How does the pandemic end? Losing control of the COVID-19 pandemic illness narrative

Autor: Charles Allan McCoy
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2023
Předmět:
Zdroj: Global Public Health, Vol 18, Iss 1 (2023)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 1744-1692
1744-1706
17441692
DOI: 10.1080/17441692.2023.2195918
Popis: The end of a pandemic is as much a political act as biological reality. It is over not simply when case counts or deaths are reduced to some objectively determined acceptable level but also when, and if, the public accepts the stories that politicians and health officials tell about it. This paper has three aims. First, to develop the concept of a pandemic illness narrative – a public narrative that makes the experience of an outbreak meaningful to a community of people and explains when it will be finished. Using the case of the United States, the paper then examines how American state organisations and public health officials tried to disseminate a version of the ‘restitution illness narrative’ to make sense out of the COVID-19 pandemic and explain how it would ultimately end. Lastly, the paper describes the factors that made this narrative ultimately implausible to the American public. As most Americans are now seemingly indifferent about the pandemic, it has ended in the United States without ever actually being narratively concluded.
Databáze: Directory of Open Access Journals
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