response and re-establishing government organizations specialized in disease control, we have the ability to prevent more years spent masked and six feet apart.”

In addition, their other essay, “ On Mass Extinction ,” was also published by Hometown Weekly .

“The sixth mass extinction—which scientists have coined as the Holocene Extinction—is upon us. According to the United Nations, around one million plant and animal species are currently in danger of extinction, and many more within the next decade. While other extinctions have occurred in Earth’s history, none have occurred at such a rapid rate,” they wrote. “For the sake of both biodiversity and infectious diseases, it is in our best interest to stop pushing this Holocene Extinction further.”

An essay titled “ Learning from Our Mistakes: How to Protect Ourselves and Our Communities from Diseases ,” written by Nicole Veru ’21 and Zoe Darmon ’21, was published in My Hometown Bronxville, based in Bronxville, N.Y.

“We can protect ourselves and others from future infectious diseases by ensuring that we are vaccinated,” they wrote. “Vaccines have high levels of success if enough people get them. Due to vaccines, society is no longer ravaged by childhood diseases such as mumps, rubella, measles, and smallpox. We have been able to eradicate diseases through vaccines; smallpox, one of the world’s most consequential diseases, was eradicated from the world in the 1970s.

“In 2000, the U.S. was nearly free of measles, yet, due to hesitations by anti-vaxxers, there continues to be cases. From 2000–2015 there were over 18 measles outbreaks in the U.S. This is because unless a disease is completely eradicated, there will be a new generation susceptible.

“Although vaccines are not 100% effective at preventing infection, if we continue to get vaccinated, we protect ourselves and those around us. If enough people are vaccinated, societies can develop herd immunity. The amount of people vaccinated to obtain herd immunity depends on the disease, but if this fraction is obtained, the spread of disease is contained. Through herd immunity, we protect those who may not be able to get vaccinated, such as people who are immunocompromised and the tiny portion of people for whom the vaccine is not effective.”

Dhruvi Rana ’22 and Bryce Gillis ’22 co-authored an op-ed titled “ We Must Educate Those Who Remain Skeptical of the Dangers of COVID-19 ,” which was published in Rhode Island Central .

“As Rhode Island enters the winter season, temperatures are beginning to drop and many studies have demonstrated that colder weather and lower humidity are correlated with higher transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19,” they wrote. “By simply talking or breathing, we release respiratory droplets and aerosols (tiny fluid particles which could carry the coronavirus pathogen), which can remain in the air for minutes to hours.

“In order to establish herd immunity in the US, we must educate those who remain skeptical of the dangers of COVID-19. Whether community-driven or state-funded, educational campaigns are needed to ensure that everyone fully comprehends how severe COVID-19 is and the significance of airborne transmission. While we await a vaccine, it is necessary now more than ever that we social distance, avoid crowds, and wear masks, given that colder temperatures will likely yield increased transmission of the virus.”

Danielle Rinaldi ’21 and Verónica Matos Socorro ’21 published their op-ed titled “ Community Forum: How Mask-Wearing Demands a Cultural Reset ” in the Ewing Observer , based in Lawrence, N.J.

“In their own attempt to change personal behavior during the pandemic, Wesleyan University has mandated mask-wearing in almost every facet of campus life,” they wrote. “As members of our community, we must recognize that mask-wearing is something we are all responsible and accountable for, not only because it is a form of protection for us, but just as important for others as well. However, it seems as though both Covid fatigue and complacency are dominating the mindsets of Americans, leading to even more unwillingness to mask up. Ultimately, it is inevitable that this pandemic will not be the last in our lifespan due to global warming creating irreversible losses in biodiversity. As a result, it is imperative that we adopt the norm of mask-wearing now and undergo a culture shift of the abandonment of an individualistic mindset, and instead, create a society that prioritizes taking care of others for the benefit of all.”

Shayna Dollinger ’22 and Hayley Lipson ’21 wrote an essay titled “ My Pandemic Year in College Has Brought Pride and Purpose. ” Dollinger submitted the piece, rewritten in first person, to Jewish News of Northern California . Read more about Dollinger’s publication in this News @ Wesleyan article .

“I lay in the dead grass, a 6-by-6-foot square all to myself. I cheer for my best friend, who is on the stage constructed at the bottom of Foss hill, dancing with her Bollywood dance group. Masks cover their ordinarily smiling faces as their bodies move in sync. Looking around at friends and classmates, each in their own 6-by-6 world, I feel an overwhelming sense of normalcy.

“One of the ways in which Wesleyan has prevented outbreaks on campus is by holding safe, socially distanced events that students want to attend. By giving us places to be and things to do on the weekends, we are discouraged from breaking rules and causing outbreaks at ‘super-spreader’ events.”

An op-ed written by Luna Mac-Williams ’22 and Daëlle Coriolan ’24 titled “ Collectivist Practices to Combat COVID-19 ” was published in the Wesleyan Argus .

“We are embroiled in a global pandemic that disproportionately affects poor communities of color, and in the midst of a higher cultural consciousness of systemic inequities,” they wrote. “A cultural shift to center collectivist thought and action not only would prove helpful in disease prevention, but also belongs in conversation with the Black Lives Matter movement. Collectivist models of thinking effectively target the needs of vulnerable populations including the sick, the disenfranchised, the systematically marginalized. Collectivist systems provide care, decentering the capitalist, individualist system, and focusing on how communities can work to be self-sufficient and uplift our own neighbors.”

An essay written by Maria Noto ’21 , titled “ U.S. Individualism Has Deadly Consequences ,” is published in the Oneonta Daily Star , based in Oneonta, N.Y.

She wrote, “When analyzing the cultures of certain East Asian countries, several differences stand out. For instance, when people are sick and during the cold and flu season, many East Asian cultures, including South Korea, use mask-wearing. What is considered a threat to freedom by some Americans is a preventive action and community obligation in this example. This, along with many other cultural differences, is insightful in understanding their ability to contain the virus.

“These differences are deeply seeded in the values of a culture. However, there is hope for the U.S. and other individualistic cultures in recognizing and adopting these community-centered approaches. Our mindset needs to be revolutionized with the help of federal and local assistance: mandating masks, passing another stimulus package, contact tracing, etc… However, these measures will be unsuccessful unless everyone participates for the good of a community.”

A published op-ed by Madison Szabo ’23 , Caitlyn Ferrante ’23 ran in the Two Rivers Times . The piece is titled “ Anxiety and Aspiration: Analyzing the Politicization of the Pandemic .”

John Lee ’21 and Taylor Goodman-Leong ’21 have published their op-ed titled “ Reassessing the media’s approach to COVID-19 ” in Weekly Monday Cafe 24 (Page 2).

An essay by Eleanor Raab ’21 and Elizabeth Nefferdorf ’22 titled “ Preventing the Next Epidemic ” was published in The Almanac .

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If you develop symptoms such as severe shortness of breath or chest pain, call triple zero (000) immediately. Tell the phone operator and the paramedics on arrival if you have COVID-19.

How to avoid catching COVID-19 including getting vaccinated, wearing masks and physical distancing.

Getting vaccinated

COVID-19 vaccination stops people from becoming very sick if they catch COVID-19.

Vaccines train your immune system to quickly recognise and get rid of the bacteria or viruses that can cause serious illnesses. Vaccines that protect us against COVID-19 are designed to generate an immune response specific to the COVID-19 coronavirus.

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COVID-19 can be spread by airborne respiratory droplets of moisture. It can also spread through moisture present on surfaces or on the skin and clothes.

Wearing a face mask mask can help stop droplets from spreading when people talk, cough and sneeze, which reduces the risk of spreading COVID-19.

Learn more about how to wear a mask and which masks are best .

Allowing for proper ventilation

COVD-19 can spread through the air more easily and across greater distances in poorly ventilated environments.

To lower the risk of spreading COVID-19 indoors, make sure to open a window or use active ventilation systems and ensure the flow of fresh air.

Physical distancing

Physical distancing is a term used to describe how you should keep your distance from people.

Physical distancing helps reduce the risk of a virus being transmitted and includes:

avoiding crowds and mass gatherings where it is hard to keep a reasonable distance from others (about 1.5 metres)
avoiding small gatherings in enclosed spaces
keeping 1.5 metres between you and other people
not shaking hands, hugging or kissing
not visiting vulnerable people, such as those in aged care facilities or hospitals, babies or people with weakened immune systems

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Practising good hygiene is one of the best ways to protect yourself from COVID-19. It is essential to keep your hands clean — especially outside your home — and to cover your cough or sneeze.

Good hygiene includes:

wash your hands frequently with soap and water for 20 seconds, or use an alcohol-based hand sanitiser
cover your cough and sneeze, dispose of tissues and wash your hands immediately after
regularly clean and disinfect surfaces you use often, such as benchtops and door handles
avoid touching your face

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If you or someone in your household does get COVID-19, you should have some supplies ready.

Having some essentials, like tissues, masks, gloves and pain relief medication, will help you be better prepared.

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How to Write About Coronavirus in a College Essay

Students can share how they navigated life during the coronavirus pandemic in a full-length essay or an optional supplement.

Writing About COVID-19 in College Essays

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Experts say students should be honest and not limit themselves to merely their experiences with the pandemic.

The global impact of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, means colleges and prospective students alike are in for an admissions cycle like no other. Both face unprecedented challenges and questions as they grapple with their respective futures amid the ongoing fallout of the pandemic.

Colleges must examine applicants without the aid of standardized test scores for many – a factor that prompted many schools to go test-optional for now . Even grades, a significant component of a college application, may be hard to interpret with some high schools adopting pass-fail classes last spring due to the pandemic. Major college admissions factors are suddenly skewed.

"I can't help but think other (admissions) factors are going to matter more," says Ethan Sawyer, founder of the College Essay Guy, a website that offers free and paid essay-writing resources.

College essays and letters of recommendation , Sawyer says, are likely to carry more weight than ever in this admissions cycle. And many essays will likely focus on how the pandemic shaped students' lives throughout an often tumultuous 2020.

But before writing a college essay focused on the coronavirus, students should explore whether it's the best topic for them.

Writing About COVID-19 for a College Application

Much of daily life has been colored by the coronavirus. Virtual learning is the norm at many colleges and high schools, many extracurriculars have vanished and social lives have stalled for students complying with measures to stop the spread of COVID-19.

"For some young people, the pandemic took away what they envisioned as their senior year," says Robert Alexander, dean of admissions, financial aid and enrollment management at the University of Rochester in New York. "Maybe that's a spot on a varsity athletic team or the lead role in the fall play. And it's OK for them to mourn what should have been and what they feel like they lost, but more important is how are they making the most of the opportunities they do have?"

That question, Alexander says, is what colleges want answered if students choose to address COVID-19 in their college essay.

But the question of whether a student should write about the coronavirus is tricky. The answer depends largely on the student.

