> "predicted outcome acted upon with sufficient data". This is a consistent problem in public messaging throughout the pandemic; people feel uncertain and like the government is as clueless as them.

This is where I think you may be asking too much. I agree with you that we need to better normalize uncertainty in politicians, but asking politicians to interpret science to even make "predicted outcomes" is unlikely to work out at best, and likely part of why we got here in the first place. "We think we only need two shots, but we'll find out when more data arrives" turns into "Just two shots and we're done" because the politicians are trying to "predict outcomes" and in part are going to tell people what they want to hear rather than the uncertain part. If they are right they sound like heroes of the people and if they are wrong they apologize and move on, and we get exactly the whiplash a lot of people have felt in all this, because this has been a virus intent on breaking "predicted outcomes".

I think what we need to normalize is both simpler and a lot harder: "I don't know, I will ask the experts." and "We don't know yet." and "Let me get back to you on that." and "Right now, here's what we think based on the data that we have, but that could change."

It's simpler because those are arguably really easy answers to give. They don't take a lot of time. They don't make "predictions". They state pretty plainly that there are experts to trust, those experts need time, and those experts update their recommendations as real world facts come in.

It is a lot harder because it isn't "good" politics (in the current political climate, at least). "No one" wants to elect a politician that defers to experts, that admits when they don't know something, that doesn't make bold predictions their constituents want to hear. It sounds "weak" to ever state that you don't know something or don't have an opinion on something until you have more facts.

An interesting thing that I watched in the past couple of years was my own state's Governor attempt to put contemporary politics aside and very much take that stance of "We don't know yet" and "We want to find out" and "We have experts working on that", because he seemed to generally believe that an event like this was more important to get right than to treat as politics as usual. It has had some insane political blowback from the obvious stuff of opponents predicting he will take a beating in the next reelection attempt and may only be a one term Governor, to a dramatic hanging of an effigy on the Governor's Mansion lawn (where he and his wife and kids live), and many things in between subtle and not-so-subtle.

I absolutely wish there were more politicians like that out there in this crisis, because watching my governor do exactly this "We don't know yet" and "I don't know but I'll try to find out" to press question after press question was immensely satisfying and comforting to some of us here, and I would have wished more people to experience that. I don't know how we get there in the current general political climate (at least in the US) that is currently so deeply anti-expert and stuck in toxic machismo where "I don't know" is a "weak" and "unacceptable" answer.