If you see a friend come back from an international trip or large event, Covid-free, it reinforces the sense…

If you see a friend come back from an international trip or large event, Covid-free, it reinforces the sense of ‘maybe Covid is a spent force’. The importance of infection and disease patterns. Covid is not everywhere, all the time. That’s why it infects in waves. /1 https://t.co/Kg6hK7qLin

Sometimes these waves are seen as the rise and fall of population immunity. But it’s much more likely to be (for Covid) the development of a disease hub, spread from that hub, and then petering out of that spread. Until the next hub forms. /2

It’s at the lived experience of people level that this is most important. If people see many situations where people take high risks and aren’t infected, it will reinforce the sense that the crisis is over. They then drop their precautions too. /3

It also encourages the idea that this is everybody’s problem, all the time. But public health has been working away our entire lives with most of us not even noticing or needing to do much at all. It’s been hijacked by social media team sports. /4

A pathogen with low dispersion means most people don’t pass it on. But those that do, pass it on to lots of people. Most of us should need do nothing, to control it. Our lived experiences are informed by political narratives of Covid being everywhere, all the time. /4

Which as I’ve Tweeted about before, helps both Covid minimisers (‘there’s nothing we can do, its everywhere’) and those advocating for public health (‘we all need to mask and to ventilate every building’ etc.). Social media loves the universalising narratives. /5

Infection and disease patterns tell us a much calmer, more positive story. The work that needs doing is targeted, and manageable. 4+ years of the rival teams on social media slugging this out have led to nothing being done, anywhere. /6

Some quiet, targeted, specific work, for example in schools, could cripple Covid. There needn’t be any fanfare about it. A smart politician could do it under the banner of basic school maintenance. /7

But politicians are living in the same populist team sports bubbles as social media, which are taking over our entire societies. The emergency phase of the pandemic, ‘lockdowns’, is over. But we jumped straight to ‘now pretend Covid is gone’. /8

Missing entirely the disease control stage. That’s basic public health. The stuff happening 365 days of every year already, with few of us even noticing. Because the action is highly targeted. Covid is even *more* amenable to this, than most of the pathogens we grew up with. /9

The pandemic could be ended with very little interruption to our beloved lifestyles. That should be an easy sell to all sides. But we’re trapped in the bubbles. Desperate for our teams to win the battles. /end