Coronavirus
Out of context: Reply #2757
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- webazoot3
Someone tries to work out what Stay Alert means...
"The immediate response to the government’s new Covid19 messaging has been a mixture of confusion and outrage. Commentators and academics seem bemused, the only possible explanation being that the government is incompetent.
But actually, I think it’s very deliberate — and if their ultimate goal is to retain power rather than save lives — very smart.
What they are trying to do with this shift is change the way this crisis and the actors in it are framed. Until now, Covid19 has been an intentional attacker (witness the war metaphors and the comparison to “an unexpected and invisible mugger”); we have been the weak and hapless victims who need to be told what to do; and Johnson and his government have been the strong, all-knowing heroes who will save us. This is a version of what I call the Subject story.
But this story has been falling apart, and that is why they’re changing it now. This was not unexpected: a pandemic was widely expected. People are not victims: so many of us in so many ways have thrown ourselves into helping one another. Government has not been strong: they responded too late, and their “led by science” trope has been convincingly dismantled.
So here is why this announcement is happening today: not because we’re past the peak and ready to start lifting lockdown, but because the government’s framing is failing and they need to change it.
This is much more a political moment than a public health moment.
The new story is a version of one I call the Consumer story. Covid19 will now become an inconvenient hindrance to our lives, but one that each of us needs to take personal responsibility for dealing with, and getting back to normal as best we can. In this story, government steps back and gets out of the way, because people are best left to look out for themselves. We are individuals, there is no such thing as society.
The dark corollary of course is that if you get the disease, it will be your fault — because you will not have stayed sufficiently alert."
- Intentional strategy to shift future blame onto the public.lowimpakt
- it doesn't mean anything, just another pointless slogan to distract us from the fact that they haven't managed to organise any proper data gathering.hans_glib
- ie finding out how many people have had this fucking thing. hospitals and care homes are two small (extreme) data points -hans_glib
- it's bad science to extrapolate anything from those figures.hans_glib
- they haven't got a fucking clue what they're doing. this is the same fucking bunch of cunts that have been lying to us since '16Bluejam
- Amused how, in hindsight, cretins can always say they saw it coming. No. No this narrative change was not “expected.”monospaced