Pandemic Apathy Allows Genocide:
A look at the connection between pandemic public health and the ongoing genocide of Palestinian people.
“If you have come here to help me you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” — Lilla Watson who is a Murri indigenous Australian visual artist and activist.
What does it mean for our liberation to be bound up in one another?
To me it has always meant that they rely on each other to flourish. And that we may hinder or move forward each-other’s liberation with our own personal actions. That we are accountable to one another. And that community care should be the center of every movement and every struggle. Our liberation being bound up in one another to me, means that it can never be found in a vacuum, where it only focuses on one particular thing at one particular time, we do not exist as one dimensional beings.
I have been in advocacy and educational work for over a decade now. Some of the work that I’ve done includes: working in rape crisis and Domestic Violence centers/shelters, traveling and giving lectures around the world and country regarding race and reproductive rights, organizing community events and protests for Black lives, working in the National Women’s March Organization as a digital racial educator.
And now, working as a full spectrum birth worker: teaching educational courses, virtual consulting with expectant families, birth advocacy trainings, and in person Abortion, Conception, Birth, Lactation, and Postpartum care. And one thing that all of those many various positions have taught me is that often most people don’t understand what it means for us to be bound up in one another.
We are terribly individualistic.
And I have seen this individualism the most striking in the educational spaces that many of us birth workers are trained in. And in the care teams and attitudes of the loved ones of my birth and postpartum clients. I watch regularly in my work with these families as the surrounding communities they are in don’t know how to be a community. Where these family and friends do not know what it means to “show up” and they expect to come into a newly postpartum space and be entertained by a new baby and cooked for by a person that just tore their body apart to grow a new life. And I watch the hurt and confusion these new parents have when they realize that almost no one around them understands that this process of making humans was always supposed to go hand in hand with community care, but often, it does not.
And people are left alone to suffer.
The deeper I go in this work, the more I confront my own previous selfish individualism throughout my life, and the more I realize the ways I too, also failed the communities I worked in and loved in.
Now, I understand that this work to outgrow individualism is life long. It ebbs and flows, and grows the more we age, the more we experience, the more we see, and the more we understand the world around us.
This individualism is a result of us living deeply under capitalism, to a suffocating point.
This individualism is one of the side effects of us all being so worn out by existing because the systems of this country and the world built it all this way on purpose. So with that in mind, this article is not at all an admonishment or call out of anyone. As angry as I am at the state of the world, and lack of community care, and as much as I’ve grown weary of trying to get folks to collectively connect the dots, I also understand that not everything can be learned or gained through anger alone.
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*Sharing the following story with permission from the families*
Early in the pandemic, when I still had a newborn myself, I attended two Free Births as the family’s Doula. I did not tell anyone in my own personal life what I was doing because I knew that if I did they would stop me. And they would stop me not just because of the risk of Covid and the fact that I am immune compromised, but also because I was so early postpartum and still so mentally and physically wrecked by my own traumatic birth and postpartum that followed at such a scary time. I was afraid that no one i knew would understand why I so desperately felt pulled to load up my broken body and my tiny baby, strap her to my chest in a carrier, and be with these families that needed care but could not access it properly in the medical industry.
Both of these clients were Black women, both were immunocompromised, both had experienced years of medical violence and gaslighting, and only one had a partner at all to support her. Early on in this pandemic, it became incredibly clear that the most vulnerable were always going to be sacrificed in the name of convenience. Because even before masks were mandated everywhere, the first thing that happened in hospitals and doctors offices around the country was that partners were not allowed to be present during doctors visits and births.
To outside onlookers, this rule may have seemed necessary and needed at such a chaotic time. But I want you to think for a moment what that rule would mean for the people that already fall in the perimeter of the most horrific marginalizations.
Think about what this would mean for these people to enter a space without love and support and most importantly, advocacy, when they birth their babies.
I want you to think about the Black pregnant people, the indigenous pregnant people, the poor pregnant people, the previously abused pregnant people, the disabled pregnant people, the trans pregnant people. The pregnant people that fall into many of these categories all at the exact same time.
And i want you to understand what this loss of access would mean for any of them if they faced complications during their births, if they came close to death, or did die, if they were in emergency situations, and if they lost their babies in the process. Many were left alone in the care of medical staff that very often are bigoted, and were overworked, undersupported, underprotected, who where at the time watching their own families and coworkers die off from Covid.
Having a partner, a best friend, a family member or a Doula be able to attend a birth often for many people, is a matter of life and death, because even without doing any advocating, those other people merely being present to witness it all, remind medical staff that this person who is giving birth is human, that this person is loved and cared about and will be fought for. Although this rule did not last long because parents and birth workers fought so hard against it, it still damaged a lot of people because at a time when the goal should have been to center the wellness of these most vulnerable populations, they were pushed out of care. And the fact that pushing the most vulnerable out of care was the first plan in crisis really showcases how disgusting, how insidious, and how unprepared to support these medical systems are. Because when medical, particularly reproductive health, is built on racism and subjecting Black bodies to trauma, then that is the lens it will function in forever. The birthing parents that suffered in this time from losing their care teams, took that grief and trauma into their postpartum and parenting journey and it still sits inside of them today almost 4 years later and informs not only how they parent their children and live their lives, but many times, changes the way their bodies even function because that’s how trauma works.
Because of these rules around care, and the overall risk of contracting covid in a hospital, home births rates skyrocketed. However, many homebirth midwives became overbooked, were experiencing immense grief and trauma themselves, and many were against covid safety protocols. So that’s where Free Birth for many came in. Now, whether you agree or disagree with Free Births, I want you to know why they exist at all — because the Medical Industrial Complex harms people everyday. Cornering people into choosing to birth alone. There needs to be a deep understanding about why someone would opt out of or not even have access to medical care because of who they are. Think about what systems medical care is built on and is sustained by that would make it easy and normal for the most marginalized to immediately be cut off from access to support, at one of the most critical times in human history. Think about how being forced into any kind of birth could risk lives.These are the kinds of life risking decisions that immune compromised people have been forced to make for almost four years now.
So how does any of this apply to Palestinians?
I want you to now consider the connection between Covid and the Genocide/Occupation of the Palestinian people and their land(And other Genocides happening around the world).
What encourages these genocides to happen?
What helps them continue?
What things have humans collectively seen/allowed in human history that made it easy for pandemic apathy and ignoring of genocide to occur at all?
And why is the world often so okay with these atrocities happening even if we can all see or hear about the devastation?
Understanding Disability in the context of the occupation of Palestine first means education about what a genocide can do to the body, mind, and spirit of a person, and how that will vary by age, and the ways that will look in the future for Palestinian children who’s brains and bodies are still forming while this is taking place.
There needs to be a profound education to understanding that when this genocide is over, whoever may survive, will most definitely be left with physical and mental disabilities, many of which they will never recover from. And previously living under occupation their entire lives- born as hostages, damaged their nervous systems, which therefore leads to chronic health disorders, increased risk of cancers, heart disease, inflammation, organ issues, weakened immune system, birth complications, etc.
Many of these things were already being seen in the people of Gaza for decades prior to October 2023, because they have been living under siege, which restricted movement, food, and water access, medical care, mental health services, and all other political/social rights. Now that thousands of Palestinians have been bombarded and murdered by the Settler Colony of Israel, whoever may make it out alive may face all of these previous health issues, but now magnified, along with any current injuries sustained. And I think that it’s easy for westerners to kind of look at treatment of humans like this as just a consequence for “war”. This genocide, however, is not a war, it a strategy for dehumanization. It’s not just that Israel, and America want to maintain political, structural, economic, and land power, but they also want to strip these people of their dignity, their future, their health, and culture. The goal here is to eradicate an entire people off the face of the earth, and to convince the world that Palestinians are undeserving of even life itself. That isn’t accomplished just by killing someone only, it is done by restricting access to human needs, mutilating their bodies or minds or both- disabling them, and it is done by using language and the media, to help to “other” them in society. Pushing them out of the margins of care and support and deeming their brutality and suffering as necessary for others to move forward. This has all been done under the false pretenses that Israel was made and exists for the safety and sustainability of the Israeli and Jewish people. You have been told and believed a lie that safety for one could ever be born out of the degradation of another. And because of the world believing and allowing this lie, millions of Palestinians have suffered.
