the julian sauce

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.’