Words have power, especially at a crucial time like this

The lettering was hard to miss – angry black capital letters running the length of a plywood fence next to the only supermarket on Waiheke Island; five metres of spray-painted outrage.

‘‘Jacinda + media are lying to you … Tyranny is upon us’’, plus some upsetting anti-vaccine stuff aimed at teenagers and their parents.

After a few hours, the supermarket painted over it, although not very well. Usually, I’m told, ratepayers ferry a private contractor in from Auckland to clean up particularly repulsive graffiti in a public place, if the property owner doesn’t act.

Sadly, this was necessary only a few weeks ago after anti-vax graffiti appeared on a wall at Little Oneroa beach. Locals were incensed, and someone daubed heartfelt messages over the offending words.

To councils, removing offensive graffiti is as important as removing racist graffiti, local board chair Cath Handley tells me. ‘‘We have great support from the police on this. People are entitled to their views, but targeting the vulnerable is incredibly sad.’’

Desperate times call for desperate measures. On the Ka¯ piti

Coast, shoppers have been treated to vaccine misinformation stuffed in the packaging of their new toasters, and in boxes of orange and turmeric herbal teabags.

These pathetic cris de coeur reek of ‘‘temporarily restricted’’ social media accounts, with followers in the single digits; of lonely Facebook posters unfriended by old mates, muted by common consent. When even Twitter doesn’t want you, toaster packaging must have a certain allure.

Part of me is gagging to fight back. A learned friend suggested spray-painting ‘‘Peer-reviewed research trumps graffiti’’ over the other stuff. This is good, although it has the word ‘‘trump’’ in it, which might confuse some people.

Normally I dislike platitudes, tropes, maxims, slogans, and truisms plastered on diaries, mugs, pillows, calendars, and pencil pots. But there’s a pandemic on. Needs must. Pope Francis’ homily that ‘‘being vaccinated is an act of love’’ is the sweet, sweet Covid-19 messaging I can live with, even in my toaster packaging.

In these brave days, even old war poster slogans like ‘‘Together we can do it’’ and ‘‘Victory begins at home’’ sound like snappy, up-tothe-minute

health messaging.

New Zealand’s Covid-19 messaging is more sport than war, of course. ‘‘To go hard, and go early’’, ‘‘Team of five million’’ and ‘‘Unite against Covid-19’’ are winning mantras in sync with the findings of science communication research – if you want people to change their behaviour, explain why, explain how, stay positive and say that everyone else is doing it.

We feel safe in a majority, and mask-wearing-on-the-bus

vaccinistas now represent the social norm.

The Government has indeed ‘‘followed the science’’, including the science of public health messaging.

This seemingly obvious strategy is ‘‘starkly different to that elsewhere’’, as former Wellington journalist Elle Hunt explained in The Guardian. ‘‘The state of Oregon ran a campaign with the slogans ‘Don’t accidentally kill someone’ and ‘It’s up to you how many people live or die’. In the UK, government campaigns have warned ‘Don’t let a coffee cost a life’ and shown the reproachful faces of people on ventilators: ‘Look him in the eyes and tell him the risk isn’t real’.’’

Our search for reassurance and meaning in the era of Covid has not been lost on craft breweries, selling to a youngish crowd whose lives have been upended. In the US, breweries reacted faster than politicians.

In March 2020, Ale Asylum launched a hit beer called F... Covid, and donated the profits to charity. ‘‘Very, very rarely in life do you get 100 per cent of the population behind something,’’ the co-owner marvelled to trade website SevenFifty.

The same piece noted that Texan brewer Weathered Souls put out a hazy IPA called 6 Feet of Separation; the most telling came from New York brewer Bridge and Tunnel, with its witbier No Mask? Fugetaboutit.

New Zealand labels like Behemoth, which brought us Im-peach-ment 2: This Time it’s Insurrection, and the IPA Riden With Biden are, so far, resting on their laurels.

The best Aotearoa breweries can do in what is (let us hope) the most important public health campaign of our lives is Garage Project’s F... You 2020 – a lovely lazy hazy blend of light malt and wheat – and F... Yeah 2021 – a lovely lazy hazy blend of light malt and oats.

Well, I’d like to submit a beer name I have nicked from a March for Science protest sign I saw once: ‘‘No Science No Beer’’. (Geddit?)

Graffiti is a crime, so I’m not going to sneak out at night and paint slogans like ‘‘Fear not, get your shot!’’, Dr Anthony Fauci’s ‘‘If it looks like you’re over-reacting, you’re probably doing the right thing’’, or ‘‘Ehara! Ko koe te ringa e huti punga! (Yes, yours is the arm best suited to pull up the anchor! From Aroha by Dr Hinemoa Elder). Except on a legal graffiti wall, obv.

Getting caught while only halfway through the mish can lead to disaster. The friend of a mate was arrested during the Save Aramoana campaign in Dunedin (circa 1981) while inscribing ‘‘Dunedin needs a smelter like a fish needs a bicycle’’ in a parking lot near the Octagon.

She had just finished painting ‘‘smelter’’. Other protest graffiti was cleaned up, but hers lingered for years.