This chapter provides a theoretical basis for examining the tension between scientific and lay rationality that continues to undermine attempts to address such vital healthcare issues as vaccine hesitancy or lack of compliance with regulations and test regimes during a pandemic. It outlines the main tenets of the narrative paradigm, acknowledges critical scholarship relating to its applicability in some cases and settings, and demonstrates its usefulness through a variety of examples from different cases of medical controversy relating to recent epidemics such as SARS and HIV. The chapters that follow do not only explain different antagonisms surrounding Covid-19 from the perspective of the narrative paradigm as elaborated by Walter Fisher, but also extend the framework and nuance it in the course of analysis, especially with reference to its application to medical narratives and its potential for offering a point of orientation for medical practitioners and policy makers in the healthcare sector.

Arguments about the pros and cons and possible effectiveness of face masks have occupied considerable space in specialist, medical venues such as peer-reviewed journals and science blogs as well as public forums such as mainstream media and social media – the latter attracting contributions from medical specialists and lay members of the public alike. The debate has often been heated, and there have also been reports of individuals resisting the stipulation to wear face masks in shops and on airplanes, at times leading to acts of physical violence. Drawing on the narrative paradigm, this chapter examines some of the arguments for and against face masks as articulated by a diverse range of individuals and constituencies, within and beyond the Anglophone and European world, and the justifications given in each case, as well as their underlying values and logics.