“6 feet apart” or “mask up” are cool slogans but 8 months into this epidemic, we should be communicating better than this.

People don’t need more slogans.

They need to understand the activities & scenarios that led to the spread of #covid19 so they can calculate risk better.

2/ There are a few now “famous” outbreaks— restaurant in China w/ AC spread; wedding in Jordan w/ sick father in law; children’s camps in Georgia; Buddhist monk outbreak on a bus— these have been important & informative.

But we should be reporting so many more of these.

3/ These data should be collected quickly, analyzed, & reported in a public-facing way so that people can figure out whether or not they really want to go to that restaurant indoors, or if they want to take their mask off during their lunch break.

4/ These can also help people understand activities that are more safe, such as exercising outdoors, where transmission is so much lower. Perhaps more people would be running without masks, and more would be masking indoors and avoiding high risk activities.

5/ People are smart, & they are committed to their own safety. But as time goes on, people also weigh the risk and benefits of activities as they try to return to life as much as they can. Having specific examples & a real breakdown of how a super spreading event happened...

6/ Is so important. It’s easy to say “stay 6 feet apart” over and over again. Or scream “masks” louder. But there is more work to be done in terms of how we communicate about the spread of infection. It gives us something concrete to grab on to & apply into our own lives.

7/ No matter what, most people will not be masking the whole day, nor do they need to. But when you fail to help people understand the situations which led to outbreaks & why, they will eventually have to make assumptions about what is and isn’t safe.

8/ An outbreak in our state happened at a hospital during a lunch break where workers took off masks to eat together. Now I am sure they did not intend for spread to happen. But spread often can happen when we least expect or consider it.

9/ We can use that example to very clearly point out to many people who will be returning to work that they should head outside for lunch when possible. Using outbreak examples in real time can prevent the same mistakes from happening again. Saying “wear a mask” isn’t enough.

10/ @RanuDhillon & I have a piece coming out on this shortly— we have discussed this at length for months: outbreak investigations can truly help us focus on the details of what went wrong/why. The fact that we rely on media reports & very staggered journal articles is a problem

Thread— we need better communication on how spread of #covid19 is happening

Cc @chrissyfarr @cshea4 @elizabarclay @binajv @germanrlopez @virginiahughes @amymaxmen @andersen @angie_rasmussen @DrOniBee @aetiology