CDC needs to improve its COVID messaging. Here's how it can do better.
Today we're leading the newsletter with a column on COVID messaging. Many Americans have been confused about COVID messaging since the beginning of the pandemic. But, there's a chance to still make things better.
CDC needs to improve its COVID messaging. Here's how it can do better.
By James Davis
Americans don't trust their public health experts, a serious problem in the best of times but downright dangerous amid a pandemic. Just 44% of Americans trust in the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, while only 40% trust Dr. Anthony Fauci (the nation's point man on all things COVID) according to an NBC News survey conducted this month. Trust in politicians is even lower.
It's perfectly understandable why Americans feel this way. At all levels, our public health agencies have been using contradicting claims and supposition masquerading as fact. And it's not hard to diagnose the root of the problem. To quote the Captain's speech in "Cool Hand Luke," "what we've got here is failure to communicate."
Today's Editorial Cartoon
Why 'Billions' can show branded spin bike without Peloton's permission
By Christopher J. Schiller
A particular exercise product made a surprise appearance Sunday in the sixth-season premiere of Showtime's "Billions." I'll spare you any spoilers and simply say Peloton wasn't thrilled with a scene involving one of its spin bikes. The company put out a statement making clear it didn't sign off on its brand being used in the show.
Whenever headlines mark situations like this one, I'm reminded of the oft-asked but seldom-understood question of trademarked product use in film and television productions. The inquiry is usually phrased as either, “How can they get away with that?” or “Is it OK if we do that, too?”
As an entertainment attorney with experience in intellectual property and related areas, I can shed some light. With a standard caveat – you really need to pass the specific details of your situation by your lawyer; no, really, you do – I can provide a general sense of what the issues are and hopefully indicate when a production may want to put its law firm on speed dial.
We're failing a generation of kids suffering from trauma
By Goldie Hawn
We all know how magical a child’s imagination can be – the wonderful worlds they create in their minds. But there’s a flip side to the joyful creativity that can turn a big cardboard box into a spaceship. A child’s mind exposed to real-world fear, without the ability to properly process it, can go down dark passages leading to nothing less than existential dread.
Generations of children have had to face this dread in many forms: The kids who watched the Challenger space shuttle disaster on live television in the 1980s; young people who saw America come under attack on 9/11; and particularly in the COVID-19 era, where children, their parents and their grandparents are all under real and immediate threat from a plague that has killed millions and isolated so many from the friends, family and support structures that all humans depend on for perspective, encouragement and love.
Other columns to read today
- Why are TV shows about despicable people so popular?
- Final 'Jeopardy!' answer is 'Who is Amy Schneider'?
- Putin's war in Ukraine: U.S. is moving too slowly to stop the horror
- Youth mental health crisis: A simple coping toolbox can help children
Columns on qualified immunity
We are doing a series examining the issue of qualified immunity. For more on the series read here.
- Roadside assistance caught the cop who killed my cousin. Justice shouldn't be so rare.
- I was a victim of police brutality. It's why I became a cop.
- A rookie cop mistook my sons for gang members and searched them at gunpoint. Where's our justice?
- Suing cops takes forever because they get 3 chances to appeal. Why should they?
This newsletter was compiled by Jaden Amos.