Anons, you're going to want to read this. It's really good.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/lets-be-clear-bidens-confusing-the-shit-out-of-america
What we have here is failure to communicate.
I’m talking about the Biden administration’s tendency to issue confusing statements and then walk them back and clarify what they really meant. One minor, but recent, example involves the wearing of masks. As David Leonhardt writes in The New York Times, “The White House added to the confusion” on Tuesday by emailing staffers and telling them they would have to again wear masks. “The email explained that the C.D.C. had recently upgraded Washington, D.C., to having ‘substantial’ transmission, from ‘moderate,’” the article continues. However, “The online C.D.C. map… still showed the city as yellow, meaning it had only modest transmission.”
Did the White House get it wrong? Was the CDC map simply out of date? Does the email hint at vaccine mandates for all federal workers? It’s not clear—and that’s my point. “Clear messaging is one of the most powerful tools that public health officials have,” Leonhardt writes, “but only when they use it. And the CDC and the Biden administration did not do so.”
My guess is that Biden will eventually clarify this, as he so often does or has his spokespeople do for him. But clarifying things is one way of cleaning up a mess, which means there was a mess to begin with—as we saw again on Thursday when Biden stepped on his own vaccine announcement for a confusing argument with a reporter as he walked away at the end of his event. We have enough existing messes to clean up without manufacturing new ones. This president loves to say “let me be clear” but he’s often anything but clear—including on critical matters of public health.