I want you to understand what the process of “othering” another human being does, how convincing the victims and those observing them that this human is “different”, and that different = pointless to exist, is something that has been the baseline for all other atrocities throughout human history. This is also the baseline for oppression of disabled and immune compromised people throughout our current pandemic.
The “us” vs “them” mentality has to name a few — allowed African slavery, the holocaust, and the oppression and ethnic cleansing of indigenous people. This Us vs Them mentality tells society that there is never much we can do to change anything, all we can do is worry about ourselves. And thus, the individualism of public safety was born.
It has been stated publicly, early on in this pandemic, that it is normal for the fragile to struggle and die. That our medical needs, and right to safety in public space is up for political debate and is a matter of personal opinion of each human and is not something that is of importance enough to be mandated. If we are immune compromised we are told to stay in isolation if we are worried about getting sick. And we are shown that even medical care is not responsible for protecting any of us, but especially the compromised. My heart doctor for my Long Covid sees me and my 3 year old walk into her office and smiles at us with a maskless grin that always reminds me that even my medical care doesn’t value my life. And that I have no inherent value in society because I am “other”.
These governmental entities and the media have done such great work at priming everyone to accept mass death and disability as a side effect of life needing to return to “normal”.
And they have been doing it for centuries before this pandemic ever existed.
Those in charge of public health have never once in this pandemic encouraged citizens to regularly track wastewater Covid data, Long Covid data, or educate themselves about the personal experiences of those being most impacted who are dealing with lifetime health issues because of Covid.
Instead, they tried to convince us that everyone with Long Covid did something to bring it on — that we were previously “unhealthy’, which therefore convinces those listening, that these post Covid chronic health problems do not happen to ‘healthy’ people, which is a lie.
Political, medical, and media powers have treated knowledge surround Covid the same way they taught medical providers our entire lives to treat knowledge surrounding patient health- where they take our blood, monitor blood pressure, pulse, heart rate/function, etc and rarely tell us what anything means unless a problem is found or if they want to judge our weight. This practice of ownership over knowledge essentially leaves most aspects of our health as something only a doctor can tell us about, unless we fight like hell to be a part of the process. There is rarely body liberation in medicine, because “doctor knows best”. This is, despite the fact that medical providers education does not center public health and safety, even if their job title states otherwise. It centers money and career advancement.
So with that in mind, it’s been a simple task, really, for most of society to fall for this idea that the pandemic is “over” merely because someone in charge said that is. Like Professor. Peter Chin-Hong, M.D. who is an infectious disease specialist who went on the news on national tv to say: (Click here to watch video) “This is the year when covid will become endemic. Covid is becoming predictable thanks to the amount of immunity in society , as well as tools like treatments and vaccines. We, as a society, have to be prepared for as much as 100,000 to 250,000 people a year dying of those vulnerable groups. But, in general, for your average person, you know, it’ll probably fizzle out.”
Us vs Them.
When someone in charge makes a statement like that it not only ensures the “healthy” population that they have nothing to really worry about, and that they somehow have immunity from Covid after previous infection, when really we know, based on numerous research and studies by scientists, that repeat covid infections can lower immune system function and does not provide immunity from Covid. But statements like these also do not encourage the “healthy” to seek out further education to protect themselves. Nor do these statement speak to the personal accountability to not infect others because you could kill or disable them, it reinforces an idea that humans do not belong to one another, when the opposite is true. Statements like these do not tell you that “health” is not permanent. Or that Covid is being compared by researchers to Hiv and Aids. That it goes into the body and is often like an explosion going off inside of it and then it sticks itself to organs and tissues and can create long term health problems in each.
