"Ineffective communication" easily improved!

John Lynham rightly asks "Where are the public health announcements on TV?" (Letters, 12/01/21). With guidance limited to "politicians` announcements and dull official information online", "effective communication" is clearly not being made As John Crace says, the chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, might well be the only person whom anyone trusts to tell "the naked truth about coronavirus", but he cannot do the job alone, especially when restricted to Downing St press conferences (At a time when we all need someone we can trust, it`s Whitty, not the PM, who delivers, 12/01/21). An improvement could be made by the government buying time on TV channels between and during programmes when millions are guaranteed to be watching, just before Match of the Day, for example, or in the commercial break during Coronation St. Other well respected people, like Marcus Ratchford and David Attenborough, minus the interminable graphs and podiums, could be chosen to explain the rules clearly, and to advise on mask-wearing and social-distancing, with perhaps a 30 second clip of Whitty explaining why these rules must be obeyed. Celebrities like Phoebe Waller-Bridge or Ed Sheeran might have influence, too, especially on the younger audience. Reducing transmission figures will doubtless come down, in Hancock`s words, to being "about how everybody behaves" and with the death toll set to reach six figures soon, something different is clearly needed (Police defy ministers as clamour grows for new Covid restrictions, 12/01/21). Rocket science it clearly isn`t, but for a government incapable of joined-up thinking, it could prove a useful tool.