What is said about the pandemic in Spain
Facts, comments and analysis on the pandemic in Spain in the in-depth analysis of the newspaper El Pais
Experts, writes El Pais , warn that the frenzy in managing the crisis is undermining public confidence.
Clear and well-structured messages are essential in any crisis communication, and even more so in a very serious health crisis such as that caused by the coronavirus . Public health and sociology experts warn that contradictory messages from the authorities, such as those we have heard in recent days in relation to Madrid, undermine the trust of citizens and can be very damaging to working as a society to control the epidemic.
“The contradictions between the administrative levels and the lack of agreement and coherence of the measures have a very negative impact on the adhesion of the population to the preventive measures”, explains José Miguel Carrasco, member of the Spanish Society of Epidemiology and researcher of Aplica. He gives the example that in the unconfined neighborhoods of Madrid so far, neighbors could follow mobility restrictions less because it gives more credibility to those who argue that the intervention threshold should be higher (1,000 cases per 100,000 inhabitants) than the tax (500 ). “At a time when the entire population should internalize the scale of the situation we are experiencing and integrate the need to follow preventive measures into their daily lives, contradictions and disagreements should be as little as possible,” he says.
Politicians, sociologist Josep Lobera recalls, "somehow decode complex realities for those who trust them". In other words, if citizens do not have all the information available, and moreover these are issues that involve some difficulty, they tend to look towards people who inspire them with confidence. The Spaniards saw both the Ministry of Health say that the epidemic is out of control in Madrid and that we must act with determination – "we are late", continued Minister Salvador Illa – and the regional government say that everything is under control and that the hospital occupation is improving. "If you trust the Madrid president, you will interpret reality based on what she describes, and this will influence your behavior," Lobera explained.
Measuring the impact on the degree of compliance with the recommendations is complicated, says Fernando Rodríguez Artalejo, professor of preventive medicine and public health at the Autonomous University of Madrid. But he says, "Contradictions in messages are undesirable, because they suggest they have an arbitrary component, and they reduce their credibility." "If the population perceives a lack of control, which does not really know what is good and what is not, it will comply only to avoid sanctions," adds epidemiologist Jesús Molina Cabrillana.
Lobera assures that the social sciences have had proof for years that, when faced with complex issues, especially in science and technology, citizens use the so-called shortcuts of trust, especially by believing in the politicians we trust or those we vote for. . Recent research examined data from US President Donald Trump's vaccine tweets showing the influence of these messages on vaccine rejection among his constituents. And she sees a problem for the future: "If the president of Madrid contradicts the government, which is the one who will give us vaccine recommendations, a person who trusts her will believe that the government has misdiagnosed the situation and the measures to be taken. ". And that, upon the resumption, "will erode the confidence that same person will have when the government says 'now we have to get vaccinated' or anything else related to the pandemic".
The political scientist Ivan Krastev, author of the essay “Is It Tomorrow Yet? How the pandemic will change the world, ”he says that success in managing the pandemic depended on factors such as social trust, the experience of health crises and the strength of public services, rather than whether the leaders were democratic regimes or authoritarian. And he points out that where there is more political division there is more discussion about the answer. In those countries, which include Spain, the polarization has intensified: people "more or less support the management of the crisis depending on whether they voted for the government or for the opposition".
According to César Calderón, an expert in political communication, there are many people in the pandemic who have already chosen their side and “very much trust the chosen side”. This happens with the most politicized. The rest, he says, "I don't know who to believe". The first victim of this war is the citizen, but the second is politics itself, he says. “Credibility is at the limit and the big beneficiaries are those who are outside the constitutional consensus, those who do not propose anything and whose role is only to criticize. Politicians must reflect and realize that they are paving the way for the messages of the national-populist parties, ”he adds.
Experts agree on what the messages should look like in a public health crisis like this. Carrasco defines them as follows: “Honest, transparent and faithful to reality, but also clear, simple and understandable”. And he stresses that it is very important to maintain credibility throughout the evolution of the crisis, "especially when the fatigue accumulated by the population is particularly high". As now, the population is asked to “make a new effort to follow the recommendations that will cause them more or less discomfort”: limitation of movement and activity, reduction of social interactions, etc. The discordant messages of the political authorities, who are the ones managing the crisis, have another dangerous derivation, Carrasco underlines: "They also challenge the credibility of those who generate the knowledge necessary to manage the crisis, science, as they provide visions different of a problem supported by the same data ".
(Extract from the foreign press review by Epr)
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/che-cosa-si-dice-della-pandemia-in-spagna/ on Sat, 03 Oct 2020 09:10:59 +0000.