New Zealand health messaging

[JustAnotherRandom]

Spot the difference. Wash your hands and don't mention covid vs

twitter.com/covid19nz/status/1670943608428539905?s=46&t=G9BWOZlYGPa1_pR7aKkbHQ

I'm so sorry to hear about your teen. I really hope she recovers.

I agree with you about the kind of world in which I'd rather live.

@BeethovenNinth I'm sorry to hear about your daughter. Lockdowns were exceptionally hard for some. I hope she recovers. There will be many still grappling with the impact of lockdowns, whether there is honest messaging or not.

The shorter life thing - that is happening in practice anyway, with excess deaths.

Quality of life - shorter life doesn't necessarily equate to better quality of life. Covid is currently destroying physical and mental health, livelihoods, quality of life etc for many and - for some - the will to carry on living / existing with the impacts of that. That is happening, whether it is acknowledged or not. Why do any public health measures need to be related back to lockdowns?

Why do any public health measures need to be related back to lockdowns?

I think anything that involves the state trying to get people to do things that were compulsory restrictions at some point is inevitably going to be related to lockdown for some people. Because rooting our views in our experiences is what humans do. And we've just gone through a considerable communal trauma, which for some people was exacerbated by said public health measures.

This is why a pp made such a good point about structural problems needing structural solutions. Trying to change the minds of people who already know how much they loathe eg distancing is pointless. Focus resources on things we know will help, like adequate sick pay.

We need ways of dealing with this at societal level that don't rely on overcoming restrictions fatigue. Because ultimately, it doesn't actually matter whether some part of the population finds the visceral reaction to eg masks logical or not. It's a fact on the ground, and there's no indication of that changing any time soon.

I agree structural solutions - pp was responding to some i'd suggested. Maybe the lack of political will to deal with that is a reason we have such dishonest messaging. In the meantime, more people are getting screwed.

I think the desire not to invest in things like better sick pay is probably part of it yeah. It would be very politically inconvenient if the peasants started demanding that.

But I thought the pp was talking about things that would require individuals to change behaviour, she specifically mentions masks, distancing, restrictions and passports. This is not the way to go.

You need to change culture as well as sick pay. Sick pay needs to improve but if you don’t improve the culture of presenteeism among managers and workers it won’t make much impact. You need to make it socially unacceptable to mix with others with an infectious disease as well as providing the support to help people stay at home.

I suspect a number of other public health measures may well improve if there was more focus on a healthier work life balance.

Changing a culture of presenteeism and improving work life balance isn’t the same as making it socially unacceptable to mix with others when you have an infectious disease. Avoiding a culture of presenteeism is about much more than just stopping infectious diseases. This talk of making fairly normal human behaviours “socially unacceptable” is where I start to have issues with the need to control what individuals are doing, instead of looking at changing structures.

People have infectious diseases all the time without realising it, and people mix within homes and then go out and mix with other groups. Going back to an accusatory, guilt-tripping “grannie killer!” mentality around illnesses that people aren’t catching or spreading on purpose helps no one. Strong encouragement and making it easy for people to work from home and/or take sick leave if they don’t feel well enough to either be in the workplace or even working at all can become part of a workplace’s culture, without also needing to make things “socially unacceptable”.

Yep, same.

I'd also be concerned about the impact on people who have particular medical conditions with symptoms that might be taken to be those of infectious diseases. There've been posts on here in the past from people whose coughs were happening because of things like asthma and emphysema, who were nonetheless subject to comments and criticism from random people who, in the circumstances of the pandemic, felt empowered to police who should be in public space and who shouldn't. The last thing we need is more of that.

There are lots of infectious diseases where it isn't socially acceptable to mix with others though.

Yes. However, the poster was clearly suggesting a significant change to the current norms about what those are, and that's a bad idea.

There've been posts on here in the past from people whose coughs were happening because of things like asthma and emphysema, who were nonetheless subject to comments and criticism from random people who, in the circumstances of the pandemic, felt empowered to police who should be in public space and who shouldn't. The last thing we need is more of that.

Nothing was said to me in real life, only on MN, but I cough with hay fever. I was trying to make a point that not everyone coughing had Covid and was told I should stay indoors all summer as I might scare people. I was also told if I loved DH I would wear a mask indoors!

Exactly the sort of thing I'm thinking of.

@PinkSparklyPussyCat well that's daft and glad you didn't have to face it IRL. There will always be those at the extreme end unfortunately ranging from 'why shouldn't I infect who I like - fuck others' to 'any cough will be covid'.

It did make me a bit paranoid though as I was worried people might think the same but not say it. Not the bit about wearing a mask indoors obviously!

They had to reword the office covid policy for me as well as it said we weren't allowed in with a cough. When I pointed out I'd been coughing for weeks it was reworded to 'new cough'!

why would it be a bad idea? I’m not suggesting that people should go round berating people. But at some point you will need a cultural shift into thinking that if you are ill you should stay at home or we’ll end up with better sick pay and people going into work anyway. Poor sick pay isn’t the only reason people go to work when ill. It’s the expectation that people should go into work with ‘mild colds’.

