Inspired by conversations at the 2021 Rhetoric Society of America Institute workshop on Pandemic Rhetoric(s), this dialogue assembles graduate student, early-, mid-career, and established rhetoric of health and medicine (RHM) and critical health communication scholars to discuss a keyword that has structured political, social, and biomedical thinking about COVID-19: un/precedented. In identifying un/precedented as an organizing temporal rhetoric for the pandemic, we interrogate how recurrent appeals to the pandemic’s novelty both allow for and limit our capacities to meet the pandemic’s tremendous exigencies head-on. Leveraging our unique scholarly and community commitments, we theorize how un/precedentedness 1) becomes complicit in government inaction, 2) (re)asserts conceptual and literal borders, 3) justifies state and national public health mandates, and 4) obscures other historical and contemporary pandemics. We conclude by offering possibilities for interdisciplinary and longitudinal research into the far-reaching effects of contagious disease.

The public’s declining trust in health advice from traditional outlets has long been noted by scholars. But what makes alternative sources for health information appear more trustworthy to some audiences? In this analysis, the author traces the use of expertise and experience as forms of multivocality in the textual artifacts of Gwyneth Paltrow and her enterprise, Goop—specifically those that promote clean eating and detox diets. The analysis illustrates how Goop creates a superficially neutral platform for different voices that make the texts seem polyphonic and by extension more trustworthy given that readers can choose which health plan is right for them. But upon further analysis the author illustrates that Goop blends each voice so that they “move in step” as a choir, combining with Paltrow’s own voice, and ultimately creating an illusion of polyphony and masking a dominant homophonic message that ties together mandates to “ask questions,” empower ourselves, and embrace the assumption that young, slender bodies are signifiers of health and wellness.