There are quite a few op-eds, essays, and commentaries that have been written during the pandemic, and to this day are being published, that point out how covid often seems like a taboo subject, or how people deny having covid, or are unwilling to talk about mitigation for it, and they don’t even mention the term taboo, and never seem to mention the known phenomenon — STIGMA.
This is stigma.
When you hear that “people are tired of it” – that’s also part of stigma. And it’s not necessarily true that people are actually just sick of it – but they keep being told they should be. Informational learned helplessness can do that to us. Stigma is leveraged and reinforced on purpose by big money industry interests who think any reminder of danger at all is bad for business. So it’s to some degree manufactured stigma.
I find it astonishing that most commentaries people write on people not talking about covid never ever seem to mention the word STIGMA because it’s a well known public health term to describe exactly what’s happening – this phenomenon is a KNOWN quantity in the area of health conditions but even most especially in the realm of infectious disease. It’s a known problem, and it takes active efforts to overcome it. We know this. Public health experts know this. People should be NAMING IT.
Public health should be working to overcome it.
I wonder if because of PR stranglehold on the media, if people are actually pitching op-eds that explain the issue of stigma, and they get turned down. Maybe nobody wants to mention the word because then we’d have to talk about it after all! So many practical truths are kept from the public understanding with bad framing and spin that obscures the way toward solutions.
✏️Write reps prompt -My letter to reps:
I would like my representatives in government to take proactive steps to reduce stigma around infectious disease, masks, vaccines, and treatments. It’s unacceptable for people in government to shirk public health leadership.
Please feel free to repurpose for your own letters to reps.