Tactics

Another recent example of how our officials chose inappropriate words was this:

"The SAR government would exhaust the last penny in order to maintain the stability of the financial system of Hong Kong."

No, there's nothing wrong in its literal sense, but it's just against the principle of public speaking (or advertisement). The above declaration, despite of its noble intention, just create an impression that our government is about to, or has a real risk in, spending the last penny.

That's not what (or how) you want to be reassured with in the middle of a crisis.

For those who are not familiar with standard tactics for this problem, here they are:

1. Appear to be confident and know more than the others.
2. Emphasize you have more than one way to deal with the problem (without specifying what these methods are).
3. Point out a simple practical way for the public that could help protecting them.

For the last point, it doesn't matter if the way you advise has no genuine value - no one could (nor would anyone have the courage to) disprove it. One excellent demonstration by our own officials was the advice to clean the floor and furniture with 1% hypochlorite solution during the SARS epidemic. It does not work - the thing was transmitted by droplets, not fomites. Nonetheless it worked well in terms of soothing the public and prevent further panic.

As Franz Kafka said: The lie is made for world order.