QotD [Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος]

"I've talked around this idea before but I'm realizing that if your politic centers around care work in any fashion, you have to starting integrating mass #LongCovid disability into your thinking and work.

"Entire family and community networks are becoming debilitated/ disabled.

[...]

"So when I hear from providers, 'can your partner help you with that?', they're clearly not seeing the full picture.

[...]

"So if my household is all (becoming) disabled or at least slowed down by multiple Covid infections... who is supposed to care for me? for us? for my parents or my spouse's parents as they age (and also are disabled by #LongCovid)?

"How do we reconceptualize care work when the majority of those both needing and providing care are becoming disabled?

[...]

"In my own life, my spouse is chronically ill and become more debilitated. My parents are aging and also didn't bounce back from Covid well. My spouse's parents, too. My friends and comrades are disabled and/or already do TONS of care provision.

"Who is left to ask for help?

"The arriving future requires us to

"1) reconceptualize care and care work

"2) reorganize how care is provided and compensated

"3) expand our ideas about whom we provide care for or are responsible to

"4) slow the fuck down to the speed of sustainability (disability justice).

[...]

"I just... people still don't grasp what's happening and the scale it's happening at."

-- Rachel Bean, dauer formation (colocha_rachel), 2022-08-29

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Thanks for this. I don't have a household and this scares the shit out of me. If I become more disabled, I'm on my own. My mom is around but she's not young and I'm scared for her too.

[link] [reply]

This is hitting care work the hardest, but it's presumably gong to be everything.

And some who have no good reason to not know better are saying Covid is 'over.' Many gov officials, NGOs and even UN sources are saying that. NOPE. Imho, not even entering the end game. The damage that has happened is still piling up and not nearly all of the damage has/is being reported and tabulated.

And that's before we even look at the likelihood that more mutations/variants of Covid are likely to show up.

The thing i'm watching for is how the situation plays out in the U.S. Republicans encouraged their 'base' to ignore vaccines and protective measures making things a lot worse than they might have been. Reported cases in the U.S. have run about double the reported cases from the next highest country. But there's no reason to believe those 'numbers' in other countries, nor the U.S. 'numbers' due to jurisdictions intentionally refusing to report and serious lack of testing. This all will seriously hurt the U.S. in the future. The only thing is "how" that will happen.

So, I have a certain amount of argh about this. It's great that this person is realizing there is a social justice issue here, but this is not a Covid problem, merely an already raging fire Covid threw gasoline on. And I feel this person's newcomer take on it is leading them down some counterproductive paths. Decommodification of care work is how we got in this situation to begin with: the treatment of "women's work" as infinite and uncompensated made it invisible and unreckoned. When we actually have to pay people what they're worth to do it, we, as a society and as individuals, get sticker shock. Decommodification is just worker exploitation.

So when I hear from providers, 'can your partner help you with that?', they're clearly not seeing the full picture.

THIS TIMES 1 BILLION

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