Calm-mongering
“Both the Biden administration and its critics, faced with an impending wave of disease with the potential for mass death and disability, chose to spend their time focused on critiquing or defending the tone of the messaging. The comical absurdity of the situation belies the horrific public health failure. It was a mass mortality event without precedent in the history of the United States. Given that the level of concern of the public was likely to impact their degree of adoption of risk mitigation measures, this misplaced focus on urging calm, rather than masking and vaccination, was a deadly mistake. A more honest discussion about the risks could have saved lives. All the back-and-forth about whether fear was or was not being mongered distracted from the task at hand, which should have been (checks notes) protecting the public from Omicron BA.1.”