Paid advertisements are sane because if an ad fails, the company will feel the costs. Government ads can sometimes be well-designed, but can also get away with being insane because there’s no consequences for the government if they fail. So sometimes you see things like this:

A Toronto transit poster instructing the reader to cover their cough.

(Photo taken by me on a Toronto subway platform in 2025.)

At a distance it just says “Cover your cough”, which sounds sane enough. But then you read the text underneath, and it says:

Cover your cough or sneeze with a tissue…

With a tissue? What happened to sneezing into your sleeve? Is there a study or something that said sneezing into your sleeve is bad now?

…then immediately throw the tissue in the garbage…

Every time I cough I have to walk and find a garbage can “immediately”?

…and wash your hands.

Jesus.

“Hold on a minute, I need to sneeze. Achoo! Sorry, I need to go find a garbage can and a washroom. I’ll be back in ten minutes. Unless I sneeze or cough again during that process, in which case I’ll have to start over. Good thing I have an entire Kleenex box in my pocket!”

Assuming this ad wasn’t sponsored by Kleenex, it reveals the total insanity of the City of Toronto government. I know nothing about the city government to be honest, but I find it revealing that two years after a pandemic is officially over, we should be taking safety measures so extreme they are in practice impossible to actually carry out. How did this make it onto a poster on the subway platform? You can’t even justify it on safety grounds because a person who followed these instructions would spread covid more than someone who simply coughed into their sleeve and went home sooner.

The only purpose I can think of for this poster is for the author of the poster to signal their alignment with “covid bad” and “safety good” as maximally as possible, like peacock feathers that have evolved well past their utility for flight, to the point where they actually hamper the thing they are supposed to help.

I do wonder who is doing the signalling, and to whom. Am I supposed to be the one on the receiving end of the signalling, thinking, wow, the City of Toronto sure is taking this covid thing seriously. As I cram myself into a subway, shoulder to shoulder with a bunch of sick people?

Or was the signalling some kind of internal signalling. Like the poster originally just said “cover your cough”, but someone on the committee put up their hand and suggested they add that you should cover your mouth with a tissue. Then someone else put up their hand and said to should specify to throw away the tissue, that way nobody will leave their used tissues on the subway. And soon enough you have a monstrosity of a poster designed for the sole purpose of showing everyone in the room how responsible and socially conscious everyone on the committee is. Physical reality having been abandoned straight away.

After musing about this terrible poster, I stepped onto the subway, where a homeless man had shit himself and was visibly covered in shit. I wondered if maybe they should have made a poster for that. “Don’t shit your pants on the subway. Or if you do, use a tissue, and throw the tissue away immediately. Then wash your hands.” The subway train was closed due to unsanitary conditions.

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