The health and science communicators must improve how they communicate with the public.
Providing accurate-in-effect summarized information is a difficult balance to strike.
Ultimately though, if people really care, they should be parsing through study results.
I think there is a fundamental misscommunication going on.
It was unclear what your gripe was.
If a drug manufactuer runs a commercial, they are legally required to include risks and references to relevant information. If a state rep or PR manager does it, they can literally lie as far as I am aware.
Absolutely hate this framing. I care but I don’t have the requisite education to understand what I’m reading. I need it explained by someone who has taken up that specialization.
But to say that because I have walked another path in life that I don’t care?!? Because I have chosen a different specialization?? Deeply insulting AND untrue AND unrealistic. Our society is based on specialization at this point. If we cannot rely on each other for these basic communication tasks, then society must be dead, eh?
That process, by definition, in the perfect case, includes someone summarizing/simplifying concepts.
And that process is extremely difficult to do without bias, summarization being an information-loss activity, etc.
So essentially, you're asking for an impossible standard of communication.
Additionally, I'd point out that the basics^ of biology, immunology, pathology, and epidemiology aren't that complicated, if you're a reasonably intelligent person.
Grasping the basics of mRNA transcription, viral fragment encoding, immune system functioning, and the purpose and effects of various common vaccine adjuvants is ~20 hours of internet research.
Which is one of the reasons it really gets my goat when so many anti-vaccine folks appear not to have made any educational effort before crystalizing their loud opinions.
^ As distinct from the details, which require a lifetime to comprehend
They did explain it! Here's what it sounded like: "We have thoroughly researched these treatments and found them to be generally safe and effective, and well-worth the potential risks for people who fit profile X Y Z, but closer individualized medical consideration is warranted for people who fit profile P Q R."
It's perfectly clear.
Or are you arguing that people need to know the numbers but have no obligation/ability to actually figure out what they mean?
Yet, whenever I try to look up anything with regards to health/medicine, I find dozens of people/orgs repeating the last bit, and the first bits are hard to come across if you dont already know where to look. Its so avoided that im not surprised some people think its intentionally hidden.
Saying something is safe is a declared risk tolerance, it is not actually communicating the risk. It only works if the people you are talking to already trust your judgement.
Taking a complex topic and distilling it into simple, consumable bites that your audience can injest is what communication is. Yet, so much communication takes the easy route of "the public cant possibly understand this, well just say its safe or unsafe".
If you see this as an unavoidable, then I see the breakdown of trust of these institutions to be unavoidable too, as their ability to communicate is too poor.
They publish information at every level of specificity and detail!
Anyone who is actually curious and not just doing this lazy meta-commentary game could find all the information they need at any level of specificity or technicality they want.
They are saying what is generally safe and what is not. Telling people the dry statistics won't help most people. Remember half of all people are below average in IQ. You need to paint with broad strokes if you want to reach most people.
If it helps, substitute health officials and Healthcare with tech CEOs and tech products. Do you trust them when they claim that their products protect your privacy without laying out the evidence?