Important lessons for Leaders and Comms teams during #COVID19 #COVID19nz via John M Barry "The great Influenza epidemic"

..there is another lesson from 1918 that is clear. It involves fear and the media and the way authorities deal with the public. There was terror afoot in 1918, real terror.

The media and public officials helped create that terror - not by exaggerating the disease but by minimizing it, by trying to reassure.

..those who occupy positions of authority must lessen the panic that can alienate all within a society. They must retain the public's trust.

The way to do that is to distort nothing, to put the best face on nothing, to try to manipulate no one.

Leadership must make whatever horror exists concrete. Only then will people be able to break it apart. #COVID19 #COVID19nz