"In general, I don't think students should write about COVID-19 in their main personal statement for their application," Robin Miller, master college admissions counselor at IvyWise, a college counseling company, wrote in an email.

"Certainly, there may be exceptions to this based on a student's individual experience, but since the personal essay is the main place in the application where the student can really allow their voice to be heard and share insight into who they are as an individual, there are likely many other topics they can choose to write about that are more distinctive and unique than COVID-19," Miller says.

Opinions among admissions experts vary on whether to write about the likely popular topic of the pandemic.

"If your essay communicates something positive, unique, and compelling about you in an interesting and eloquent way, go for it," Carolyn Pippen, principal college admissions counselor at IvyWise, wrote in an email. She adds that students shouldn't be dissuaded from writing about a topic merely because it's common, noting that "topics are bound to repeat, no matter how hard we try to avoid it."

Above all, she urges honesty.

"If your experience within the context of the pandemic has been truly unique, then write about that experience, and the standing out will take care of itself," Pippen says. "If your experience has been generally the same as most other students in your context, then trying to find a unique angle can easily cross the line into exploiting a tragedy, or at least appearing as though you have."

But focusing entirely on the pandemic can limit a student to a single story and narrow who they are in an application, Sawyer says. "There are so many wonderful possibilities for what you can say about yourself outside of your experience within the pandemic."

He notes that passions, strengths, career interests and personal identity are among the multitude of essay topic options available to applicants and encourages them to probe their values to help determine the topic that matters most to them – and write about it.

That doesn't mean the pandemic experience has to be ignored if applicants feel the need to write about it.

Writing About Coronavirus in Main and Supplemental Essays

Students can choose to write a full-length college essay on the coronavirus or summarize their experience in a shorter form.

To help students explain how the pandemic affected them, The Common App has added an optional section to address this topic. Applicants have 250 words to describe their pandemic experience and the personal and academic impact of COVID-19.

"That's not a trick question, and there's no right or wrong answer," Alexander says. Colleges want to know, he adds, how students navigated the pandemic, how they prioritized their time, what responsibilities they took on and what they learned along the way.

If students can distill all of the above information into 250 words, there's likely no need to write about it in a full-length college essay, experts say. And applicants whose lives were not heavily altered by the pandemic may even choose to skip the optional COVID-19 question.

"This space is best used to discuss hardship and/or significant challenges that the student and/or the student's family experienced as a result of COVID-19 and how they have responded to those difficulties," Miller notes. Using the section to acknowledge a lack of impact, she adds, "could be perceived as trite and lacking insight, despite the good intentions of the applicant."

To guard against this lack of awareness, Sawyer encourages students to tap someone they trust to review their writing , whether it's the 250-word Common App response or the full-length essay.

Experts tend to agree that the short-form approach to this as an essay topic works better, but there are exceptions. And if a student does have a coronavirus story that he or she feels must be told, Alexander encourages the writer to be authentic in the essay.

"My advice for an essay about COVID-19 is the same as my advice about an essay for any topic – and that is, don't write what you think we want to read or hear," Alexander says. "Write what really changed you and that story that now is yours and yours alone to tell."

Sawyer urges students to ask themselves, "What's the sentence that only I can write?" He also encourages students to remember that the pandemic is only a chapter of their lives and not the whole book.

Miller, who cautions against writing a full-length essay on the coronavirus, says that if students choose to do so they should have a conversation with their high school counselor about whether that's the right move. And if students choose to proceed with COVID-19 as a topic, she says they need to be clear, detailed and insightful about what they learned and how they adapted along the way.

"Approaching the essay in this manner will provide important balance while demonstrating personal growth and vulnerability," Miller says.

Pippen encourages students to remember that they are in an unprecedented time for college admissions.

"It is important to keep in mind with all of these (admission) factors that no colleges have ever had to consider them this way in the selection process, if at all," Pippen says. "They have had very little time to calibrate their evaluations of different application components within their offices, let alone across institutions. This means that colleges will all be handling the admissions process a little bit differently, and their approaches may even evolve over the course of the admissions cycle."

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The Science of Persuasion Offers Lessons for COVID-19 Prevention

Hand washing, mask wearing, social distancing—experts agree these protective behaviors are key to stemming coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). But how should leaders encourage their uptake?

Look to the science of persuasion, says communications professor Dominique Brossard, PhD. Brossard is part of a new National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine group called the Societal Experts Action Network, or SEAN, whose recent report lays out research-based strategies to encourage COVID-19–mitigating behaviors.

Brossard says the changes must feel easy to do—and to repeat, which helps to form habits. Past public health campaigns also suggest it’s wise to know and understand one’s target audience, and to tailor messages and messengers accordingly.

“It’s difficult to change people’s behavior at the massive level,” Brossard, chair of the life sciences communications department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in a recent interview with JAMA. The following is an edited version of that conversation.

JAMA: You and your coauthors write that simply explaining the science of COVID-19 and its risks will rarely translate to a change in attitudes and behaviors, even if people understand and accept the facts. Why isn’t it enough to explain the science if you want to change health behaviors?

Dr Brossard: Because human beings rely more on the psychological dimensions of the risk than the quantitative aspect of the risk. If experts measure risk in numbers, such as the probability of getting harmed by something, human beings in general—you and me included—look at what we call the qualitative aspect of that risk: the potential magnitude of the effect, the potential dread, how much it may impact people [close] to us, and so on. So, psychological dimensions.

JAMA: How does that translate to people’s unwillingness to change their attitudes and behaviors?

Dr Brossard: If we’re asked to do something new, that will impact our willingness to do it for a variety of reasons. It might be because people around us, our social network, the norms around us tell us that this is something that’s not acceptable. It might be because it’s a little inconvenient. It might be because we forget about it. At the end of the day, when we perform certain behaviors, rarely do we think about the science that tells us why we shouldn’t do it and why this might be dangerous. We do it because, as social animals, we pay attention to cues that our minds tell us to pay attention to and our community and people around us tell us to pay attention to. Therefore, our behavior is really based on the psychological components rather than more quantifiable aspects.

JAMA: Your report recommends 5 habit-promoting strategies: make the behavior easy to start and repeat; make the behavior rewarding to repeat; tie the behavior to an existing habit; alert people to behaviors that conflict with existing habits and provide alternative behaviors; and provide specific descriptions of desired behaviors. How can these strategies be applied today?

Dr Brossard: People are more likely to act in healthy ways when it’s easy for them to perform that behavior. So let’s think in terms of hand washing, for example. It will be very important to have hand washing stations and hand sanitizer easily accessible to people. Making the behavior very easy to start and to repeat is very important. If you put a mask next to your front door, and it’s easy to grab when you go out the door, that’s going to be easy to implement and you may be more likely to actually do it again. If you want to encourage people to physically distance from other people around them, having signs on the floor is actually something that works. They don’t have to calculate in their mind: what does it mean to be physically distanced? How far am I from other people? They simply stand where the mark tells them. It makes the behavior easy to repeat and easy to perform.

JAMA: So you’re trying to take away any barriers to the behaviors?

Dr Brossard: Exactly. The idea is if you take away as many barriers as possible, you encourage people to repeat the behavior. And then you end up creating a habit.

JAMA: In your report you mentioned that having many hand sanitizer stations sets the norm—that it’s normal to hand sanitize.

Dr Brossard: Mask wearing and physically distancing are new habits we’re creating from scratch. As social animals, that’s not something we do, in general. However, hand washing is a habit that we would have hoped the population already had. The problem is it hasn’t been really implemented. People do it very inconsistently. If you have hand sanitizers everywhere, it’s very easy. As a matter of fact, in supermarkets, when you have the hand sanitizer at the door, people line up and do it. So it’s that idea of the social norm and making it sound like, this is something you do, it’s widely available, other people do it as well, and therefore, this is socially acceptable and highly encouraged, and we should just all do it.

JAMA: The report also discusses 10 strategies for communicating risk, like using clear, consistent, and transparent messaging. It feels like that’s the opposite of what we’ve had. What’s your take on the federal government’s messaging around COVID-19 mitigation?

Dr Brossard: I think that in this case what’s really crucial is the messaging at the local level. At the state level vs county level vs town level, having a consistent strategy, consistent messages, is very important. It’s clear that for public health–related issues, really what makes a difference is the action of local leaders. It’s really the community-based action that can change people’s behavior. At the local level people trust the doctors, the public health officials.

JAMA: Masks unfortunately have become politicized. Is it too late for universal masking to be accepted or do you think minds can still be changed?

Dr Brossard: You will always have extremes on both ends. The vast majority of the population will be somewhere in between. People that are extremely set on the attitude not to wear a mask, which is, by the way, a very, very small minority, are unlikely to change their views. However, all the others can change their views. People are reasonable in the sense that they want to protect their own, they want to protect the community, they want to have the economy reopen, and so on. So I would say, yes, there’s still hope. And we see it. Every week, our group at the SEAN Network publishes a summary of all the polls that address [COVID-19–related] behaviors. We see that mask wearing is increasing. It’s not yet at the level that we would like to make sure that we are protected, but it’s indeed increasing.

JAMA: You reported that highlighting crowded beaches or people who aren’t wearing masks can be counterproductive. Why? And what’s a better approach?

Dr Brossard: They end up thinking that it’s a more prevalent behavior than it actually is. Or it may actually prompt them to think, “Oh, I wish I was on the beach.” You want to highlight good behavior and make it sound like this is socially acceptable rather than highlighting undesirable behavior and making it sound like it’s more frequent than it actually is.

JAMA: So local leaders should emphasize that mask wearing is increasing, for example?

Dr Brossard: Exactly. The research on social norms is extremely, extremely important here. We tend to get cues based on the people around us. Human beings have something that we call fear of isolation. We don’t like to be the lonely person that is the only one doing a certain thing when the vast majority around us are doing another thing. So it’s very important to actually show, “Look, this is going in this direction. Political leaders from both sides of the spectrum are doing it.” To show that the desirable behavior is something that’s becoming prevalent and that this is the direction society is taking.

JAMA: One lesson in your report is that it’s important to concede uncertainty. Why should leaders say things like, “Based on what we know today…”?

Dr Brossard: This is a really key message of risk communication. If you highlight something as being certain and then the science changes and suddenly you say, “Well, wait a minute, actually this was wrong, and now it is this,” you destroy trust. Science evolves, particularly in the context of COVID-19. We are all discovering this virus. The social sciences have shown that acknowledging uncertainty will actually increase trust, much more than painting things as certain. So it’s very important to say, “Based on the science of today, this is what we should do.” It’s very important to show that it’s a work in progress.

JAMA: What about the messengers themselves? Have we tapped into social media influencers enough? And who are community influencers that have the power to change our collective behaviors?