And as someone with cough variant asthma I definitely wasn’t suggesting everyone with a cough should stay home. That would be daft. Not least because coughs can last long after you are no longer infectious.

Because while you were not suggesting that, it's what would happen. Absolutely nailed on inevitable.

I think it’s really important not to ONLY reserve sympathy for those who were badly affected by a particular restriction but to ALSO sympathise with those who were badly affected because there was no restriction/a poorly executed restriction/were vulnerable and are now still alive because that restriction existed.

To eliminate personal bias is really hard and I think people find themselves sympathising with those who support their bias while dismissing those with equally valid horror stories from the other side.

Research is starting to show that with reinfection, your chance of serious issues such as diabetes, mental health issues, and chronic fatigue goes up.

What the hell does this sentence mean?!

Does it mean either "The likelihood of developing other conditions..." or "The likelihood of developing serious issues in relation to other existing conditions..."

It's a garbled nonsense isn't it?

Sympathy with all those who suffered, regardless of why, is important and you're right to stress that. Most covid discussions could do with that point being hammered home more!

However, it's a different point to whether particular public health messaging or measures are viable or sensible. Those things do have to take into account where the population are and how they'll be responded to.

In the case of, say, trying to promote more mask wearing or distancing, the feelings of people who were badly affected by those restrictions when they were compulsory (or weren't that badly affected but just hate them) are more practically important when it comes to deciding policy. The reason for this is that good public health policy has to meet the people where they are. And those attitudes are part of that.

But if you are talking about meeting people where they are, the majority of the population were in support of masking. They were also broadly in support of other restrictions. So I don’t think it’s true to say that we can’t talk about taking measures because it isn’t where the people are.

Lockdowns do cause negative effects we shouldn’t forget that. But I don’t think we should misinform the British public because some people were harmed by the lockdowns. That’s neither fair on the people who are being harmed now and don’t have the information they need to make decisions about what risks they would take nor the people who are aware and are taking some precautions but getting grief for being overanxious or sheeple or whatever else anyone thinks is suitable to yell at people still masking.

Were. That doesn't tell us anything about what people think or would be prepared to do now.

The fact is that all the measures we've had got pretty high compliance because most people bought into the case for voluntarily limiting our behaviours, notwithstanding that we know there were both structural barriers to some of them (eg people not affording to isolate) and that they did seem to be breaking down by the time we got rid in spring 2022. Now, that no longer exists. Meeting people where they are is different in 2023 to how it was in 2021, because people have moved.

Obviously only a twat gives anyone grief for their masking choices, but that's a different point to what public health advice and policies should be. This is also not specifically about harm from lockdowns either, rather it's about what the experience of lockdown and restrictions has done to some people's attitudes. Public health policy has to take that into consideration, or it will fail.

And that's why the focus here should be on structural solutions, not trying to get people to mask more when lots hate it and know full well that real world masking didn't make Omicron not rip through the population. Focus on sick pay and air quality, not attempted behavioural change that will be resisted and risks alienating people further.

@RafaistheKingofClay, interesting point about cultural shift.
@StormShadow, yes unfortunately some people will be dicks about asthmatic coughs etc, some are currently dicks about people wearing masks. We don't play up/down risks of e.g. smoking / drink driving / handling raw food / STDs etc just because some people are dicks. Even if we carry on down this strange route of being personally responsible, with no / lottery of structures in place to support that (e.g. culture within a company), the messaging on risks should be easily accessible and honest.

There's a lot to unpick here.

Firstly, people who make different value judgements to you about risks and benefits are not being dicks, just as people who feel more comfortable not socialising indoors and want to wear masks in public spaces aren't either. Any public health messaging or policies starting from that perspective will be at best a waste of time.

Additionally, if you want to talk about risk management, you can't only pick the ones you like. So if you want people to be told they should stay in when they have minor symptoms, that means acknowledging that this will be used as a tool of coercive control by some abusers, and that some people will be told they shouldn't be in public spaces by others, as a consequence of the messaging. These will disproprortionately be people who are already vulnerable in some way, because for all the comments on here about tutting at people who weren't wearing masks, got too close etc, people don't do that if they think it's going to get them slapped. They go for the easy targets.

Ultimately, you can if you like just tell people they should be doing X and Y. Sure. It's an option. But three and a half years into a pandemic, and having observed the failure in real world conditions of some of the provisions you mention, it's going to fall on a lot of deaf ears. You don't have to like that for it to be true. Meanwhile, those resources could be used for something we know would actually help like better sick pay.

Thank you. Good points. It's also not either/or - many will have been impacted by both elements of policy and covid.

Definitely. People's positions and experiences on this can be really complex, and there's absolutely a cohort who suffered due to both covid itself and policy responses.

That complex, new experience plus in the UK the whole Partygate fiasco means we're in uncharted waters when it comes to public health messaging and engagement.