The threat of thinking in threats: reframing global health during and after COVID-19

Narratives and metaphors shape how actors perceive the world around them and how policymakers frame the range of policy choices they think of as feasible. The metaphor of war and the narrative of how to tackle the unprecedented threat of COVID-19 are effective mechanisms to convey urgency. However, they also bear serious implications: Thinking in terms of health threats works with a logic of exceptionalism, which supports images of “us” vs. an “enemy” thereby shortening complex lines of causality and responsibility and privileging national answers. It fails to provide for a normative framework for drafting long-term systemic approaches. In this contribution, we critically engage with existing narratives of global health security and show how the logic of exceptionalism is limiting the current responses to the pandemic. We conceptualize an alternative narrative that is based on the logic of solidarity and argue that within this alternative framing a more sustainable and ultimately more just way of coping with infectious diseases will be possible.