The sociological production of the end of the pandemic
On 11 May 2021, the US Biden administration declared that the Covid public health emergency over.
In this episode, the hosts of the Death Panel podcast trace back to the moment it became clear the US was going to "end the pandemic". The US was not going to stop Covid, but just redefine what a pandemic even means, both socially and politically.
In this excerpt specifically, the hosts are discussing how capitalist governments worldwide decided they were done with Covid. They discuss what kind of ideas were needed to make this a reality. Timestamps: 18:56-20:20
Content note: discussing ideas of disabled people dying being seen inevitable (eugenics).
Beatrice Adler-Bolton: Yeah, so there's been this narrative from the beginning of COVID that a lot of the death that we're seeing is people that were gonna die anyway, right? That COVID deaths were being pulled from the future and so I think --
Artie Vierkant: That they were somehow inevitable, right? Yeah.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton: Right. Yeah, that these were deaths that were preordained to happen, we're just like cashing in on the deaths a little bit early.
Artie Vierkant: Yeah, more crassly, to quote one edgelord from last year, that "We know who is at risk."
Beatrice Adler-Bolton: Mhm. Maybe they had a secondary condition, maybe they were older, maybe they were overweight, maybe they had high blood pressure, maybe they had diabetes. And there's been this -- this drive to prove and certify, as much as we can, that people who died from COVID almost -- not that they deserved it, but that it makes sense that they died. And this whole making sense of the death has been about trying to draw a line in the sand between the people who have died and the people who have not died, that doesn't place the blame on the political economy, that doesn't place the blame on those in power, but places the blame on the individual and their individuated experience of health, which has dictated their outcomes in this pandemic.
The transcript is at this link:
With the public health emergency declaration ending today, May 11th, we turn back the clock to early 2021, mere days into the Biden presiden
