"I think there is right now a little bit of a deficit of public trust because there has been a lot of confusion about the test kits," Cameron says.

She thinks the administration likely lost time in its response to the virus by getting rid of her old job, which was a position on the National Security Council — instead it had to form a task force specific to coronavirus.

"One of the advantages to having a standing group constantly monitoring outbreaks is that you have existing glue already put together between the different interagency pieces," she says. "You're constantly exercising and talking about what could be happening — I do think that that kind of a structure can really save time in a crisis."

Cameron says she thinks the current deficit in public trust is reversible, and that it "can be easily and quickly rectified if the administration continues to provide clear scientific, fact-based communication on a regular basis," she says.

Howard Markel, a physician and University of Michigan medical historian, agrees that complete and clear communication from officials is what establishes public trust during an epidemic. He says whenever a country announces there's an epidemic, it stands to lose a lot of money, so there's always an urge to wish it away.

"Concealment is one of the big no-nos in the history of pandemics, and it happens again and again and again, sometimes for political reasons, sometimes for commercial reasons," he says.

Some of the ugly responses to coronavirus are familiar, he says, when you look to epidemics past — especially the scapegoating and racism. "During the early 20th century, when we had 1 to 1.5 million immigrants coming in a year — mostly through the gates of Ellis Island — and epidemics broke out, they were often blamed on East European Jewish immigrants," he says. "There was a bubonic plague epidemic in Chinatown in San Francisco in 1900, and the public health officers literally did a jagged quarantine — almost like a gerrymandered congressional district — that was just around the Chinese neighborhood."

What's new — and dangerous — in the year 2020 with coronavirus, Markel says, is a much more "atomized" information landscape. It's an era where "everybody feels they are entitled to their own set of facts, which is absolute rubbish," he says. "There really are a set of scientific facts."

It's important that government officials work "to coalesce the population — to make sure that we're all on the same page of what we need to do to keep ourselves and our children and our families safe — our communities safe," he says.

Public trust is needed when officials say that your risk is low, and you should go about your normal life — which is what they're currently saying is true for most Americans — and when things suddenly change, and officials need cooperation in closing schools or canceling public events.

Markel thinks so far the coronavirus response from officials at the CDC and other agencies has gone quite well. "Look, they're human," he says. "They may make mistakes, it is not going to go perfectly, but an A-minus grade that this professor would give right now is pretty darn good."

He adds, we're well positioned to manage whatever coronavirus might bring going forward. "There's never been a better time to have an epidemic in human history than today," he says. "We have the means, the will, the money and the technology to handle this problem."

Now officials just need to earn — and keep — the public's trust.

Copyright NPR 2021.