A Quick Rant About…
Vaccine Misinformation.
Content Warning: Death.
The pandemic is nowhere near over. So it feels kind of unfair to put emotional labor into griping over numbers and mourning deaths when I know that before the ink dries (sort of speak) there will be more deaths to mourn.
The working class are continued to be called essential, essential enough to keep the economy going but not essential enough to be given all the safety nets necessary so that they do not end up unhoused in the middle of a pandemic now that the moratorium on evictions has ended or indebted or dead if they were to contract the deadly disease in a country where healthcare is a for profit industry. As the country foolishly re-opened, it did so sweeping under the rug the numbers of Black and Brown People that continue to die in each state, some not even being diagnosed or treated for COVID.
The truth is that we will never know with exactitude just how many people we truly lost to COVID-19.
For the first few months of COVID-19 I did not work. Once funds began running low, and with no end of this pandemic in sight, I slowly began accepting more assignments to hospitals and mental health fascilities in the state of Virginia as a medical interpreter, my speciality lies in mental health.
For months I braved hospitals, spent time away from my family and suffered the trauma of being in fear and anxiety at work, with an invisible foe — a virus that as someone with an immune disorder, can mean death. I only work when I am needed, I do not have to show up daily, staff an understaffed department, be harassed because I wear scrubs and be put in the type of danger that nurses, aides, techs, lab, doctors and all the staff necessary to keep a hospital running: from kitchen, to maintance to administrative work, all of my co-workers and friends that work in healthcare seem to be burned out, suffering and overall tired of the bullshit. Medicine is a field that people go into because they love to take care and heal people, yet this very drive which keeps them going is being used as an excuse, as a gaslight to excuse very selfish behavior by few people.
The anti-vaxx movement has been around for decades and it seems to pull people from different demographics under the banner of government suspicion. Which is fair enough. The government does have the best interest of those capitalists enterprises that aide it in upholding itself, healthcare industry included, and yes, by virtue of this being a white supremacist capitalist system, you can make the argument that the system itself is designed to kill and maim non white people. It is easy to mention instances in history where our People were treated like test subjects, and even easier to remember that last year we found out that ICE camps were sterilizing people.
However we cannot be suspicious of that which can save the most lives. We are in a global pandemic, and beyond the US and our myoptic american essentialism there are millions that are not in the priviledged position of choosing to not take a shot for the team.
I am not addressing the people that are making horse deworming meds sell out like hot cakes, thom Fox folks are beyond saving, they display a lack of self awareness of their own ignorance, a level of paranoia and unwillingness to see other´s world view (even when presented with proof and evidence) that is not that different from the patients I see at the mental health fascilities, the people that blame staff for putting micro chips into the medications that can potentially help them. With the difference that some of the COVID denialists and anti-vaxxers in general that believe such things are not getting the help they need from mental health professionals, they are instead on their phones (a tracking device that the goverment can and does have full access to whenever) ranting and passing out misinformation that continues to harm the most vulnerable. Thanks to them, American selfishness, ignorance and individualism has never been more on display than during this pandemic.
I am addressing the people with valid concerns, understanding of the history of BIPOC with white medicine and seeing that healthcare is an industry here. People that are kind, empathetic and want the best for their families. People that consider themselves on the opposite side of the alt right and their consistent fear mongering. No matter the fear.
COVID-19 is very real. I lost friends and family to it. I have had to help make the call to patient families that did not speak English, I have heard from the inside of entire detention centers packing people with covid with healthy people, spraying them with disinfectant and giving them no more than aspirin to help: My People, treated like animals (animals don’t deserve this treatment either!) I see the massive amounts of death my coworkers in healthcare carry on their shoulders. They see no end in sight. I applaud healthy distrust of Empire, but right now it is not the time to play revolutionary on the graves of so many. It is the time to see the capitalism for what it is and stop there. I mean think about it, Cuba, the most anti capitalist nation on earth, developed their own vaccines (a miracle and a true test to communist brilliance in spite of imperialist blockades) and have so successfully taken care of their People that now they send Soberana (translates to sovereign) all over the world. To get the shot and encourage all to do so is the principled revolutionary thing to do. Get the shot!
Today I am just grateful that Alex Jones has been de-platformed before this pandemic started. The death toll that I imagine was avoided makes my head spin.
Reverend Leonina Arismendi Zarkovic is part of the Prophetic Council for the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival and Co-Leader at Iglesia del Pueblo. They are an award winning writer and artist from Uruguay living in the US.
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