2021-02-14 (Day 045) FACTS

Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic the way that the government communicates with the public has become very important.  We started off with "Stay Home. Protect the NHS. Save Lives" - a simple and straightforward slogan that acted as a call to action (Stay Home), and explanation of why (Protect the NHS - stop our hospitals from being overwhelmed and unable to cope) and the reward for doing so (Save Lives).

As the first lockdown came to an end England adopted a rather less memorable slogan - "Stay Alert. Control the Virus. Save Lives."  Quite what "Stay Alert" meant, nobody seemed to know. Scotland didn't really do any better, with "stay safe, protect others, save lives".  But it is probably easier to make up a slogan that demands a clear action than it is to make up one that asks for variable, hard-to-define modfications of normal behaviour.

Scotland also came up with "FACTS" as shown above (in this case, it is being displayed outside my local Tesco).  And it's not a bad message.  But I feel thta England's "Hands, Face, Space" works better.  Sure, you need to know that you are being asked to wash your hands, cover your face and stand 2m distant from others, but in many ways that's wasier than trying to remember the five tenets of "FACTS".

So what else do we see here?  We see people coming out of Tesco wearing masks.  Maybe in future mask wearing will become commonplace, and this picture will look completely normal.  Maybe mask wearing will no longer be required and this pictre will look as alien to people as it would have in 2019.  Time will tell.

I've just noticed #WeAreScotland - what's that all about?