7. COVID-19: Critiquing the Federal Response with former HHS Spokesman Bill Pierce, and Busting Coronavirus Myths with Epidemiologist Dr. Maria Sundaram

Communicating with the public during a crisis is as critical as it is difficult. And if it's seemed to you like President Donald Trump has been hitting many of the wrong notes during his daily media briefings, you're not alone. "They threw the plan out, and started to make up a new one, and they didn't need to," says Bill Pierce, who served as a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services during the George W. Bush Administration. "There are some basic fundamentals that they should have adhered to and didn't, unfortunately." In this episode, Pierce taps into his deep expertise in crisis communication and pandemic response planning to critique the federal comms response to the COVID-19 Coronavirus so far--what they've done right and what they've done wrong. Plus, Dr. Maria Sundaram, an epidemiologist at the Emory Rollins School of Public Health, takes calls from listeners to bust some myths about the pandemic which have been circulating on social media. Watch video of Dr. Sundaram's Q&A session here. Special thanks to Daniel Matarazzo for sharing his clever, uplifting Coronavirus musical parodies with the world. Check him out on Twitter or YouTube. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices