Thread by @brownecfm

1. The reason the pandemic is uniquely dangerous is because of its pace. That is to say, the changes it is causing in society (highly stressed healthcare systems, workforce issues etc) and the long-term effects of infection are accumulating slowly enough to be normalised.

2. This phenomenon - familiar to climate scientists - is effectively the tale of the boiling frog. It is both insidious and pernicious.

For a good description, see here:

washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/0…

3. We see this in the data on the prevalence of Long Covid and other sequelae of infection. We see it in the data on the increasing risks of re-infections. Many of us see anecdata in our own lives - a level of illness in our social circles that wasn't normal pre-pandemic.

4. This anecdata, of course, tracks perfectly with the unrelenting pressures seen in healthcare, emergency care especially. More sick people means more people becoming seriously unwell. But - and here's the insidiousness - it's happening just slowly enough everywhere and...

5... to essentially everybody that normalisation is the *default psychological response for the vast majority of people*. That normalisation is then reinforced by frankly appalling public health messaging. A key factor in normalisation is denial.

6. Denial is now de facto public health. Because denial is that which allows and facilitates normalisation. And normalisation - 'back to normal' - is now the overarching goal.

However, this path will inevitably lead to an infection point when denial will stop working.

7. And, tragically, that inflection point will, quite genuinely, *take the vast majority of people by surprise*.

Normalisation is the disguise of complacency.

/end

8. *inflection point