This is great, but a gigantic Public Communications disaster.<p>I had a vax-sceptic friend send me an article from a reputable source, quoting claims from the National Health Agencies and WHO etc. about the 'blood clots' which essentially conclude that 'they are rare and treatable' ... but my friends 'interpretation' was that the vax was 'unsafe'. She literally couldn't grasp that the data in the article was supposed to make her conclude it was 'safe'. She just read 'fear'.<p>40% of developed world people are either 'not very literate' or 'not paying attention' or have 'reading comprehension' problems whereing they are not going to engage with the material to derive conclusions.<p>While the public health agencies decisions are a little cautious, they are reasonable, but the 'communications' of it via random articles with bits of 'facts' is a complete disaster from a Public Communications perspective and is causing probably measurable harm.<p>If there is a 'marginal risk' of 4 in 1 million of 'blood clotting' and it's entirely treatable, then this information should be made available and transparent during the official conferences, but it should not be headline news.<p>Whenever material information is presented regarding concerns, they have to be contextualized, and if the conclusion is effectively 'the vax is perfectly safe, this is just an administrative thing' then this has to be repeated over and over.<p>From the FDA: "Out of every 10,000 women taking birth control pills, 3 to 9 of them will develop a blood clot".<p>That is about 100x greater than clotting from AstraZeneca Vaccine, and 10's of millions of American women are taking it <i>daily</i>. Now that's context.<p>Every single story about COVID needs to start and end with the 'Net reality facts' about vaccination, which as of today is: 'It's utterly safe, basically for everyone, and it will help stop the spread and keep other safe'.<p>When messaging critical information for the masses it needs to be simple, clear, consistent, repetitive, words need to be chosen very carefully, and assume you're dealing with a 'Grade 8' audience in terms of net comprehension/attention/understanding.<p>Almost all intelligent professionals live in bubbles, we tend to have no grasp of how it is out there for a large swath of the population.<p>Even public health agencies web-sites are overloaded with information, literally with critical information in 'downloadable PDFs' (???), it's not good, I hope we develop a new approach but I don't think we will.