Covert health supremacism can be more slippery and take many forms. It can come in the form of institutional discrimination, exclusion, covid minimising, and micro-aggressions. Think of the public health officials who presented as positive and reassuring the observation that those who got seriously ill or died from covid are mostly those with pre-existing health conditions — as if the illness or death of a person would somehow matter less, just because they had diabetes? Or think of voices that say “If you haven’t had covid by now, you don’t have any friends” — presupposing that anyone trying to avoid getting infected with a SARS is a social outcast.
Other examples of covert health supremacism: when an employer forces their employees to come into the office without measures to protect against infection. When a volunteer group is unwilling to facilitate alternative forms of access to its monthly meetings. When a friend circle drops you because your insistence on masks and meeting outdoors is ‘no longer fun’. Or what about the general vibe that the pandemic is over, even though we know that transmission is high, long covid is rife, that vaccine efficacy seriously wanes over time, and that treatment for long covid is currently still unavailable. All of these tacitly, but unmistakably, communicate a clear health supremacist sentiment: ‘If you think you might not be able naturally to withstand covid, perhaps you should not be here at all.’
The health supremacist narratives have grown stronger with each wave of the pandemic. By now, the public image of society is one almost split in two: the presumed superior, ‘healthy’ individuals on the one hand, those deemed inferior, ‘vulnerable’, on the other.
Fascism is a violent, always destructive, and often lethal political doctrine which can and must be countered. Health supremacism is a fascist ideology, and so it can and must be resisted. Its rise will harm us all. But countering this form of fascism is easier said than done. Because health supremacist thinking has permeated so much of everyday life and public consciousness, the fight against it will for many involve changing the way they do things and changing the expectations that they have. But it’s high time to face this reality.