Regarding the UK gov's new Covid campaign (“Act like you've got the virus”), I was asked on @SkyNews yesterday if “there is a problem with compliance now in terms of people adhering ... is the message is clear enough?”

Preparing took me down messaging rabbit holes.

🧵

2. On Friday night, to prepare for the interview, I duly looked at @DHSCgovuk's campaign.

Prof Whitty speaks to camera: “We must all stay home. If it is essential to go out, remember wash your hands, cover your face indoors, and keep your distance from others.”
3. The new campaign combines March 2020's strap-line – “Stay Home>Protect the NHS>Save Lives” with new messages (e.g., about the new variant).

“We all NEED” (below) is not the same as Whitty's “We MUST” - or the very clear "You MUST stay at home" text message from March 2020.
4. While looking online for the new campaign, I found this Telegraph description.

In fact, I saw this *before* the DHSC one.

I got confused since the words appeared in messaging from the first lockdown and I couldn't see them in the Whitty video.
5. Among many negative replies under the Telegraph tweet was the criticism that the 'new' campaign is “too late”, “MORE fear”; a “3 phrase mantra AGAIN”, “that ship has sailed”, “ANOTHER waste of money” – but apparently directed at the wrong campaign.
6. The same (old) words were used in the Evening Standard’s tweet about the new campaign - “If you go out, you can spread it. People will die" - but the link takes you to the new message.
7. Scrolling down the DHSC timeline to 8.1.21, the new campaign uses some images from the first lockdown campaign, but with wording adapted to the current situation.
8. A BBC Breakfast montage about the new campaign, topped and tailed with the Whitty-narrated video, included the words and images below (which are not in the video).
9. The message “Act like you’ve got it” – is, as @billHanage suggests, “good advice - BUT it has been good advice since March last year."

https://t.co/jP0UfgRiUH
10. And if “Act like you’ve got it” sounds familiar, it might be because @GrahamMedley said similar things on Newsnight last year.
11. So, what about the “problem with compliance”?

As @ReicherStephen writes, "that's the wrong question; adherence has been consistently high”.

@Yougov reported on 5.1.21 that 85% of people SUPPORT lockdown.

https://t.co/dYA106Al4L
12. So, people SUPPORT lockdown and report high ADHERENCE.

The simple fact is that not everyone CAN adhere to the instruction, “We must all stay home.”

As @AdamWagner1 wrote, “Problem is there have been mixed messages already on work.”

https://t.co/mAhh3JbGPM
13. 'Lockdown' rules (and meanings) have changed.

e.g., for many, it “is essential to go out” because the gov broadened the definition of key/critical worker, leading to more journeys, more public transport use, more pupils attending school, etc.

https://t.co/sDMNtAXhxS
14. And, as @ScienceShared writes, “The millions of people who cannot afford to self-isolate face a choice between Covid compliance and financial devastation.”

https://t.co/xK5SOFEc7d
15. To go from "schools are safe" to "schools are vectors of transmission", within 24 hours, from the same source, is such a spectacular communication failure: dizzying, chaotic, inconsistent, badly-timed, stress-inducing, trust-reducing.

Go to school don't go to school.

More from Government

This is a good piece on fissures within the GOP but I think it mischaracterizes the Trump presidency as “populist” & repeats a story about how conservatives & the GOP expelled the far-right in the mid-1960s that is actually far more complicated. /1

I don’t think the sharp opposition between “hard-edge populism” & “conservative orthodoxy” holds. Many of the Trump administration’s achievements were boilerplate conservatism. Its own website trumpets things like “massive deregulation,” tax cuts, etc. /2

https://t.co/N97v85Bb79


The claim that Buckley and “key GOP politicians banded together to marginalize anti-Communist extremism and conspiracy-mongering” of the JBS has been widely repeated lately but the history is more complicated. /3


This tweet by @ThePlumLineGS citing a paper by @sam_rosenfeld and @daschloz on the "porous" boundary between conservatives, the GOP and the far-right is relevant in this context.


This is a separate point but I find it interesting that Gaetz, like Roy Moore did In his failed Senate campaign, disses McConnell. What are their actual policy differences? MM supported taking health care away from millions, a tax cut for the rich, conservative judges, etc. /5

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Still wondering about this 🤔


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