As many parts of the world settle into the COVID winter of our discontent, it's worth thinking critically about public health messaging. As I've said for months, despair-based messaging (of the "we're never going back to normal" vintage) is unlikely to do anything useful.

Even leaving aside the Rorschach-ness of this statement (i.e. that it can mean so many different things depending on what you think of as "normal" and whether or not you value those things), it's more likely to erode people's stamina than anything else.

We've heard "it's a marathon, not a sprint" since the first knockings of the pandemic, but that wisdom gels rather poorly with "the marathon has no finish line; sucks to suck."

Our political discourse is also completely corrupted at this point. Even now, I risk my words being co-opted by right wing maniacs who want us to pretend there is no pandemic; they've all but colonised the language of opposing despair, and "living with the virus."

These are important concepts, but they've unfortunately become synonymous with denialism--this prompts an overcorrection from everyone else, without any regard for whether that overcorrecting messaging is undermining the public health response in its own right.

And so here we are.

If you imply to people that they will never see faraway loved ones again, never gather again, never go back to school, etc. etc. you're essentially giving a gift to the denialists.

But on the same token, if you imply we're one lockdown away from 'back to normal,' or that a vaccine will fix everything, you're simply setting more arbitrary deadlines that we'll blow through like we have the last dozen or so. People are exhausted; trust is fraying.

We need realism from our leaders about what the next year looks like, especially if there is no vaccine, but also a willingness to *adapt* to that reality. If they want to close borders permanently, let them defend that proposition openly.

Instead of this nonsense where we keep hearing "when there's a vaccine," as if that won't *itself* be a process rather than a single moment. At some point we're going to have to *actually* transition to a "new normal" (oh you didn't think we were there yet, did you?)

Because when we could've had massive public works programmes to redo indoor ventilation, for instance, or rethink ways to safely manage international travel, we've had an endless "until there's a vaccine" wait.

In spite of the fact that such changes will have benefits that go far beyond COVID-19, could be the beginning of a renegotiation of public infrastructure that will set us up to meet the challenge of climate change, etc.

Instead, we get endless waiting and despair.

Well, that and blaming each other. Which, if you thought the individualistic shaming extravaganza from the summer was bad, you ain't seen nothin' yet folks. Anyway, with that happy thought, I leave you.

One clarification here. I'm not defending closed borders (quite the opposite) but there are many international leaders who are being quite coy about the sustainability of extreme border policies and we deserve a more honest discussion about them. https://twitter.com/Quinnae_Moon/status/1320506528432939008