Have to admit that covid was for me the final nail in my radicalization five years ago. Been lurking the longhauler sub all this time and it’s been a place of both incredible “just throw money at it and you’ll be fine” takes and takes that show how people are becoming more class conscious due to the conditions they are in with longcovid.
The latest example is this discussion and considering that this is from reddit I’d say it looks like that people keep moving left when they have to live with the fallout of capitalism, even from more privileged positions.
Same, so much the same.
spoiler trauma
I still feel this crushing despair (and admittedly also rage) when I talk to my dead-eyed relatives or friends about covid. I have developed a sort of trauma from the silence, othering and gaslighting I received when it was me who took up masking first and kept up with the science (still do) and tried informing people around me of the danger. Me, my kid and partner masked before anyone did here and the summer of 2020 we got to feel the fascism around us really well for the first time. It just got worse from there. I’ve been yelled at for “ruining the vibes”, left out and ignored for five years now. And they have given me and my partner covid, twice. My partner has developed type 2 diabetes from it, we both have longcovid symptoms and the first years were really bad for both of us.
In maybe 2021-2022 I had to return to in-person studies and had to use public transport again. I was the only one in a mask. Same at uni. The entire world around me was talking about how it “just kills the weak, sick and elderly who would die anyway, so its ok”. Also a lot of talk about how those who get it or die from it are somehow at fault. And this is when I truly and deeply understood how deeply fascist the country I live in is. Like fundamentally culturally fascist. I realized the supposed “dark humor” and phrases everyone has used all their lives are really just fascism in plain sight.
Everyone went with not giving a fuck, old people the most willfully. They took pride in their ignorance and now covid is never even talked about. I still talk about it, but it isn’t even mentioned anywhere now. I keep bringing up the dangers to my family, but it falls into those dead eyes, even though these peoples children seem sick and I bet they have some form of longcovid now too. Most of these people do. Plus our doctors and experts came out as fully fascist with covid, I have no trust left for them or my fellow humans after already knowing this by having lived in the body of a larger woman and trying to access healthcare.
I’ve also noticed that the normies are really struggling now. We (me and my partner) have been doing a hibernating life for five years now, we hike and do nature stuff, but we minimize the growds still and use masking and layered protection. We don’t do movies, eat out or any of that, I got a desktop air purifier for my in-office days and stuff like that. And despite the longcovid problems we both now have, many of these normalizers seem to not remember anything, seem to struggle with basic cognitive tasks and they apparently have no idea it’s happening to them. My sister no longer remembers things we have talked about just days before.
I know I should feel empathy for them and I do tbh, but I struggle with it because I am also eternally angry. Each of these people have probably had people in their lives who have raised the alarm and they chose and choose to ignore it. Many would also have the financial privilege of caring, but they don’t.
I have no anger for the delivery driver who was forced to get covid so these same people can complain about actually having to be with their kids and raise them for once, like they did when they had to stay home for like two weeks. I have lived poor, I never travelled or could afford going out in the ways these people mean and that makes me even angrier.
It definitely broke and keeps breaking something in me. And I agree, I don’t think it can ever be fixed again.
See the anger, the fucking rage, is what’s most radicalizing for me. Being in the public health system got me on the path to communism but seeing this shit go on for 6 years and continue to get WORSE? That’s got me ready to burn this motherfucker to the ground.
Yup, a slow burning dumbster fire is what it is.
I am in the public sector too and my studies are in social work. The disappointment and anger I have felt when ALL of my fellow students and workers unmasked as soon as possible is out of this world. In uni I asked for accomodations due to my longcovid and legitimate fear of getting it again and got forced to coming in to lectures with visibly sick people attending after getting humiliated by having to disclose my health status and beg for accommodation. I was the only one in a mask and someone with fever and tested covid sat in the next row, because if we didn’t show up we would fail the course. I then tried to ask for remote study possibilities as I thrived studying at home. My grades took a dip as soon as we were forced back in person in 2022. It radicalized me more as I understood how audhd me will always get fucked by this system.
I had been led to believe that it is the social and health sectors who are on the side of the people, as per the welfare state propaganda. That it is social workers especially who side with the vulnerable. And yet we were made to do client work maskless. To this day I cancel all my appointments or do them remote if I feel even a little under the weather or someone around me is sick, but nobody else does. The people I work with are the most at risk and yet people come to work sick, never even mention covid and take no responsibility for the people they supposedly side with.
Just last week our organizations HR ghouls gave a big speech on “sick leave culture” and how despite their best neoliberal efforts the amount of sick days taken keeps going up. Not a single mention is ever made about infectious disease apart from mandatory flu shots, because those are the norm. This is an organization that is essentially the entire health and social care field plus fire departments in an area. These are your “frontline workers”.
I am rarely sick because I do my work remote as much as possible. I don’t socialize at work if I have to be there in person and always eat alone. I protect my clients and meet them at their homes or outside, it can be done. If they are sick, I mask and offer others a mask too, nobody has ever taken one. Not even when we enter homes with the sort of serious stuff where you would want one just for the smells that you need to be able to deal with. The fascism is hegemonic.
This stuff isn’t fixable by reform. China did the right thing (at first) and was fully demonized for it.