Dr Brossard: It makes us think of the AIDS community, where the leaders of the communities were messengers in helping promote protective behaviors. Using messengers that are trusted by the target audiences and relying on social media is extremely important. And as far as influencers in the communities, this will depend from one community to the other. Let’s take Wisconsin, for example. Football is a sport that people enjoy regardless of their political ideology, age, and so on. So the [Green Bay] Packers are messengers that transcend potential barriers there. It’s important to find trusted messengers that can connect with the audience on social media but also face-to-face. That can be a trusted local business leader, for example.

JAMA: What have we learned from past public health campaigns, like antismoking and wearing seatbelts, that can be applied now?

Dr Brossard: In the ’70s, we had social marketing approaches that suggested that we needed to stop trying to educate people and actually adapt a marketing technique to social issues. The antismoking Truth campaign, as it was called, was a successful application of social marketing techniques. The idea that you need to segment your audience and tailor the message specifically to that audience is something that the Truth campaign very well illustrated. A specific audience that needed to be targeted was adolescents and teenagers, and one thing that adolescents do is rebel against authority. They don’t like people to force them to do things. So the Truth campaign tried to appeal to their drive for autonomy by showing them that the tobacco industry was taking advantage of the adolescent population. That was extremely powerful. The problem is that a mass media campaign like that can be extremely, extremely expensive. That’s why it’s very important also to rely on what we think of as organic dissemination of messaging through social media, which we couldn’t do when the Truth campaign was put together.

JAMA: How can physicians apply these strategies of persuasion with patients, in their communities, or on social networks?

Dr Brossard: We are all tempted to correct misinformation. And right now, we see it everywhere, right? However, we need to be careful because by repeating the misinformation itself, we make it more prevalent. When physicians want to communicate about COVID-19, it’s better to actually communicate the right information without repeating the misinformation itself. I think it’s very important to remember that all of us are part of the solution by making sure that those right behaviors get communicated to as many people as we can. I think physicians have a really, really big part to play in this organic dissemination.

JAMA: How will these strategies apply once we have a COVID-19 vaccine?

Dr Brossard: It goes back to that idea of targeting and audience segmentation to understand who has issues with the vaccine—in this case potentially COVID-19—and why. We actually do not know why people think the way they do. What we do know is that there’s no wrong concern. If people are concerned, they’re concerned. We need to listen and try to understand why and then address that.

See More About

Abbasi J. The Science of Persuasion Offers Lessons for COVID-19 Prevention. JAMA. 2020;324(13):1271–1272. doi:10.1001/jama.2020.15139

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Remarks by Commissioner Stephen Hahn, M.D. — The COVID-19 Pandemic — Finding Solutions, Applying Lessons Learned - 06/01/2020

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Event Title Remarks by Commissioner Stephen Hahn, M.D. — The COVID-19 Pandemic — Finding Solutions, Applying Lessons Learned June 1, 2020

The COVID-19 Pandemic — Finding Solutions, Applying Lessons Learned

(Remarks as prepared for delivery. The text and video of this speech are slightly, though not substantively different from the version presented by Dr. Hahn on June 1 to the Alliance for a Stronger FDA, via audio broadcast only. Because of evolving scheduling challenges, it was not clear whether Dr. Hahn would be able to present the speech live and so it was recorded by video earlier. Ultimately, he did give the speech live to the Alliance, but only via an audio link. Given the minimal changes in the live version, we are posting the video version and the accompanying text.)

One of the most frustrating challenges each of us can face is the inability to control the events that affect our lives. Often, we are thrust into situations not of our own making. It’s no surprise that one of the most familiar adages concerns the best laid plans of mice and men going awry.

And yet, to borrow another often-used saying, necessity is the mother of invention. History teaches us that crises often lead to accelerated change and innovations and new discoveries.

This dynamic has been on my mind a great deal recently. It wasn’t too long ago – last December, to be exact -- that I had the distinction of being confirmed as the 24th Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.

This is the greatest honor of my life. I have long cherished the critical role the FDA plays in protecting and promoting the public health, and I’ve relied on the Agency’s expertise throughout my professional life.

So, I eagerly embraced my new responsibilities and the chance to make a real difference in public health. I was especially conscious that we live in a time of extraordinary scientific achievement, especially in oncology, with unprecedented opportunities to help make the lives of American patients and consumers healthier and safer.

I quickly immersed myself in the Agency’s broad and complex responsibilities, seizing every opportunity to learn about the FDA, both those areas with which I’d previously had minimum involvement, such as food policy, and those with which I had more familiarity, like cancer treatments and innovative clinical trial design.

I began to work with, and learn from, the agency’s extraordinary leadership team. I learned very quickly that the principles that have guided me throughout my life, such as my commitment to relying only on the best medical science and most rigorous data in support of advancing innovation and discovery, and my fundamental belief in promoting integrity and transparency in the scientific process, are the same principles that guide the FDA in both science and regulation.

So, I was in the midst of transitioning from being Chief Medical Executive at MD Anderson Cancer Center to being Commissioner of FDA when our entire world was turned upside down with the appearance of the novel COVID-19 coronavirus.

I certainly did not anticipate a public health emergency of this magnitude when I joined the agency. And I could not have imagined how significantly my new role would change and be shaped by this pandemic. I definitely could not have known that discussions about personal protective equipment (or PPE) or face masks or nasal swabs would be central to my work as Commissioner.

One thing was apparent: I would need to manage this evolving situation even as I was still learning about FDA.

From the very start I knew that even in a crisis situation – or perhaps especially because we are in a crisis situation – it is imperative that we maintain FDA’s high standards for evaluating products and making sure that the benefits outweigh potential harms.

To maintain our standard, I pledged to myself and emphasized to my new colleagues at FDA that our decisions would always be rooted in science. Having spent my entire career as a physician and scientist caring for patients with cancer, I’ve always valued highly a commitment to good data and sound science. I feel comfortable working with the scientists at FDA because I know they not only share that value, that commitment, but that they will tolerate nothing less. So, it was critical to me, as the pandemic escalated that this be reinforced as the guidepost for all of our decisions.

It may have been trial by fire, but I have the good fortune to work with an enormous number of talented individuals and teams who are helping guide us through this crisis. Every day they show extraordinary expertise, commitment, and resilience.

I also was able to call on many from outside the agency, including former FDA leaders as well as colleagues from the medical community.

What struck me was the uniformity of their advice. Those who formerly worked at FDA urged me to rely upon the FDA staff, many of whom have the experience to help manage a pandemic. My friends from outside the agency urged that we move quickly to make decisions, set direction and to be transparent about what we are doing. I have tried to follow all of this excellent advice.

Protecting the Food Supply

Since this crisis and the actions of the FDA have evolved so rapidly, let me summarize what we have done. I am confident that the FDA has measured up to this unprecedented challenge.

I want to start with the first word in the FDA’s name – food. Most of us take food safety for granted. But it takes a lot of hard work to maintain a safe food supply. This was true even before the COVID-19 pandemic but is especially challenging during an ongoing international crisis.

During the pandemic, through the collaboration of the FDA, the food industry and our federal and state partners, we have been able to maintain the safety of the nation’s food supply. Our Coordinated Outbreak Response and Evaluation team remained on the job, monitoring for signs of foodborne illness outbreaks and prepared to take action when needed.

And along with our federal partners, including CDC and USDA, we also have provided best practices for food workers, industry, and consumers on how to stay safe and keep food safe.

Diagnosing and Developing Treatments

On the medical side, we immediately committed to facilitating efforts to develop diagnostic tests, treatments and vaccines for the disease. We have helped facilitate increases in our national testing capacity, have helped ensure continued access to necessary medical products, and have sought to prevent the sale of fraudulent products.

If there’s one thing that’s been reaffirmed during this crisis, it’s the essential role of medical devices, including diagnostics, to countering this pandemic.

From the earliest days of our response, we worked to ensure that we had the essential medical devices, including personal protective equipment, to help treat those who are ill and to ensure that health care workers and others on the front line are properly protected.

To be sure, there were bumps along the road, but today we have an adequate supply of the devices that have been in unprecedented high demand such as PPE, ventilators, and others.

We’ve reviewed and issued emergency use authorizations for medical devices for COVID-19 at an incredibly fast pace.

And we’ve worked closely with many companies that don’t regularly make medical products but wanted to pitch in by making hand sanitizer, ventilators, or PPE.

There was a special focus on the development and availability of accurate and reliable COVID-19 tests. We need to know who has the disease and who has had it. This is essential if we are to understand this virus and return to a more normal lifestyle.

Since January, we’ve worked with hundreds of test developers, many of whom have submitted emergency use authorization requests to FDA for tests that detect the virus or antibodies to the virus.

As you have seen reported, early in the crisis we provided regulatory flexibility for developers with validated tests as outlined in our policies because public health needs dictated that we do as much testing as possible. But as the process has matured, we have helped increase the number of authorized tests, and we have adapted some of our policies to best serve the public need.

Today, if evidence arises that raises questions about a particular test’s reliability, we will take appropriate action to protect consumers from inaccurate tests. This is a dynamic process that is continually being informed by new data and evidence.

We’ve used a similar dynamic process in the search for therapeutic treatments and vaccines.

We are working closely with partners throughout the government and academia, and with drug and vaccine developers to explore, expedite, and incentivize the development of these products.

More than 90 drugs are being studied, and FDA is actively working with numerous vaccine sponsors, including three sponsors who have announced they have vaccine candidates that are now in clinical trials in the U.S. More than 144 clinical trials have been initiated for therapeutic agents, with hundreds more in the pipeline. We don’t have a cure or vaccine yet, but we’re on our way, at unprecedented speed.

Ultimately, of course, the way we’ll eventually defeat this virus is with a vaccine. FDA is working closely to provide technical assistance to federal partners, vaccine developers, researchers, manufacturers, and experts across the globe and exploring all possible options to advance the most efficient and timely development of vaccines, while at the same time maintaining regulatory independence.

Communicating and Educating

There is much more to do going forward, and that includes research, exploration and discovery, and communicating what we know.

As the country starts to reopen, it’s essential that the public understands what they need to do to continue to protect themselves. There has been a proliferation of information, and misinformation, on the internet and in other sources. Consumers need to understand that this virus is still with us and that we, as individuals and communities working together, need to take steps to continue to contain its spread.

The FDA has an important part to play in communicating public information to all populations in the U.S. FDA has increased outreach by developing and disseminating COVID-19 health education materials for consumers in multiple languages to diverse communities and the public overall. Everyone should have a clear understanding of why hand-washing and social distancing remain essential. Consumers need to think about how to shop for food safely. People need to know when to call their doctors and when to ask about getting tested. Health care professionals need to know how to manage their patients in this new environment, and how best to apply telemedicine, the use of which is rapidly accelerating.

I want the FDA to serve as a national resource for the public and health care community. I regard educating the public and providing accurate, reliable, up-to-date information as not just an Agency priority, but one of my own personal responsibilities as Commissioner. I will be out in public and in the media talking about how individuals can help us contain and conquer this virus.

