The reason the Bay Area is now a hotspot for Covid is because the things that made us ride through well at first (an abundance of caution/masking) now have been thrown to the wind by people who think vaccines and paxlovid will get us through this. These tools will help but not 1/
on their own. Masking is a simple intervention that works to prevent the indoor spread of Covid. Shutting down indoor dining also helps. But the Bay Area has been taken over by libertarians in medicine/public health. The worst possible political orientation for getting through 2/
a collective, infectious challenge such as a highly transmissible virus is libertarianism. Because health of the collective here is greater than the sum of the individuals being healthy. It emerges when we all work together to ensure the possibility of health. 3/
The logic I have seen put forth by some Bay Area doctors is indicative of a certain kind of will to power ethos that you can see in other contexts. Why should I inconvenience myself for a poor/Black/infant/chronically ill person? Why doesn't my own personal liberty matter? 4/
Instead of thinking only of one's rights, it helps to shed light on our responsibilities, to one another. I am responsible for the health and wellbeing of people I don't know, who I don't share the same class with, who live in different neighborhoods, with whom I may never 5/
directly interact. This reality chafes against the political logic of libertarianism that seeks to emphasize our atomization, obliterating our obligations to one another for collective care. But this collective care is exactly what we did in the beginning of the pandemic. 6/
It is why we have done so well. Capitalists and libertarians and libertarian capitalists have pushed their agenda so far and hard in the media that we have forgetten the basic principles of care, how to keep each other safe. Wishful thinking won't do it. This isn't the last 7/
variant. This is only the beginning. We may in time realize how criminal it has been for people who carry MPH after their names to abandon so many protocols we know keep the public safe and guard the public health of our communities. We have lost more people and more people 8/
will now be chronically ill from Long Covid than we had to. It is the misdirection from these experts that has been a great moral injury to those who work on the frontlines, seeing the bodies wracked by this virus in the acute and its more drawn out, life-altering chronic 9/
form. I advocate for caution and care still. Mask up indoors. Keep your gatherings small and outside. Keep the babies and elders safe. Don't eat indoors. Enjoy the beautiful Bay Area in the Spring. This pandemic is not over and we are only making it worse 10/
with our willful disregard of public health measures we know work. We are not atomized individuals. We are people who live in interconnected, interwoven, interdependent communities. Let's act like it and step up to our responsibilities to care for one another. #CareRevolution
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
