There’s resistance to the idea that Covid is not everywhere, all the time. Social media’s team sports runs on…

There’s resistance to the idea that Covid is not everywhere, all the time. Social media’s team sports runs on sweeping apocalyptic generalities. Both ‘sides’ need that everywhere, all the time, to run their campaigns. Another way to see this. Existing disease guidelines. /1 https://t.co/oNYzPBD2Pv

I sometimes share NSW Health’s A-Z infectious disease control guidelines. To me they’re an excellent window into the public health world we grew up in. And they show a key thing. These operate 365 days of every year. And most of us don’t even know. /2 https://t.co/ItiJjOzRGL https://t.co/KSAtLHKdxi

Disease control *is* an everywhere, all the time thing. By swift, strategic targeting of spread, using each pathogen’s specific characteristics. It’s because of this strategic targeting that most of us never even see this work happening. But it is, everywhere, all the time. /3

It’s not just pathogens, nothing in society happens everywhere, all the time. Societies are networks. They look like this. Hubs connected by networks. We have the wrong model of society, and therefore also the wrong model of Covid. /4 https://t.co/sgu06gkZBZ

Minimisers WANT us to believe Covid is everywhere, all the time. That’s how they win, by saying ‘it’s impossible to control this, celebrate it with your hybrid immunity’. But those who want Covid gone often do the same. Vast totalising narratives. /5

The medium is the message. Social media did this to us, totalising narratives is social media’s bread and butter. Totalising narratives are rallying cries for social media teams. The more contested the battle, the more apocalyptically totalising the narratives become. /6

But as the existing disease control guidelines show, what needs doing is actually highly specific, and can be done with minimal disruption to most of our lives. Practical, calm work. Not hysterical social media ‘debates’ that never go anywhere. For example, just fix schools. /7

A very specific, calm, engineering task. Get some fresh air into schools, they needed it even without Covid. Other major public buildings have had it already our entire lives. We don’t need to route that through SM debates. We don’t need to ‘mobilise’ whole populations. /8

We don’t need hashtags or awareness-raising. We don’t need the public to understand or do anything much at all. We just need to send in the ventilation experts, and get that specific job done. It could be done without any fanfare, by a smart politician. /9

They don’t even need to mention Covid. Covid terrifies them because of possible ‘public backlash’. Just make it a mundane job of school maintenance. Job done. /end