I believe my personal experience with being self-quarantined will make me a better communicator. Being quarantined for 14 days in May was certainly no fun, but because we at FDA were already functioning very effectively virtually, I was able to continue to be fully engaged, and provide direction and leadership. And it made me even more focused on making sure consumers have all the information they need about self-protection.

We now need to look forward. A major strength of the FDA is not just in our response to a crisis, but in our ability to learn from the work we do and apply that experience in the future.

As this pandemic evolved, it was clear that some FDA processes needed to be adjusted to accommodate the urgency of the pandemic. I think the entire FDA team has now seen first-hand that we need to look at some of our processes and policies. I have instructed my staff to identify the lessons learned from this pandemic and what adjustments may be needed, not just to manage this or future emergencies, but to make FDA itself more efficient in carrying out our regulatory responsibilities.

I am committed to making sure that some of the lessons learned from managing this pandemic will lead to permanent improvements at the FDA in processes and policies.

For example, in facilitating the development of new treatments, we streamlined some of our processes.

We have taken a fresh look at how clinical trials should be designed and conducted. In a pandemic we knew we needed to get answers more quickly. For instance, early on, the FDA, National Institutes of Health, and industry worked together to facilitate the implementation of a “master protocol” that can be used in multiple clinical trials and allows for the study of more than one promising new drug for COVID-19 at a time. And we have used expanded access to meet the needs of patients who are not eligible or who are unable to participate in randomized clinical trials.

Many of the permanent changes that we will implement really represent an acceleration of where we were headed before. For example, the concept of decentralized clinical trials, in which trial procedures are conducted near the patient’s home and through use of local health care providers or local laboratories has been discussed before, and laid the foundation for some of the trials for COVID-19 products.

Another area where our pre-COVID work has informed our response to the pandemic involves the use of Real World Evidence (RWE).

In recent years, the agency has taken steps to leverage modern, rigorous analyses of real-world data—such as data from electronic health records, insurance claims, patient registries and lab results.

As the pandemic brought an urgency to these efforts, the FDA advanced collaborations with public and private partners to collect and analyze a variety of real-world data sources, using our Sentinel system and other resources.

Evaluation of real-world data has the potential to provide a wealth of rapid, actionable information to better understand disease symptoms, describe and measure immunity, and use available medical product supplies to help mitigate potential shortages. These data can also inform ongoing work to evaluate potential therapies, vaccines or diagnostics for COVID-19. The more experience we have with real world evidence, the more confidence we will have in using it for product decisions.

I mention real world evidence, but in reality, we have so many examples of how lessons learned from the pandemic will affect FDA in the future.

To the extent that the innovations and adaptations we implemented during the pandemic crisis worked and would be appropriate to implement outside of a pandemic situation, we will incorporate them into standard FDA procedures. And to the extent that we identified unnecessary barriers, we will remove them. This is one of my top priorities. Permanent change where needed will take place, and will make FDA an even stronger agency.

As I mentioned before, anything that enables quicker reviews and authorizations we will seek to make permanent.

But make no mistake. We will not cut corners on safety or effectiveness. I said this before, and I say it again. Good science as the basis for decision making has been a hallmark of my career, and is a value that I hold deeply. The American public must have confidence in the products regulated by the FDA.

Speed is important, but so are safety, accuracy and effectiveness.

FDA’s commitment to good science and rigorous data is unwavering, even as we look at how we can learn from this pandemic.

I am hopeful that this is a once-in-a-lifetime experience for all of us. An unprecedented historic event that has required an unprecedented response from us and everyone around the world.

That said, I am pleased that throughout this crisis the rest of the FDA’s work has continued, with relatively few interruptions. New drugs and devices have been authorized. Our food safety surveillance has adapted and our outbreak response resources have been maintained. Our oversight of tobacco products, including e-cigarettes, has gone on. The Agency has measured up to the challenge in all ways.

And we are well positioned as we move into a new phase, that is, transitioning back to what has come to be known as the “new normal.” Our staff has done a phenomenal job of adapting to this new normal. And I am confident that they are ready to deal with any additional upcoming challenges.

I will close with something I’ve seen reaffirmed time and time again over the past few months. That is the essential role that the FDA plays in consumer protection and beyond in advancing public health.

Before coming to the FDA, I had heard about the extraordinary dedication of the agency’s workforce. Working side by side with my colleagues in response to this pandemic, I’ve seen that characterization validated over and over.

It is my great honor to serve with so many highly skilled and committed professionals. And the American people can be assured that this agency is working around the clock for them, doing whatever is necessary to fulfill our mission to protect and promote the health of the American public.

I encourage you all to stay safe, aware, and focused as we continue to respond to the challenges of this public health emergency.

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Elsevier - PMC COVID-19 Collection

Examining persuasive message type to encourage staying at home during the COVID-19 pandemic and social lockdown: A randomized controlled study in Japan

• We examined persuasive message types in terms of a narrator encouraging self-restraint.
• Messages from a governor, an expert, a physician, a patient, and a resident were compared.
• The message from a physician increased intention to stay at home the most.
• The physician’s message conveyed the crisis of collapse of the medical system.

Behavioral change is the only prevention against the COVID-19 pandemic until vaccines become available. This is the first study to examine the most persuasive message type in terms of narrator difference in encouraging people to stay at home during the COVID-19 pandemic and social lockdown.

Participants (n = 1,980) were randomly assigned to five intervention messages (from a governor, a public health expert, a physician, a patient, and a resident of an outbreak area) and a control message. Intention to stay at home before and after reading messages was assessed. A one-way ANOVA with Tukey’s or Games–Howell test was conducted.

Compared with other messages, the message from a physician significantly increased participants’ intention to stay at home in areas with high numbers of people infected (versus a governor, p = .002; an expert, p = .023; a resident, p = .004).

The message from a physician―which conveyed the crisis of overwhelmed hospitals and consequent risk of people being unable to receive treatment―increased the intent to stay at home the most.

Practice implications

Health professionals and media operatives may be able to encourage people to stay at home by disseminating the physicians’ messages through media and the internet.

1. Introduction

The outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has emerged as the largest global pandemic ever experienced [ 1 ]. Experts have proposed that social lockdown will lead to improvements such as controlling the increase in the number of infected individuals and preventing a huge burden on the healthcare system [ [2] , [3] , [4] ]. Governments of many countries across the world have declared local and national social lockdown [ 4 , 5 ]. In April 2020, the Japanese government declared a state of emergency, which allows prefectural governors to request residents to refrain from unnecessary and nonurgent outings from home [ 6 ]. However, despite such governor declarations, people in various countries have resisted and disregarded calls to stay at home [ [7] , [8] , [9] ]. Because social lockdown is the only existing weapon for prevention of the pandemic until vaccines becomes available to treat COVID-19, behavioral change in individuals regarding staying at home is crucial [ 3 , 4 ]. Many news articles about COVID-19 are published daily by the mass media and over the internet. Such articles convey messages from governors, public health experts, physicians, COVID-19 patients, and residents of outbreak areas, encouraging people to stay at home. This is the first study to examine which narrator’s message is most persuasive in encouraging people to do so during the COVID-19 pandemic and social lockdown.

2.1. Participants and design

Participants were recruited from people registered in a survey company database in Japan. The eligibility criterion was men and women aged 18–69 years. Exclusion criteria were individuals who answered screening questions by stating: that they cannot go out because of illness or disability; that they have been diagnosed with a mental illness; or/and that they or their family members have been infected with COVID-19. A total of 1,980 participants completed the survey from May 9–11, 2020, when the state of emergency covered all prefectures in Japan. Participants were included according to the population composition ratio in Japan nationwide by gender, age, and residential area. Participants were randomly assigned either to a group that received an intervention message (i.e., from a governor, a public health expert, a physician, a patient, and a resident of the outbreak area) or to one that received a control message. The study was registered as a University Hospital Medical Information Network Clinical Trials Registry (number: UMIN000040286) on May 1, 2020. The methods of the present study adhered to CONSORT guidelines. The protocol was approved by the ethical review committee at the Graduate School of Medicine, University of Tokyo (number: 2020032NI). All participants gave written informed consent in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.

2.2. Intervention and control messages

We searched news articles about COVID-19 using Yahoo! JAPAN News ( https://news.yahoo.co.jp ), the largest Japanese news portal site. We also searched videos posted by residents of outbreak areas such as New York using YouTube ( https://www.youtube.com/user/YouTubeJapan ). By referring to these articles and videos, we created five intervention messages from a governor, a public health expert, a physician, a patient, and a resident of an outbreak area. The content of each message encouraged readers to stay at home. We included threat and coping messages in each intervention message based on protection motivation theory (PMT) [ 10 , 11 ]. Appendix A shows the five intervention messages used in this study, translated into English for this report. For a control message we obtained textual information about bruxism from the website of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare ( https://www.e-healthnet.mhlw.go.jp/ ).

2.3. Measures

The primary outcome was intention to stay at home. The secondary outcomes were PMT constructs (i.e., perceived severity, vulnerability, response efficacy, and self-efficacy). Participants responded to two or three questions for each measure (see Appendix B ). These measures were adapted and modified from previous studies [ [12] , [13] , [14] , [15] ]. All primary and secondary outcomes were measured before and after the participants read intervention or control messages, and mean scores were calculated. Higher scores indicated greater intention and perception. All participants were asked for their sociodemographic information before they read intervention or control messages.

2.4. Sample size

Based on the effect size in a previous randomized controlled study [ 16 ], we estimated a small effect size (Cohen’s d = .20) in the current study. We conducted a power analysis at an alpha error rate of .05 (two-tailed) and a beta error rate of .20. The power analysis indicated that 330 participants were required in each of the intervention and control groups.

2.5. Statistical analysis

A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted with the absolute change in mean values for each measure before and after intervention as the dependent variable and the group assignment as the independent variable. For multiple comparisons, Tukey’s test was conducted on significant main effects where appropriate. The Games–Howell test was performed when the assumption of homogeneity of variances was not satisfied. Additionally, we conducted subgroup analyses including only participants who lived in 13 “specified warning prefectures,” where the number of infected individuals showed a marked increase [ 17 ]. A p value of <.05 was considered significant in all statistical tests. All statistical analyses were performed using IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, Version 21.0 (IBM, Armonk, NY, USA).

Table 1 shows the participants’ characteristics. Table 2 , Table 3 present a comparison among the five intervention groups using one-way ANOVA and multiple comparisons when including all prefectures and only participants who lived in the specified warning prefectures, respectively. More significant differences between intervention messages were found in the specified warning prefectures compared with all prefectures. In Table 3 , the Games–Howell test indicates that the message from a physician increased participants’ intention to stay at home significantly more than other narrators’ messages (versus a governor, p = .002; an expert, p = .023; a resident, p = .004). Multiple comparisons demonstrated that the message from a physician increased participants’ perceived severity (versus a governor, p = .015), response efficacy (versus a resident, p = .014), and self-efficacy (versus a governor, p = .022; a patient, p = .009) significantly more than other narrators’ messages.

