I keep looking for a simple and concise article I can hand to someone who just doesn’t understand how social justice and SARS-CoV-2 (Covid) are related. I can’t find one I really like, so I’m writing one.
Here’s a true story. I belong to a Social Justice book club. All of the books we read are about social justice. I am the only member who masks. It’s frustrating. These are good people who really care about others. We study. We read together. We try our best to translate our reading into action that will lead to greater social justice. But I am the only one who masks. The space we share has a window that opens. I enter in my mask, open the window and hope for the best while we discuss our latest book. (This month’s book is “One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This” by Omar El Akkad.)
My book club knows that I am a person who is chronically ill. I identify as disabled. I have the dreaded “pre-existing conditions.” Because Covid is airborne, most public events are difficult for me. I have to mask indoors, and often outdoors too if I’m in a crowd. As a result, a lot of activities are less accessible to me. I have to weigh the risk in a way others don’t. In part, I have to do this because no one else masks. Theye are busy breathing their germs into the air we share. Despite reports to the contrary, the pandemic is not over. There is no need to use the past tense about it. People still get Covid, but since hardly anyone tests, it’s hard to know how often. Wastewater gives us some indications. I know at least twice a year, others are talking about this terrible “thing” that’s going around that they just can’t shake. I think we all know this; we just don’t want to. Most people I know have had covid three times now. Some have had it six times.
Covid is more than a cold:
Covid is often referred to as a neuro-vascular disease that presents as a respiratory infection. Once the cold and flu symptoms go away, it can keep working on you, leaving problems in every organ, particularly your brain and heart. Covid has been linked to an increased risk of cancer and to cancer recurrence. It has been linked to the reactivation of other viruses like EBV and Shingles. The list goes on and on. Covid causes immune system damage, and the more often you get it, the worse your immune system becomes. You become susceptible to other viruses and when you get them, they often are more severe. And the more often you get Covid, the more likely you are to get Long Covid, that is a strange cluster of symptoms that can leave a person bedbound. It is estimated that worldwide, 400 million people have experienced Long Covid, about 6-7% of adults. This is why Covid has been called a mass-disabling event. At this point, literally thousands of peer reviewed studies show the harms of covid.
It seems like something we should care about.
Prevention:
I understand what it is like to be sick. I’d rather not get sick again, or add to my existing issues. And until we have a sterilizing vaccine, there is nothing that is a 100% sure thing to prevent Covid. Some people suggest that is about 5 years away, but with the gutting of science and research in the US, I’m skeptical. (But officially, I remain hopeful.) Today’s vaccines will help keep you out of the hospital and probably keep you from dying, something that happened to many of Covid’s early victims. Hand-washing is always a good idea, but because Covid is airborne, hand-washing won’t protect you from Covid. The most effective thing to do is to mask with an N95 respirator or better, not a baggy blue medical mask that lets air in. It would also be a grand idea to clean indoor air. How? HEPA grade air filters. There are many. Public buildings could have their HVAC upgraded. There’s also some interesting work being done with Far UV. Even if we could just filter indoor air in schools, hospitals, and health care settings, we would go a long way to making the world a lot less risky.
Why is Covid a Social Justice Issue:
First of all, health is a social issue. That’s why we talk about the social determinants of health. For example, a good indicator of life expectancy is how much money you have. We often discuss health like it’s only a personal responsibility. What did they eat, not what can they afford to eat. You get the picture.
Nevertheless, we live in a “personal responsibility” culture even though we are affected by everything everyone else does and the environment itself. If the environment is polluted, it’s awfully hard to stay well. Health is both an individual and social responsibility. Accessibility is also a social responsibility. We can’t do it alone. For example, we, as a society, build wheelchair ramps because a wheelchair user can’t get very far in a world of stairs and curbs and we can hardly expect them to fix the roads and sidewalks. Some things are better accomplished together. There are plenty of places that don’t bother to create accessible streets and buildings, but thankfully, we still do that. Sticking with the wheelchair example, the cost of wheelchairs is wild. And do you know what a person has to go through to get one fixed? But I digress. The cost of chronic illness and disability is largely borne by the ill person, even in a place like Canada which has universal health care. Illness is incredibly expensive.
People can’t work when they’re ill. Jobs like nursing, teaching, other healthcare work, and many other service jobs are women dominated. These jobs also have many racialized workers. Labour conditions aren’t great, so there are few, if any, paid sick days or short or long term sick leave. We don’t yet live in a world with Universal Basic Income, so who can afford to get sick? Certainly not your average minimum wage worker.
So, to recap, illness is expensive. Sick people are expensive. And we’re living in a time with eugenic and fascist leanings. That means it appears we sick people are a burden and a lot of people aren’t afraid to say so. How many times did you hear the death of a person with Covid justified by the “pre-existing condition” narrative. “But they had diabetes, high blood pressure, they were overweight, had diverticulitis” or any other “itis.” Or old age. Sick people and old people are expensive. And babies. Babies are expensive. Capitalism only really likes people who are “productive.” If you can’t be productive anymore, well, some people think you’re just a drain on society. It seems pretty clear that if you want to fight fascism, you have to fight for the people affected by it most; sick people, old people, babies, and other marginalized folks.
There’s more. Insurance hates paying for sick people. With something as new as Long Covid, getting “proof” that one is ill remains quite difficult. Is Long Covid real? Why yes, it is. But not everyone agrees. And sick people don’t have the energy to get the appointments, the notes, the this and the that to prove what has happened to them is real.
Further, too many people, including most of our governments, are pretending Covid isn’t a thing anymore. Why? Because it’s expensive! Remember CERB? That might be the closest we ever get to UBI. It was glorious. People who got sick could stay home. People didn’t have to fear losing their homes because of the pandemic. And then it ended. Why? Because it was expensive! We were told to “go back to normal.” Public health abandoned its responsibilities. It abandoned us. And this is not some faceless agency. These are people. People working in public health, with a responsibility to tell the truth about the risks we face to our health and what we can do about them. They abandoned us. They abandoned their responsibilities. Worse than that, they obfuscated to the point of lying. Covid is not harmless. Everything is not OK. There is a case to be made that the emergency is over, (especially with the vaccines largely minimizing the worst outcomes) but Covid was never over.
Meanwhile, has anybody counted up the cost of lost work days, lost homes, lost families, lost lives and livelihoods? Someone has done the math. Covid may be responsible for the loss of 1% of global GDP.
It’s important not to fall in with the minimizers. It’s important not to fall in with the fascists. It’s important not to fall in with the eugenicists. They have an agenda, and it’s not a social justice agenda. It’s a corporate and capitalist agenda in which we are only valued as cogs in the machinery of creating profit for billionaires.
Government has a responsibility to care for us, and, I would add, it has the money to do so. After watching literally billions of dollars go to a useless war and the build up of weapons for more war, I will never again accept the excuse that, when it comes to caring for people, it costs too much. There is money. There is simply no political will.
Caring for people is a social justice issue. Let’s care for people enough to help them prevent Covid. Let’s care for the many people who already have Long Covid. Let’s understand the intersections between Covid, other disabilities, gender, race, and class. If you care about marginalized people, about everyone, caring about Covid is part of that. You have to do what you can to minimize the spread of the disease. Do it for yourself. Do it for others.
If you’re out there thinking you’re a social justice warrior and you’re not doing all you can to prevent Covid and make this world a safer place for everyone, maybe you could do better. At least think about it.