During a time when we’ve been accustomed to looking up to higher authorities, it was refreshing to hear of an approach of community involvement from Stacey Thurman. Her perspective of creating trust within communities by using public health advocates that are more familiar and accepted seems retroactively obvious. This begs the question of why did we go so wrong with COVID-19 communications, leading to the extreme politicization of public health unlike ever before. One answer may be due to the unprecedented and urgent nature of the pandemic however it also could be attributed to experts wanting to be the one to be accredited for the big breakthrough. A lesson I hope we learn from this disappointment is humility. Moving forward in public health matters, including for example the growing antivax movement, authorities need to collaborate within communities in order to mitigate politicization unearthing thought to be dead diseases. In times of mistrust and uncertainty it is much easier to villainize a stranger you only see in the media than it is to a local medical hero, nonprofit leader, MD in state office, and so on. As we go forward into our public health careers and scatter outside Atlanta into new horizons, Tulane has some advice on how we can advocate for public health. https://publichealth.tulane.edu/blog/community-health-advocate/