Participants’ sociodemographic information.

Comparison of amount of change before and after intervention among groups when including all prefectures (N = 1,980).

Comparison of amount of change before and after intervention among groups when including only the “specified warning prefectures” (N = 1,274).

4. Discussion and conclusion

4.1. discussion.

As Appendix A shows, the message from a physician specifically communicated the critical situation of hospitals being overwhelmed and the consequent risk of people being unable to receive treatment. Depiction of the crisis of overwhelmed hospitals may have evoked heightened sensation that elicited sensory, affective, and arousal responses in recipients. Social lockdown presumably evoked psychological reactance in many individuals [ 18 ]. Psychological reactance is considered one of the factors that impedes individuals’ staying at home during a pandemic [ 18 ]. Studies of psychological reactance have indicated that heightened sensation is the feature of a message that reduces psychological reactance [ 19 , 20 ]. Additionally, in Japan recommendations by physicians have a strong influence on individuals’ decision making owing to the remnants of paternalism in the patient–physician relationship [ 21 ]. These may constitute the reasons for the message from a physician generating the greatest impact on recipients’ protection motivation.

Public health professionals, governors, media professionals, and other influencers should use messages from physicians and disseminate relevant articles through the media and social networking services to encourage people to stay at home. It is important that health professionals and media have a network and collaborate with one another [ 22 ]. To build relationships and provide reliable resources, health professionals are expected to hold press conferences and study meetings with journalists. Through such networking, journalists can acquire accurate information in dealing with the pandemic, such as using messages from physicians to encourage people to stay at home. Consequently, journalists should disseminate such messages. It is also important that governments, municipalities, medical associations, and other public institutions convey messages from physicians and that the media effectively spread those messages. Owing to the advances of Web 2.0 [ 23 ], health professionals’ grassroots communication with journalists and citizens via social media may provide opportunities for many people to access persuasive messages from physicians.

4.1.1. Limitations

First, the content of the intervention messages in this study may not represent voices of all governors, public health experts, physicians, patients, and residents of outbreak areas. Second, it is not clear from this study which sentences in the intervention message made the most impact on recipients and why. Third, this study assessed intention rather than actual behavior. Finally, it is unclear as to what extent the present findings are generalizable to populations other than the Japanese participants in this study.

4.2. Conclusion

In areas with high numbers of infected people, the message from a physician, which conveyed the crisis of hospitals being overwhelmed and the consequent risk of people being unable to receive treatment, increased the intention to stay at home to a greater extent than other messages from a governor, a public health expert, a patient with COVID-19, and a resident of an outbreak area.

4.3. Practice implications

Governors, health professionals, and media professionals may be able to encourage people to stay at home by disseminating the physicians’ messages through media such as television and newspapers as well as social networking services on the internet.

This work was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science KAKENHI (grant number 19K10615).

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Tsuyoshi Okuhara: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Investigation, Writing - original draft, Funding acquisition. Hiroko Okada: Methodology, Investigation, Writing - review & editing. Takahiro Kiuchi: Supervision, Writing - review & editing.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

Acknowledgement

We thank Hugh McGonigle, from Edanz Group ( https://en-author-services.edanzgroup.com/ac ), for editing a draft of the manuscript.

Appendix A.

Intervention: the message from a governor.

The following is a message from the governor of your local area.

Please avoid leaving your house as much as possible.

Staying at home can save lives and prevent the spread of infection.

Intervention: The message from an expert

The following is a message from an infectious disease control expert.

Intervention: The message from a physician

The following is a message from an emergency medical care doctor.

Intervention: The message from a patient

The following is a message from a patient who is infected with the novel coronavirus.

Intervention: The message from a resident

The following is a message from an individual who lives in an area where an outbreak of novel coronavirus has occurred.

A control message

According to the traditional definition, grinding one’s teeth is when somebody makes a sound by strongly grinding the teeth together, usually unconsciously or while asleep. Nowadays, it is often referred to as ‘teeth grinding,’ a term which also covers various actions that we do while awake.

Whether you are sleeping or awake, the non-functional biting habit of grinding one’s teeth dynamically or statically, or clenching one’s teeth, can also be referred to as bruxism (sleep bruxism if it occurs at night). Bruxism can be categorized into the movements of: sliding the upper and lower teeth together like mortar and pestle (grinding); firmly and statically engaging the upper and lower teeth (clenching); and dynamically bringing the upper and lower teeth together with a tap (tapping).

Bruxism is difficult to diagnose, as it often has no noticeable symptoms. Stress and dentition are thought to be causes of bruxism, but it is currently unclear and future research is anticipated.

Splint therapy, which involves the use of a mouthpiece as an artificial plastic covering on one’s teeth, and cognitive behavioral therapy are being researched as treatments for bruxism.

Appendix B.

All questions above were on a scale of 1–6, ranging from “extremely unlikely” to “unlikely,” “a little unlikely,” “a little likely,” “likely,” and “extremely likely.”

coronavirus

Coronavirus.

Coronavirus Testing

Pre-registration for Public Testing

It’s best to get testing through your provider, but if you need to use public testing, you can save time in line by visiting coronavirus.dc.gov/register to create a profile from your smartphone, tablet, or computer.

COVID-19 Resources in Your Language

Recursos sobre el COVID-19 en su idioma • COVID-19 : ressources en français • በቋንቋዎ የኮቪድ-19 (COVID-19) የመረጃ ምንጮች • COVID-19资源（使用您的语言)• Thông tin hỗ trợ C0VID19 trên ngôn ngữ của quí vị • 코로나바이러스 감염증(COVID019) 한국어 자료

Over The Counter Self-Report
Get Vaccinated
Vaccine Information
Vaccination Q&A
Vaccine Trials
What Is DC CAN?
Privacy Policy
Key Metrics
Vaccination Data
K-12 Schools Data
Variant Surveillance
School Surveillance Testing
COVID-19 Therapeutics

How to Protect Yourself from COVID-19

The symptoms that are currently being seen with COVID-19 are fever and respiratory symptoms such as cough and shortness of breath. To help prevent the spread of germs, you should:

Multiple times a day, wash your hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds, especially after going to the bathroom, before eating, and after blowing your nose, coughing, or sneezing.
Avoid close contact with people who are sick.
Avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth with unwashed hands.
Clean and disinfect frequently touched objects and surfaces.
Use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol if you have symptoms of acute respiratory illness.
Stay home from work or school until you are free of fever, signs of a fever, and any other symptoms for at least 24 hours and without the use of fever-reducing or other symptom-altering medications.
Seek medical attention if you have reason to believe you have been exposed to coronavirus or influenza. Call your healthcare provider before visiting a healthcare facility.

You play an important role in stopping the spread of germs, view resources to share with your family, friends and within your community .

Higher Risk Populations

Some people are at higher risk of getting very sick from COVID-19, including older adults and people who have serious chronic medical conditions. If you are in this higher-risk population, the CDC recommends that you:

Stock up on supplies
During a COVID-19 outbreak in your community, stay home as much as possible to further reduce your risk of being exposed
Take everyday precautions to keep space between yourself and others
When you go out in public, keep away from others who are sick, limit close contact and wash your hands often
Avoid crowds as much as possible
Avoid cruise travel and non-essential air travel

Learn more at: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/specific-groups/high-risk-complications.html

Make a Plan

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has information on how to prepare your home and family for COVID-19. Recommendations include:

Clean and disinfect high-touch surfaces daily in household common areas (e.g. tables, hard-backed chairs, doorknobs, light switches, remotes, handles, desks, toilets, sinks)
Contact your healthcare provider to ask about obtaining extra necessary medications to have on hand in case there is an outbreak of COVID-19 in your community and you need to stay home for a prolonged period of time
If you cannot get extra medications, consider using mail-order for medications
Be sure you have over-the-counter medicines and medical supplies (tissues, etc.) to treat fever and other symptoms. Most people will be able to recover from COVID-19 at home
Have enough household items and groceries on hand so that you will be prepared to stay at home for a period of time
If possible, choose a room in your house that can be used to separate sick household members from others. If someone in the household is sick , separate them into the prepared room
If caring for a household member, follow recommended precautions and monitor your own health

If you are the family member or caregiver of someone at higher risk , you should:

Know what medications your loved one is taking and see if you can help them have extra on hand
Monitor food and other medical supplies (oxygen, incontinence, dialysis, wound care) needed and create a back-up plan
Stock up on non-perishable food items to have on hand in your home to minimize trips to stores

How to Tailor COVID-19 Vaccine Information to Your Specific Audience

Illustration of various professionals in their uniforms

To improve vaccine confidence and COVID-19 vaccination rates, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shares steps for tailoring messaging and materials to your specific audience.

Step 1: Understand your audience.
Step 2: Create tailored messages and materials.
Step 3: Get audience input and feedback.

Health communications and social marketing work best when they are engaging, relevant, motivating, and actionable.

Step 1: Understand Your Audience

There are three things you need to know about your audience to effectively tailor messages and materials.

1. Their knowledge, perceptions, beliefs, motivations, and barriers related to COVID-19 vaccines

Many factors can affect someone’s decision to get vaccinated. Answering the following questions about your audience will help you create vaccine messages that are relevant and compelling.

What does your audience know about COVID-19 vaccines?
What does your audience know about the risks of COVID-19?
What does your audience know about the benefits of COVID-19 vaccination?
What would motivate your audience to get vaccinated?
How does your audience feel about getting vaccinated?
Have others in their circle of influence had positive or negative experiences?
What core beliefs, values, and moral foundations drive your intended audience’s decision making?
Are freedom, liberty, and purity important to them? What are their religious beliefs?

2. Their communication preferences

Knowing your audience’s communication preferences will allow you to reach them effectively and efficiently where they are and in ways they prefer. Consider the following questions:

What is their preferred language?
How do they prefer to receive information (online, in person, print, audio, video)?
What is their literacy level for written communication and health information?
Where do they look for COVID-19 vaccine information?
Which social media platforms do they use?
Who do they trust for health information?
When and where are they most receptive to getting health information?

3. Their socio-cultural context

Download CDC’s Rapid Community Assessment Guide for steps and adaptable tools to quickly gather information and better understand your community of focus.

Your audience’s community, environment, and norms can shape the way they perceive and consider vaccination.

Thinking through the following questions can help you choose images, examples, and stories that resonate with their lived experience and make calls to action that align with what is feasible and acceptable.

What is their family status (single, family with children, multigenerational setting)?
What are common occupations? Are they essential or frontline workers?
Where do they live (urban, rural, suburban areas)?
Which racial and ethnic groups do they represent?
Where do people in their community gather?
What is their level of education and income?
What type of health care, if any, do they have access to?
How common is vaccination where they live (for example, is it the norm)?

If you don’t have answers to the questions above, don’t make assumptions . Instead, conduct web searches and literature reviews to identify research findings and other information about your audience. If information or research does not exist, consider conducting a community assessment to learn more.

