The way people talk about this pandemic like a war has gotten me thinking about old propaganda posters. I’ve got “loose lips sink ships,” on my mind.
The present-day concern is not that agents of the novel coronavirus are lurking in the shadows, waiting to report back to their commanders, but that we will take down our own institutions though pandemic panic.
Since day one, the public health department standby has been that the specifics of new cases are not public information. Viral spread is considered need-to-know information and unless you’ve got symptoms, you don’t need to know.
It feels wrong, because knowledge is power, but part of every successful communal effort is trust. If we are going to be a society that believes the medical professionals on the “front lines” know what they are doing, then we need to let them do their jobs.
