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This article examines how the securitisation of COVID-19 in the United States was publicly contested. Reviewing the wider securitisation scholarship, it outlines five different kinds of contestation: securitisation failure, contestation within, counter-securitisation, the securitisation of securitisation, and desecuritization. Considering these within a discourse analysis of how COVID-19 was securitised and contested by both key political figures and protestors between 1 January 2020 and 30 May 2020, the paper finds that the securitisation of COVID-19 took two forms. One used war metaphors to represent COVID-19 as a ‘foreign enemy’ to be (quickly) conquered, while the other represented normality – everyday economic and social activity – as dangerous. The former saw efforts to desecuritize and ‘close’ the threat, while the latter was securitised as a threat itself. Ultimately, COVID-19 was downgraded to a manageable risk, while measures that recognised its continuing threat were depicted as existential threats to American lives, jobs, prosperity, and freedoms.

‘The cure cannot be worse than the problem’: securitising the securitisation of COVID-19 in the USA