Step 2: Create Tailored Messages and Materials

Focus on your audience’s “why” or motivations for getting vaccinated..

Tap into emotional triggers. Everyone who chooses to get vaccinated does it for a reason—to protect themselves and their family or to get back to activities like seeing friends, resuming work, or returning to in-person school.

The reasons that drive someone’s decision to get vaccinated will always be those that are most compelling to them personally.

Example: Young adults may be less concerned about their own health, but more motivated to help prevent infection in older family members. Messages to them should emphasize protecting their loved ones.

Incorporate values that resonate with your audience.

Values such as liberty and purity have been associated with vaccination intentions. Position them as reasons for getting vaccinated rather than reasons for not getting vaccinated.

Example for audiences with strong ties to liberty: “Vaccination helps you take personal control of your life and allows you to be free to live a healthy life.”
Example for audiences with strong ties to purity: “Vaccination boosts the body’s natural defenses against disease to keep you free of infection.”

Invite people to have conversations with their healthcare professionals.

Use messaging such as “talk to your doctor” instead of telling them to get vaccinated. This is a nonthreatening way to help your audience learn more about COVID-19 vaccination from someone they know and trust.

Provide details on how to get vaccinated.

Include simple, doable, and time-bound calls to action, such as “Go to Vaccines.gov to find a vaccination location today.” For local outreach, provide more specific details, such as vaccination locations, phone numbers, addresses, and hours.

For sample COVID-19 vaccination messages, refer to the following resources:

CDC Key Things to Know about COVID-19 Vaccines
Ad Council COVID Collaborative Messaging Recommendations
CDC Social Media Toolkit: COVID-19 Vaccinations
NIH COVID-19 Vaccination Communication: Applying Behavioral and Social Science to Address Vaccine Hesitancy and Foster Vaccine Confidence

Clear communication is important no matter who you’re trying to reach. The following are helpful resources when drafting your messaging and materials:

Everyday Words for Public Health Communication : A guide for writing clear public health messages.
CDC Clear Communication Index : A research-based tool to help you develop and assess public health communication materials.

Step 3: Get Audience Input and Feedback

Even if you have a strong understanding of your audience, it’s important to get input and feedback from them on the messages and materials before disseminating.

Include audience members in the design process.

If possible, include members of the intended audience in developing messaging and materials that they think will resonate. If resources allow, design a few versions of materials and messages to get feedback from the audience.

Test materials with the intended audience.

This will help ensure what you’ve developed will be effective, appealing, and useful to your audience and minimize the risk of unintended reactions. You can do this via focus groups or online surveys.

Consider engaging relevant community partners in materials design and testing. This can build trust and ensure that the materials are culturally appropriate.

For more guidance on testing materials, refer to the following resources:

CDC: Health Literacy: Develop and Test Materials : Guidance on ways to effectively develop and test materials for audiences of varying health literacy levels.
Making Health Communication Programs Work (Pink Book) : A publication from the National Cancer Institute (also called the Pink Book), a revision of the original 1989 guide offering planning steps for health communication programs.

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Open access
Published: 28 June 2022

Strategic exploration of the COVID-19 prevention campaign message: based on South Koreans’ perception type

Won Joo Choi 1 &
Jang Sun Hong 1

BMC Public Health volume 22 , Article number: 1262 ( 2022 ) Cite this article

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Many questions have been raised in the ongoing battle against COVID-19: How does the public perceive the COVID-19 prevention campaign as a member of the community?; What made the perception of the experts and the public on COVID-19 change from ‘simple’ to ‘serious’ epidemic?; What is the risk perception on health?; and what are the effective messages of the government’s campaign about disease prevention? As such, this study aimed to examine the perception of the public about the government’s campaign against COVID-19. Moreover, this study investigated the more effective messaging strategies for the campaign through subjective values, thoughts, and attitudes about the information dissemination, which became the basis for the degree of people’s participation in the disease prevention campaign.

In order to investigate the public perception on the campaign messages that are promoted by the government for prevention of COVID-19, this study implemented the Q methodology that studies subjective attributes of humans, unlike existing empirical studies. The Q methodology is an approach that endeavors to discover complex issues in human subjectivity through empirical studies. In order to determine the factors that trigger people’s voluntary and active practices and the motivation for disease prevention, the Q methodology is implemented to examine human subjectivity, thoughts, and attitudes. When it comes to the disease prevention campaigns that require strong civic awareness as members of the society, the rationale that induces people to participate in the campaign voluntarily and actively is based on their subjectivities, such as values, thoughts, and thinking. The voluntary awareness and behavior of the public campaign participants are based on their subjective perception about the given message.

In this study, it was ascertained that there were four different types of perceptions among Koreans on the message of the COVID-19 prevention campaign. The four perceptions are as follows: Type 1 is ‘the social threat caused by people with COVID-19 related symptoms;’ Type 2 is ‘the relational measures through personal hygiene;’ Type 3 is ‘the dependence on the social system due to the disease;’ and Type 4 is ‘the avoidance of the symptoms caused by human contact.’

As a result of this study, it was possible to draw a correlation between people’s perception of the campaign message for COVID-19 prevention and campaign messages. The response method of the campaign message must be differentiated according to the type of people’s perception of the disease prevention campaign, and the message development required by stages. The different characteristics of each type are clearly explained by keywords: symptomatic person for Type 1, personal hygiene for Type 2, social system for Type 3, and etiquette for Type 4. Type 1 perceived the messages about symptomatic persons as important to prevent the disease spread in the community whereas Type 2 tried to protect themselves from physical threats by developing proactive prevention through personal hygiene management prior to infection. Type 3 responded actively by relying on social systems, such as medical institutions or management organizations, while Type 4 positively responded to the messages related to etiquette that allowed them to avoid virus infection caused by contact with others.

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Introduction

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak a global pandemic. COVID-19 was initially considered a novel coronavirus that would soon subside, similar to the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome-related coronavirus (MERS) and Zika virus disease. Contrary to expectations, COVID-19 spread rapidly around the world and although there are regional differences, pandemic situations have been a ongoing repetitive cycle with the emergence of mutations of the virus. Due to its rapid spread and high mortality rate, COVID-19 created a pandemic situation that has paralyzed social systems. The current pandemic situation, which has caused unprecedented social problems, is so stringent that it has dire situations that have led to the cessation of economic and human activities [ 11 ]. Fortunately, vaccinations against COVID-19 have begun in different countries from January 2021 (with various vaccine brands such as Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Janssen, etc.). Which has allowed the situation to become much more stable; nevertheless, the number of confirmed cases is still on the rise and these circumstances seem to continue with the emergence of new mutant viruses. On July 7, 2021, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, of the WHO stated in a media briefing that “the world is at a perilous point in the current pandemic,” as COVID-19 deaths had passed the tragic milestone of four million recorded deaths ( https://www.who.int/director-general/speeches/detail/director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19-7-july-2021 ). Recognizing the gravity of COVID-19, each country, including the G7 countries, have implemented quarantine measures but were inadequate in stopping the spread of the infection.

The Korean government acknowledged the severity of the disease on January 2020, when the domestic outbreak began. Korea has prepared and implemented various countermeasures which began on February 2020, including campaigns on preventive measures, rules on daily living, and basic guidelines on responses against COVID-19. On the beginning stages of the virus, due to the absence of accurate information about COVID-19, there were social confusions and mask shortages. To solve these problems, the government-led prevention campaign was launched to encourage the public to overcome the fear of COVID-19 and actively participate in preventative countermeasures. Through this campaign, it allowed for a social atmosphere that raised awareness in preventions for COVID-19 as the public voluntarily responded to it. In Korea, the efforts of government and private sectors to stop the spread of COVID-19 have continued by encouraging the public to take part in government campaigns, promoting rapid drive-through testing, and sharing information using IT. The dedicated efforts of medical staff and quarantine volunteers have also largely contributed to the fight against COVID-19.

Many questions have been raised in the ongoing battle against COVID-19: How does the public perceive the COVID-19 prevention campaign as a member of the society? What made the perception of the experts and the public on COVID-19 change from ‘simple’ to ‘serious’ epidemic? What is the risk perception on health? and what are the effective messages of the Korean government’s campaign about disease prevention? As such, this study aims to examine the perception of the public about the Korean government’s campaign against COVID-19. Moreover, this study investigated the more effective messaging strategies for the campaign through subjective values, thoughts, and attitudes about the information dissemination, which became the basis for Korean’s participation in the disease prevention campaign.

The message of disease prevention campaign

Following the official declaration of COVID-19 as a pandemic by the WHO on March 11, 2020, international public health agencies have implemented stricter measures to mitigate or suppress the spread of the virus. Focusing on mitigation and containment policies carried out by major countries such as Canada, the United States, and some European countries have implemented various preventive campaigns from ‘virus containment strategies’ to ‘maintaining physical distance.’ Other examples include ‘strict personal hygiene,’ such as frequent hand washing, ‘physical and personal distancing,’ and ‘mask wearing’ in public places [ 2 ].

Doogan et al. [ 4 ] compares the guidelines of country-specific singularities about non-drug (non-vaccine) preventative campaigns. These comparisons were made between six countries (the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland) for the guidelines of: personal protection, social distancing, testing and tracking, blockade, workplace closure, and more. Particularly in the guidelines of ‘hand washing’ and ‘staying at home,’ the persuasive approach of the campaign was different for each individual country. The United States and Canada were much more receptive to hand hygiene than other countries, therefore, campaigns that encouraged people to wash hands while singing the ‘Happy Birthday’ song was a successful in the United States. Whereas in the U.K., the promotion of hand disinfection campaigns, with the use of alcohol based hand sanitizers, were much more successful. In the guidelines of the Australian government, it was stated that wearing a mask was not effective for the prevention of COVID-19 infections, but the people of Australia claimed otherwise. This shows the presence of conflict between the government’s campaign guidelines and the actual guidelines supported by the public. The guideline of ‘social distancing’ specifically ‘staying at home’ was taken very seriously in the U.S. and U.K. In the case of the U.K., this campaign was respected as a public duty rather than resistance.

Messages related to health and disease mainly use fear appeals that give shock and stimulation through threat or warning expression [ 17 ]. In addition to the degree and the magnitude of fear, such messages combine the concept of ‘self-harm’ and ‘other-harm’ [ 8 , 12 ] to introduce a direction towards whether the subject of the threat appeal is ‘from oneself or from others’ and ‘is subject of harm or the one being harmed’. Also, public messages are classified according to the degree of social threat, which refers to the physical threats experienced by others, and ethical-moral threats that cause harm to others [ 5 ]. Schoenbachler and Whittler [ 15 ] states that the direction of message appeals, such as physical and social threats, are subdivided into psychophysiological, physio-psychosocial, and psychosocial threats which lead to more complex conceptualization.

