I take your point, but by correct I meant “consistent with the established definition,” which was the original context we started in

Like I said, maybe it’s not the optimal term to use in public health communications, and that could be because of dishonesty, but it could also be due to ineptitude or just failure to appreciate a widespread misunderstanding

It's not the "established" definition with the target audience. Your argument is basically "I don't speak Spanish, so I'll talk louder and add a long 'o" at the end of words when talking to someone who only speaks Spanish."

It's hard to find a public health organization that doesn't say that communicating with the public is a key goal and core competency.

So, are they: [1] Incompetent [2] Using a different definition of "goal", "communicating", "core competency", etc? [3] ????

Note that communications isn't the only problem.

One of the arguments for [1] is that the public health folk have long said "hey, we're necessary to avoid a repeat of the Spanish Flu." yet they were largely unprepared. (Then again, flu kills 30-80k Americans every year and most of the good transmission research was done in the late 40s...)