Each autumn, the return of cooler air carries with it the ancient human anxiety about illness and the choices we make to protect one another. This year, as COVID cases climb across more than half the United States and flu season gathers on the horizon, that anxiety is compounded not by a lack of answers but by an excess of contradictory ones — federal and state health authorities speaking in different voices at the moment when a single, clear call to action is most needed. The wisdom to protect ourselves exists; what falters is the shared language needed to translate that wisdom into collectiv