The message frames of a disease are used to more clearly understand the public’s preferences on health-related messages. It is a pattern by the perception of the messages and about the power the public has in the process of health-related decision-making [ 10 ]. Various stories and news articles on disease prevention published by the government and public organizations provide the public with the appropriate information to respond to specific or infectious diseases. Although the related informative message serves its function as public promotion, there have been situations in which people have refused to take preventive actions [ 16 ]. This is because out of disbelief, people tend to acquire health-related information through unreliable sources through the internet, rather than getting the information from reliable sources such as medical professionals or medical journalists [ 3 ]. However, as the information about the disease is limited, incomplete, and sometimes inappropriate, the information provided are scarce, leading to unreliability. During the crisis of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), the frame of ‘blockade’ was deployed to overcome the situation, focusing on the marginalized groups [ 19 ]. During the prevalence of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), the focus was on the failed policies, using frames like ‘politics’ and ‘interest conflict’ on top of the pattern of overcoming the crisis [ 1 ]. The message conveyed by media tends to be contextualized by framing and then delivered as a newly conceptualized content. Therefore, it is paramount to focus on the frame formed by central organizations and the production of media messages need to centralize around these factual information to avoid confusion [ 11 ].

The messages for the campaign for disease prevention influence the response of perception through various health variables. In other words, a health variable also plays a major role in shaping the individual’s attitude and mindset [ 9 ]. For example, it can be a frame recognized by the public, as it can affect frame perception, and have a multifaceted tendency that can become the general structure of the frame.

The Q methodology is a tool to measure human subjectivity [ 13 ]. The effectiveness of public campaigns designed for disease prevention is not a unilateral message led by government policy; rather, it is related to the degree of people’s voluntary participation in the campaign message. The voluntary awareness and behavior of the campaign participants are based on their subjective perception about the given message. Behavior is a response to subjective values and perceptions. Subjectivity is the ‘subjective perspective on phenomena’ and includes all objects that exist in the inner world, such as the intrinsic disposition or taste of human as an observer [ 6 ]. In order to understand human beings, it is necessary to properly understand social phenomena or archetypal essence of men, while grasping the subjectivity essentially inherent in these elements. In order to investigate the public perception on the campaign messages that are promoted by the government for prevention of COVID-19, this study implemented the Q methodology that studies subjective attributes of humans, unlike existing empirical studies. When it comes to the campaigns for the prevention of diseases that require aggressive civic awareness for the members of society, the rationale that induces people to participate in the campaign voluntarily and actively is based on their subjectivities which include, values thoughts, and thinking. Therefore, this study examined the following issues: 1) How are the people’s perceptions on the COVID-19 prevention campaign message classified? 2) What are the differences between each type? and 3) What is the message strategy to increase the effectiveness of disease prevention campaigns? In addition, this study examined the association with previous studies that investigated the message strategy of the existing disease prevention campaigns.

A study of Q methodology begins with the development of a concourse. Various things such as statements, paintings, fragrances, etc. can be the subject of concourse, which also represents the world of communication about the topic [ 13 ]. A concourse refers to gathered statements about a topic, which is the general group of the items or shared opinions extracted from certain culture. It exists for every individual and may be shared with others, depending on the situation [ 6 ]. In order to compose the Q sample , the official campaign practice messages of the government were targeted from February 2020 to February 2021, which focus on the official posts on the homepages of: ‘Central Disaster Management Headquarters,’ ‘Central Disease Control Headquarters,’ and ‘Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.’ There was a total of 1,479 campaign messages in the government guidelines during the time period, and the samples were collected focusing on the health campaigns to the public in accordance with the direction of research. Based on this, the final screening was conducted in consideration of some factors such as ‘preventive measures for individuals and households,’ ‘hygiene and immunity, face-to-face contact,’ ‘medical and disease-related issues,’ ‘guidelines for symptomatic persons, self-quarantine, and all citizens.’ As a result, a total of 33 representative statements were extracted.

The P sample refers to the actual respondents with the subjective perspective. Because they are not simple research participants but a variable, the participants respond to the Q sample according to their defined point of view. Since the type of human subjectivity is not affected by the number of samples, it reflected Fisher’s structuring method for 32 P samples according to the small-sample doctrine of the Q methodology. For the P sample, 16 males and 16 females were selected in consideration of the gender ratio. Their composition by age included 16 people in their teens to 20 s, eight people in their 30 s to 40 s, and eight people in their 50 s to 60 s who searched the COVID-19 related news more than once up to five times a day.

Ethical considerations

According to Article 13 (2) ( http://irb.or.kr/menu02/commonDeliberation.aspx ) of the Enforcement Rules of the Korea Institute for Bioethics Policy (KoNIBP), this study is excluded from ethical considerations because it does not specify the subject and does not collect or record sensitive information of individuals. In addition, all processes were conducted after sufficient verbal consent to each P sample for the purpose of research and the use of the results of the survey. In addition, research procedures, guarantees for anonymity and privacy were explained to each P sample.

Q sorting and data processing

Q sorting is a process in which the respondent recognizes the relative importance of all Q samples by making the P sample distribute all Q samples within themselves. The relative importance of the respondents in the Q samples is accepted as an overall image of the research topic, and the subjectivity of the respondent intervenes in this process. In this study, the campaign messages that were selected as the Q samples were forcibly distributed by the respondents in the 9-point scale, based on the condition ‘What do you think is the most important response to prevent COVID-19?’ (See Table 1 ) During the Q sorting, an in-depth interview was conducted on the Q samples that were the most important (+ 4) and least important (-4) as shown in Table 1 , and the interview details were utilized as basic data to interpret each type. After the Q sorting, the data was treated with QUANL statistics program after coding.

The results were derived through the ‘principal component analysis’ of the Q factor analysis. In addition, the correlation coefficients between factors were reviewed while factor weights were reflected. Also, explanatory variables and screen tests were additionally implemented to develop a comprehensive process for type classification. As a result, four types of eigenvalue of 1 or higher were finally discovered. The cumulative variables of the four types were found to be 59.40% with high explanatory power (see Table 2 ).

Type 1: Social threats caused by symptomatic persons

Type 1 perceives as important the messages to be followed by people with COVID-19 symptoms, in order to prevent them from spreading the virus in the community. This type shows high involvement in the preventive measures related to others’ infection caused by symptomatic persons as reflected in these statements: ‘Those with symptoms should refrain from going out and avoid going to school or reporting for work (#25, z = 1.88)’; ‘If symptomatic, inform medical staff of all travel history overseas (if any) and any contact with persons who have had respiratory symptoms (#28, z = 1.83)’; ‘Those with symptoms should observe themselves for 3–4 days and get plenty rest at home (#26, z = 1.79)’; and ‘Those with symptoms should refrain from going out and visiting other areas in the country where COVID-19 is endemic (#29, z = 1.31)’. Above all, they prioritize blocking the number of cases that may harm others as it is a highly contagious disease. This is a characteristic similar to a social threat [ 5 ] that harms others ethically and morally. They feel the spread of the virus is a social threat, thus, they adhere to guidelines on social isolation and virus blockage, such as living in an isolated place (#31, z = 1.35), wearing masks when visiting medical institutions for treatment or other purposes (#20, z = 1.06), etc. (see Table 3 ).

“You should stay at home if you have COVID-19 symptoms because it is contagious and may spread to everyone in the society. The only way to prevent the spread of infection from a symptomatic person is to avoid contact with him/her as much as possible. Because it is entirely based on individual autonomy, you must avoid contact with others if you have symptoms to prevent social spread (P1; P17; P22; P25).”

These type of people are negative about the proactive preventive message for common diseases. As their interest is in the spread of the virus by symptomatic persons, the preventive messages related to proactive measures are not perceived as being important. They are not receptive to the messages related to individual practices for prevention, such as ‘Keeping a distance more than 2 m (at least 1 m) from others’ (#15, z = -1.46); ‘Disinfecting frequently touched items every day’(#7, z = -1.33); ‘Avoid visiting crowded places’(#12, z = -1.15), etc. The reasons that they are negative about ‘Refrain from eating and stay for only a short time when visiting places is inevitable’ (#13, z = -1.07) and ‘Restrict entry of outsiders as much as possible’ (#10, z = -1.02) is that such preventive measures cannot protect them from infection once symptoms appear. They are also negative about vaccination (#33, z = -1.08) (see Table 3 ), which is a powerful proactive measure against COVID-19, and thus agree with the non-drug prevention campaigns [ 4 ].

“Even if we practice social distancing, isn’t it useless if an infected person is in a large crowd like public transportation or the office (classroom)? Since we are not sure whether we are infected with COVID-19, it is most important to block the infection from symptomatic persons (P15; P23).”

The people in this type prefer the message guidelines that are directed to a specific target, such as symptomatic persons, rather than campaign messages targeting an unspecified majority like the entire nation. This is the stage of providing a customized program so that messages of the public campaign for disease prevention are provided directly to the targets. From the point of view of the messages, whether the subject of harm is from oneself or from others, these type of people tend to respond to other-harm messages. Furthermore, it is the type that gives importance to post-countermeasures messages.

Type 2: Relational response through personal hygiene

Type 2 focuses on preventive messages designed to protect themselves in relation to the COVID-19 crisis. In order to prevent human-to-human transmission of the disease, they think it is more important to be careful about interpersonal actions causing direct contact rather than the government’s preventive measures. They think the following messages are important: ‘Wash hands with soap under running water for over 30 s or disinfect hands with sanitizer’ (#1, z = 2.45); ‘Cover your mouth and nose with your sleeve when coughing or sneezing’ (#2, z = 1.51); and ‘Avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth with unwashed hands’ (#3, z = 1.09). For these type of people, the following is recommend: immediately contact a call center or public health center for treatment if you have any symptoms of fever or unstable respiratory function (#30, z = 1.09); follow the instructions of the quarantine authorities if undergoing self-quarantine (#32, z = 1.33); and have a positive attitude toward proactive physical prevention to avoid further increase in confirmed cases (see Table 4 ). This type protects itself from the physical threats [ 5 ] posed by the disease by taking precautions through personal hygiene management even before becoming infected with COVID-19.

“Hands are the dirtiest part of our body, so I think that frequent hand washing or disinfection can sufficiently prevent me from contracting the disease. In order to avoid suffering from physical pain caused by an infection, it is necessary to thoroughly manage personal hygiene. In order to maintain my health, I need to pay more attention to my hygiene first (P2; P4; P18; P27; P31).”

Even though COVID-19 is a dangerous epidemic, this type believes that it is important to communicate carefully with others and maintain daily activities rather than blindly deterring exchanges with others. They negatively perceive the messages that ignore human sociality, although the COVID-19 pandemic is still ongoing. They are reluctant to communicate with others through phone or SNS to avoid directly meeting one another (#9, z = -2.00), and believe it is acceptable to work in a closed environment with others (#18, z = -1.68). Although they are sensitive to personal hygiene, they stress importance in sociality. For this reason, these type of people do not care much about borrowing others’ towels or other personal items such as cell phones (#8, z = -1.31) and do not care about disinfecting items after being used by others (#7, z = -1.22). They are also often unbothered about sharing food during mealtime or snacks (#14, z = -1.37) (see Table 4 ).