What exactly does it mean to be an “average person” when 1 in 10 covid infections is leading to Long Covid, when most people have had covid more than 3–5 times THAT THEY KNOW OF.
What does it mean for covid to “fizzle out in the average person” when most doctors have no idea how to prevent Long Covid in anyone, how to treat Long Covid as a whole, or even the fact that Long Covid is not just one thing. Long Covid can be everything from persistent loss of taste and smell (neurological damage), to Dysautomia, heart, brain, and all organ dysfunction, early onset dementia, etc. These specialists, these doctors, the media, and the politicians are all banking on a few things- that you continue working and feeding money into the economy and taxes to fund genocides all over the world, that you keep getting sick so that more of your money can be spent in the medical systems, that you continue to reject community care and education on what it means to show up for one another, and that you continue to normalize that it is okay to “other’’ certain people and push them out of the margins of deserving care and rights. And lastly, these systems are banking on YOU personally helping them kill off us — the most vulnerable populations because by the Us vs Them standard, we, the immune compromised people of this country are not seen as human. But rather collateral damage that is necessary. And if you keep exposing yourselves to covid and feeding into the narrative of only healthy lives having worth, or unhealthy lives not being able to access human rights, then you easily could become us and become expendable too.
When we loudly declare, either with our words or actions, that the human lives around us are expendable based on them being “unhealthy”, broken, or “other” then that is a ripple effect that travels all over the fuckin planet.
From Palestine, to Sudan, to Congo, to Haiti, etc etc etc. It doesn’t solely hinder Covid safety, but also degrades human worth as a whole, it downplays the collective responsibility we all have to one another, and stops the ability for community care to grow. It further pushes the notion that ALL “other” type people are undeserving - that Black people, Indigenous people, all disabled people, queer and trans people, poor people, parents and children, etc have no worth because we are different from you.
Everyday when masking, vaccinating, testing, educating, and centering the voices of the most marginalized does not happen, that is society telling us that we are unworthy.
And that is feeding a flame that is burning us all.
Everyday in the real world and on social media when most of society does not care about the weight of their own public actions regarding taking covid precautions, it’s not just that they are possibly infecting others which could kill or disable them. But these people are now servants of normalcy. They are showing with their actions that it is normal to not engage in community care, normal to push “other” people out of the margins of society, and they are encouraging others to do the same by being an influence.
When we immune compromised people are the only ones finding, distributing, and loudly acknowledging the information and data for this ongoing pandemic, then our voices are routinely silenced by the sounds of the world returning to normal.
We can not be the only ones speaking.
We can not be the only ones doing.
Pandemic safety is a branch on the tree of liberation for all marginalized people, everywhere.
The most marginalized have been the ones most infected, most medically neglected, the ones most likely to get Long Covid and go undiagnosed, the ones most likely to not have access to antivirals to fight the infections, or vaccines to prevent it, especially now that the ignoring of the pandemic has allowed Biden to charge for those services.
Pandemic apathy is a tool of white supremacy that aids ethnic cleansing, genocides, racism, and lack of climate emergency awareness.
When you take pandemic precautions you are telling the world that marginalized lives all over it deserve to be liberated, safeguarded, cared for AND at the center of focus, not pushed out of the bounds of sight.
When you take pandemic precautions you are telling the world that we are equally human and that equity is required to uplift us.
So when you see these images of genocide and people begging for help, and you wonder how we got here, or what you can do to support them — it is not only that you must donate, sharing their stories, and demand a ceasefire/an end to the occupation — you must realize that all of these worldwide issues are connected and influence each-other. We owe it to each-other to look inward at personal actions regularly, and ask if we are living in a way that encourages or obstructs this type of cruelty in the world.
Are we fighting for a world that does not tell any marginalized person that they deserve suffering?
Please connect the dots.
Our Liberation is bound up in one another.
ShiShi Rose
Birth & Postpartum Advocate
Writer
Truth teller
Mother
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