In the 1980s we learned that public health messaging divorced from people’s values simply doesn’t work
Since the beginning of the pandemic, communication from the government, epidemiologists and health statisticians appears to rely on the belief that if people are shown enough graphs, enough models, enough statistics, enough information, they will all act rationally and do the right thing. Even when that is deeply at odds with the way people live: closing oneself at home, potentially alone, ceasing all intimate contact with people outside, locking down.
This was surprisingly successful in 2020, as a response to a sudden disaster, but it isn’t a realistic long-term strategy. The cultural, social and political history of the HIV pandemic taught us that this epidemiological approach of trying to protect a population chiefly by focusing on ideal individual behavioural guidelines doesn’t work.
João Florêncio is senior lecturer in history of modern and contemporary art and visual culture at the University of Exeter
