The New Politics of COVID-19

We have entered a new era in the politics of COVID-19. Here, we will explore how this new era has been reached, as well as the potential and actualized consequences that come with it. A few disclaimers before we start: I am not a public health expert, and I am just one person who lives in the U.S., with one experience of how the narrative around COVID-19 has changed.

To begin with, what does this new era look like? It is comprised of several shifts in COVID-19 mitigation tactics, including but not limited to the following. First, individual responsibility is the guiding principle, rather than collective well-being. Masks are rarely, if ever, required outside of healthcare settings, and so one-way masking has become the default. This means that individuals who choose to mask for any reason often must rely solely on the protectiveness of their own mask, which can fall through if they need to eat or drink or briefly remove their mask for any other reason. Along with this, investment in protective measures such as air filtration and de-densifying have fallen, and contact tracing, required testing, work from home options, and paid sick leave are less and less available.

These shifts would make one think that COVID-19 itself has become less life threatening, less contagious, and overall, less of a problem. However, this is not the case. Hospitals are still struggling to keep up, there are worker shortages and supply chain issues, and people are still getting sick. The change, therefore, is not in COVID-19, but in how the data on it is presented. With less required testing and contract tracing as described above, there is less accurate data to determine risk levels. If there is no data, there is no problem.

One could argue that this is not intentional. However, shifts in the CDC COVID-19 mapping have made it so that the default view is now "community levels", which show much lower risk than "transmission levels", a far more accurate metric of risk assesment. If the level of COVID-19 is percieved to be lower by the general public, then the percieved problem is also lower, garnering support for reduced mitigation and protection measures, while ignoring that COVID-19 is still a problem. Despite everyone's desire for the pandemic to be over, the reality is that COVID-19 is an airborne disease (something that is often ignored in public health guidance) that is constantly evolving new strains. The dropping of mitigation and protection measures, along with the fact that vaccines and boosters are not being as strongly promoted nor are they as protective against new variants means that this crisis is far from over. The new era of COVID-19 is one of denial above all else.

You may be wondering, why is this a problem? For one, you can still get really sick. In some cases, you can even develop longCOVID, meaning that your symptoms may remain for a long time after infection, or that you might develop a new (and potentially disabling) health condition. Those who have developed long COVID have been warning us since the pandemic began that this is a serious issue, and yet it is still barely acknowledged by the general public and public health authorities. Repeated infections are thought to only make one's suceptibility to this worse - in sum, getting COVID is not a good thing.

To add onto this, removal of protection and mitigation measures means that those who are immunocompromised or otherwise have a higher risk of becoming severely ill from COVID are effectively shut out of society. This is ableism, plain and clear. Furthermore, if one considers the risks of Long COVID, the abundance of this issue only grows.

What should one do in this new era of everyone for themselves? In an ideal world, the government would acknowledge the issue and reinstate protective measures and mask mandates when transmisson (not community) levels are high. Research and funding for measures that have kept people safe would also be continued. However, that is not something that is likely at the moment, especially with midterm elections coming up. In the meantime, we can protect ourselves and those around us by getting boosters and vaccines when we are eligible, getting tested when we are able, and wearing masks indoors in large groups or when around others who want us to. We don't need to return to lockdown, but we can't quite pretend that COVID-19 doesn't exist. The situation we are in is far from ideal, but if communities can work together in the absence of government support to find a happy medium that keeps people safe but also able to carry out their lives, we might have a chance to reach something better.