So when we talk about public health we need to be clear that the core of public health is human *behavior*. Preventing negative health outcomes through a public health approach it's most often NOT because we've altered human behavior (which is actually very difficult to change)

Most of our successes are because we've built the structures and systems *around* people that reduce their risk of the negative outcome to near zero. You can think about this through the lens of access to preventatives or, better yet, removing the conditions that created risk

This is why everyone you know who actually does anything public health related was incredibly silent when y'all were shaming people for going to parties. Did we approve? No. But there's truly decades of literature on how shame-based messaging does nothing to alter behavior.

What it DOES do instead is incentivize people to LIE about it which in turn only increases the likelihood they will put other people at risk because they will be afraid of having honest conversation.

Because we have had ZERO federal leadership and so we simply do not have systems to support people and so the only thing that's left is personal risk navigation at the individual level which requires that people tell you what they ACTUALLY do not what you WISH they'd do.

Long-winded way of saying if you're worried about your friends or family around the holidays you need them to share their ACTUAL plans with you and then you can share best practices for staying safe with them. But that won't work if you've already shamed them into lying to you.

Here's a report from WHO that I kinda like on the topic of public health messaging: https://www.who.int/mediacentre/communication-framework.pdf

Anyway, stay safe kids and if you feel up to it try to help someone else stay safe too.