“I think it is okay to meet people as long as you follow the quarantine rules. Social distancing for more than two meters and wearing a mask will prevent the spread of infection. You can’t stop interacting with people and socializing because of the fear of infection (P3; P8; P32).”

These are the type of people that want to maintain social relationships through human exchanges by implementing preventive actions that become the guidelines for personal hygiene management in their daily lives. These people consider the universality of behavioral aspects to improve the health status of the targets in a public campaign. To the public that is not much sensitive to the disease, a message that can be easily understood and actively practiced in the current situation is more effective than the one that creates a high level of fear. When it comes to judging the victims, these people respond to the message appeal of ‘self-harm’ that weighs on “Am I the harming object?”. In terms of proactive measures and post-countermeasures, it is a type that gives importance to proactive messages.

Type 3: Dependence on social systems due to the disease

Type 3 relies on social systems, such as medical institutions or management authorities in relation to the transmission of COVID-19, with a focus on the messages of active response against the infection. The emphasis is on the containment and mitigation of the virus by the health environment and institutional systems, rather than implementing personal hygiene or social distancing. Those with suspected or confirmed symptoms of COVID-19 must rely on the institutional environments or medical institutions to prevent transmission and provide treatment. These type of people is very receptive to messages like ‘Those subject to self-quarantine must strictly follow the instructions of medical personnel and quarantine authorities (#32, z = 1.77)’; ‘Those with symptoms should refrain from going out and visiting other areas in the country where COVID-19 is endemic (#29, z = 1.39)’; and ‘If you develop fever and respiratory symptoms, contact a call center or public health center and visit a screening clinic (#30, z = 1.52)’. To prevent the spread of COVID-19, they are willing to stay alone in isolated places (#31, z = 1.74), avoid going out (#25, z = 1.00), and prioritize getting a COVID-19 vaccine, rather than other available vaccinations such as pneumococcal and influenza vaccines (#33, z = 1.92). Regarding the persons with symptoms, they perceive as essential the messages like ‘Those with symptoms should use their own car when visiting medical institutions’ (#27, z = 1.27) or ‘If symptomatic, inform medical staffs of overseas travel history (if any) and possible contact with persons who have had respiratory symptoms’ (#28, z = 1.22) (see Table 5 ). Unlike Type 1, Type 3 attaches great importance to vaccination and believes that disease should be managed and controlled professionally and systematically.

“I think vaccination is the best way to prevent coronavirus infection. Many healthcare professionals say that vaccination can not only stop the spread of infection to society, but also lower the risk of having a serious condition after contracting the disease. In particular, those with high-risk conditions should be controlled and managed by following the instructions of the quarantine authorities or medical institutions rather than following their own judgment. An effective social management system is needed to cope with the coronavirus (P12; P13; P14; P16; P19; P20).”

They are more interested in the actions to be taken after being infected with COVID-19 rather than proactive prevention. The messages on universal simple disease preventive measures are not perceived as important. They dismiss medication or checking medical treatment schedules of those with chronic disease as separate matters (#23, z = -1.58), and a balanced diet, regular exercise, and sufficient sleep are not important at this point (#4, z = -1.55). These type of people are willing to accept the professional and systematic messages on the coronavirus symptoms (see Table 5 ).

“I am not interested in any contents that are not related to the guidelines of medical institutions or government authorities to respond to the coronavirus. I think the only way to quickly overcome this situation is following the preventive rules against the virus infection guided by the government or medical institutions (P13).”

Type 3 takes the messages of systematic countermeasures from the government or medical institutions as being important due to the increased number of COVID-19 confirmed cases and the high fatality rate. They value the practical quarantine measures focused on COVID-19 and the messages guiding the persons confirmed to be infected with COVID-19. The public campaigns related to this should establish a customized program so that a direct message can be delivered to the targets, which are conscious of the confirmed persons. From the perspective of the message regarding the subject of harm, a message appealing to ‘other-harm’ is more effective in this type. They are more sensitive to the messages of post-countermeasures than proactive ones and tend to trust and follow professional and systematic social management systems.

Type 4: Avoidance of the symptoms caused by personal contact

Type 4 gives importance to preventive messages related to viral infection through contact with others. In particular, these type of people respond sensitively to airborne transmission by droplet and respiratory symptoms, while emphasizing personal etiquette, wearing a mask, and physical distancing to avoid the symptoms caused by the virus. They think that it is good to refrain from talking loudly and singing when other people are around (#17, z = 1.93) and it is considered basic etiquette to cover one’s mouth with their sleeves when coughing or sneezing (#2, z = 1.75). Moreover, they try to avoid contact with persons who have fevers or respiratory symptoms (#16, z = 1.89), always wear a mask when going to medical institutions (#20, z = 1.37), and will follow the instructions of medical personnel and quarantine authorities (#32, z = 1.30) (see Table 6 ).

“I am very careful when coughing or sneezing or when I am in a crowded place, as you can easily get infected with coronavirus. I heard that the coronavirus may be spread through airborne transmission, so I am always careful where there are other people around (P6; P10; P26).”

They respond positively to the messages about social distancing and minimizing exposure to the virus, but they hope to secure their personal information and privacy. They respond negatively to the use of QR codes or electronic access systems when visiting public places (#19, z = -1.32) because they believe that these measures, by the government, to prevent the spread of the virus are a violation to individual human rights. Although prevention is the best option, they believe it is unnecessary to live isolated from the outside world, even if COVID-19 is spreading (#10, z = 1.39), as beliefs of personal life and freedom should be maintained with the normal scope of daily life (see Table 6 ).

“After the outbreak of COVID-19, many guidelines related to its prevention have been introduced. I think it is important to follow all the guidelines to avoid getting infected with the virus, but sometimes it's difficult to follow them all. Wouldn’t it be better if I take care of myself according to my lifestyle and situation? (P10; P24)”

They are a type that corresponds to the stage of considering the universality of the behavioral aspect to improve the health status of the targets in a public campaign. These people prefer the macroscopic messages guiding the public that are relatively less sensitive to epidemics by inculcating the idea that all areas apply to oneself. These types of people perceive the virus from its symptoms and determine their attitudes and behaviors, regardless of whether the symptoms are from others or from themselves. This type is more sensitive to the messages with specific symptoms and countermeasures of the disease rather than figuring out the subjects of the infection. They correspond to the initial stage of post-countermeasures rather than proactive prevention.

Discussion and implications

The directions suggested by the various messages on the disease prevention campaigns do not always draw positive perceptions and effective responses from the public. What is perceived as “positive” or “negative” varies from person to person. The frames created by themselves may be more effective than the ones given by others, such as the media or government. Therefore, ‘what people chose’ can result in more positive efficiency than ‘what is chosen.’ The health goals chosen by the people reinforce such perceptions and can be practiced in their daily lives as a habit [ 7 ]. The success of public campaigns on disease prevention depends on how the state or related organizations reflect their messages into the subjective perceptions of the people. In connection with the COVID-19 prevention campaigns, personal hygiene, physical distancing, and vaccination were used as the message frames, along with various situational contexts. The shift in the people’s risk perception regarding COVID-19 from simple to serious epidemic does not imply the implementation of what is stipulated in the frame. It rather indicates that people’s perception on existing or newly created frames have changed according to the situations caused by the spread of COVID-19. Besides, the case of Korea can be referred to by governments and communication officials from other countries to take a new perspective on COVID-19 response strategies.

As a result of this study, it was possible to draw a correlation between people’s perception of the campaign message for COVID-19 prevention and campaign messages (see Table 7 ). Therefore, the response method of the campaign message must be differentiated according to the type of people’s perception of the disease prevention campaign, and the message development required by stages. The different characteristics of each type are clearly explained by keywords: symptomatic person for Type 1, personal hygiene for Type 2, social system for Type 3, and etiquette for Type 4. Type 1 perceived the messages about symptomatic persons as important to prevent the disease spread in the community whereas Type 2 tried to protect themselves from physical threats by developing proactive prevention through personal hygiene management prior to infection. Type 3 responded actively by relying on social systems, such as medical institutions or management organizations, while Type 4 positively responded to the messages related to etiquette that allowed them to avoid virus infection caused by contact with others.

With respect to the subjects of ‘harm’ studied by Peak and Hove [ 12 ], it was possible to identify the positive correlation between Type 1 and Type 3 with ‘other-harm’ and Type 2 with ‘self-harm.’ Type 2, which emphasizes personal hygiene, prioritizes proactive prevention and is exposed to the first stage of the disease prevention campaigns. The universal messages on practice related to personal hygiene are required at this stage. Type 4 is sensitive to the infection through contact and accepts messages on post-countermeasures in the second stage of the campaign, when the disease spread in the society has progressed to some extent. When it comes to contact caused by personal interchanges, the messages related to the observations of universal behaviors are required. Types 1 and 3 tend to be exposed to the messages about post-countermeasures in the third stage of the campaign, in which the social spread of disease has become serious. These types require customized messages constructed for each individual situation or singular target for disease treatment. However, there is a difference between Type 1 and Type 3, as Type 1 focuses on symptomatic individuals whereas Type 3 focuses on messages related to the social system.

The message of a public campaign should be flexible and multifaceted rather than uniform to achieve a successful campaign. In a previous study, the messages shared at a certain point of time naturally constituted the social frame and then used for message framing as a belief or symbol [ 14 ]. Various preventive campaigns, from virus containment strategies to physical distancing and vaccination, were used as message frames in accordance with the situation [ 2 ]. Nonetheless, the message frame of disease prevention campaigns did not always work positively. Sometimes, negative message frames were made with limited, incomplete, and inappropriate contents. During the AIDS crisis, a blockade frame was used [ 19 ] while using the frames of politics and interest conflict with the pattern of overcoming a crisis during the SARS outbreak [ 1 ]. Some frames emphasized specific themes or episodes [ 18 ]. In the public campaigns for disease prevention, it is difficult to generalize the message framing in a light and simple way because the success of the campaigns cannot be guaranteed without considering individual subjectivity and diversity. According to the result of the study, the types of people’s perceptions on the messages of prevention campaigns amidst the COVID-19 pandemic differ by characteristic. The difference in the aspects that people perceive as important for the same disease is clear. The purpose of the public campaign for disease prevention is to overcome disease through the spread of social participation, rather than production of issues through message framing. Such campaigns should be approached in terms of responding to the messages by target and stage. In addition, it should be taken into account that subjective perceptions on disease and its prevention among people differ depending on political, social, and cultural values of each society.

Availability of data and materials

Not applicable.

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Choi, W.J., Hong, J.S. Strategic exploration of the COVID-19 prevention campaign message: based on South Koreans’ perception type. BMC Public Health 22 , 1262 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-022-13671-2

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