Mask mandates are dropping like flies. Restrictions are being lowered. In my observation, it feels that they are going to the wayside not only because of dropping caseloads, but also because people are just more than ready to move on. There may be some complacence – a feeling that the ubiquitous Omicron has fostered a feeling of inevitability about exposure and eventual infection. But mostly, we are just tired – there is a strong sense of COVID fatigue, not just among people, but it seems even institutions.
Even perhaps FDA. In a recent blog posting, I looked back at the profile of FDA press releases over the period 2013-2021 (See What They Said 2021 – An Overview of FDA Press Statements). In it we saw that FDA had a good deal to say in 2020 putting out over 400 press statements, but that output fell considerably in 2021.
Not only was the agency saying less, it was saying less about COVID. Communications regarding aspects of agency work vis a vis the pandemic fell in 2021 compared to the year before, despite the number of developments in vaccines and therapeutics during the year. Looking at it on a month by month basis, you get a real impression of how much oxygen COVID-19 took of FDA’s communications.
COVID-related releases are indicated in orange while non-COVID are in blue. Looking to the right axis of the graph above, one can see that during 2020, COVID was over 50 percent of the discussion nearly all of the time. In April 2020, COVID-related statements comprised three quarters of FDA’s public facing releases, and it never went below 50 percent during the rest of the year. By contrast during 2021 there were some spikes, but the overall profile of COVID talk fell below the 50 percent mark during several months. And the first month 2022 (not a big month for press statements from the agency in general) saw a steep decline. The overall trend is definitely downward.
Why is this important? It may not be, but it also may be a signal from a communications perspective that it may be easier to get back to some of the topics – and some of the science – that we have maybe pushed aside for the past two years. Maybe there is opportunity to talk about the cancer moonshot, or the goal of ending HIV/AIDS or other pressing issues from which we were distracted#C.
Perhaps the pandemic is becoming normalized, perhaps we are just tired, or could there be less actually happening? Maybe it is a combination of all three. It is likely too early to tell. Certainly there are many mysteries remaining with respect to what it means to have COVID, to prevent it and to treat it and many more with respect to what it has done to us as individuals and collectively. But it would be nice to get back to other topics. We will have to see.
Photo by Isaac Quesada on Unsplash
