pandemic and the Trump years | Allan Bonner Communications Management Inc.

Most often I ad lib on radio and TV or in newspaper interviews.  But, in the back of my mind is former CBS TV anchor Walter Cronkite’s old quote that there’s no such thing as an ad lib. There might be a turn of a phrase you’ve never made in that exact way, but you have entertained that thought or thought process before.  Then there’s the time Tom Brokaw was asked what he was doing just before an election broadcast.  “Writing out my ad libs” was his response. 

Sometimes to rehearse I’ll write out an Op Ed and sell it to a newspaper. Or I’ll just natter away at my wife or friends on the phone to rehearse.  Sometimes I’ll spend a dozen hours with academic studies to prepare for a series cable talk show.

On this occasion I’m referencing books about the pandemic and the Trump years.  I want to say something substantial and specific about the books, amongst my personal observations.  So I made notes. 

I hope they reveal a little about the media relations process for you.

COVID The Politics of Fear and the Power of Science by Marc Siegel, MD

This may have been a book about fear and risk, and the history of pandemics, quickly repurposed to be about this particular pandemic.  Regardless, there’s good information, even while the pandemic is still raging.

Flight or fight response…fear…risk perception…risk taking vs risk avoidance

Ghoulish note that we didn’t have the survivors to fill hospital beds to overflowing.

History NY quarantine allowed him to fly in and out within 24 hours

Yellow Fever in 18^th Century … Hong Kong, Spanish, 1957, SARS, MERS, Ebola

Hospitals are normally about 80% filled and thus not ready

How you make a vaccine (in chicken vs mammalian eggs or cultures). We didn’t upgrade to the faster way

Smallpox vaccine used 1000 years ago in India and by George Washington on his troops

Meanwhile other huge risks are not being addressed adequately…33 million people with HIV and 3 million deaths per year…3-500 million cases of malaria a year with about 2 million deaths…1/3 of the world is starving…15 million children die of hunger each year.  Chemical plants not adequately protected…Neither are laboratories studying potential weapons, and we are not protected from nuclear terrorism  

People with severe injuries were ignored in emergency rooms in favour of COVID cases   

The old librarian interested in children’s development and the pharmacist who knew your family are gone and replaced by Google

American Crisis Leadership Lessons from the Covid-19 Pandemic Andrew Cuomo

It’s hard to ignore the accusations about the governor which have surfaced since this book was published.  It’s also ironic how he deals with deaths in nursing homes.  But there is still something to learn from the governor who was so active and communicative during the crisis.

Nursing home cover story…did he…did he have to…did Florida…was Florida required to?

Odd news conference style which worked

Good ideas:

1. Cleaning the MTC daily
2. Live in care givers in hospitals and nursing homes in France
3. 1% of New Yorkers pay about 50% of taxes—hope they come back
4. Calling up retired health care workers and newly arrived foreign workers
5. Fast provision of day care facilities managed by teachers and day care providers to look after essential workers’ kids
6. Fog of War – Fog of Covid
7. Hard to find a person who can come up with good ideas and hard to find a person who can implement good ideas.  But it’s impossible to find a person who can do both.
8. Constructive impatience.
9. Making hand sanitizer in prisons, but in smaller containers. 
10. Chapter headings Date…Number of cases…hospitalizations…number of deaths

Odd questions:

1.  Why did he get credit and Trump get blame when NY had among the highest cases? 
2. Why didn’t the Premier of Quebec or Just Trudeau get blamed for high cases in Quebec?
3. “Almost all major (New York City) actions require state approval”
4. Not enough mutual aid agreements among states
5. Ventilators should not have been a mystery
6. Bag ventilators should not have been tried
7. Blaming federal government for not helping with supplies

Turn of a phrase

1.  Too many opinions are “tweet deep”

Hoax Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth by Brian Stelter

Many of these books are what journalists call history on the run.  We’re not through the pandemic yet, but the first books are out on it and related topics.  Historians will likely link the tenure of President Trump with the pandemic.  Or will they?  We don’t think of President Wilson when we think of the Spanish flu, Eisenhower when we think of the 1957 pandemic, or Johnson or Nixon when the Hong Kong flu comes up.  Perhaps we do think of President Ford and the Swine Flu because he rushed a vaccine and some got sick from it. 

Ideas:

1.  Symbiotic relationship between Fox News, Republicans, & Trump
2. Trump didn’t think he was going to win
3. Relationship between Hannity & Trump
4. Hannity makes $30 million a year from his home TV studio on Long Island
5. Originally Trump & Rupert Murdoch were at odds
6. Ailes, Megan Kelly, Bill O’Reilly 
7. Fox and Friends and Monday Mornings with Trump made him more than the apprentice
8. People who watch Fox think it’s the Home Team
9. MSNBC & CNN viewers switch back 7 forth but Fox viewers stay with Fox