Where's the Grief?

a reply to: halfoldman

And isn't this the Semiotic crux of it?
As long as every day is still Covid-day in the world; you can't have a distinctive "World Covid Day".
I mean you can declare it, but nobody would take it seriously.

Hear ye, it's World Covid Day!

Fantastic.

We shall burn a witch and get sozzled!

(Joke, obviously.)

What i am also thinking of stitching the masks together.

Like a massive quilt.
Been done for HIV/AIDS.

A Covid quilt.

a reply to: halfoldman

You say hardly anyone mourns in south africa with such authority

a reply to: ConcernedCanadian

Well I was comparing HIV/AIDS and the Treatment Action Campaign we had from the 1990's to the end of the President Mbeki-era (2008) and their very public "mobilize and mourn" campaigns.

And during the past decade or so it has largely disappeared from the headlines, and few autobiographies and narratives are published. That is not to say people aren't mourning on an individual level (from the loss of a negative status for those who still test positive, to people still dying). But public mourning is pretty much relegated to World AIDS Day (December 1st), and even then there are few events and ribbons and solidarity. Even that is mainly a top-down talk-shop these days.

So my point was pretty much about public mourning and "visibility" events, and how this could translate for public mourning on Covid-19.

I don't have an answer to the latter, except to say there is a yearning for public events that recall the names of all those who died in some kind of expression of collective and public grief.
It's a discussion we need to have, although since the Covid-19 virus still limits public events like funerals, religious gatherings and others, the very nature of this virus and how it spreads makes such events difficult.
One could say, let's do it online (like a social media-type quilt).
But then some critics will say that's just "clicktivism".

Neither has Covid-19 been met with the same amount of stigma, initial big pharma profiteering and state denialism as HIV/AIDS. Although there have been some elements of these issues, they haven't really driven mass grass-roots activism. To the contrary, there's more concern about government over-reach concerning lock-downs, contact tracing, mask mandates and so forth. That is, mobilization concerning campaigns against Covid-19 prevention were almost immediately appropriated by governments (which certainly wasn't the case for HIV/AIDS in South Africa). So for that virus mourning was part of grass-roots mass mobilization - in fact a campaign by the largely poor and marginalized that had tactics similar to anti-apartheid activism (with a focus on music, writing, mass marches and funerals), and led by activists like Zackie Achmat and deceased Archbishop Tutu who were in fact anti-apartheid activists in the 1980's.

It's a difficult debate, but certainly one we should continue to have.
There certainly is a need to collectively mourn Covid-19.

So to sum up, while HIV/AIDS spreads differently to Covid-19, and the top-down rather than grass-roots mobilization response has been very different, there may be some cultural lessons from the older virus regarding the newer one.
And yes, Covid did raise the issue of HIV again, just like HIV raised the issue of TB, but not in a sustained manner. HIV has still been relegated to 3rd page news, or even a "private" issue between sexual partners. The Treatment Action Campaign is still around, but haven't been front-page news in years, and the fact that the US State Department's President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) is still a major funder of medicines in southern Africa is hardly ever mentioned (which one can only blame on sheer anti-American sentiments in the ruling parties, as well as left-wing academic circles - a sentiment that borders on the ungrateful, and which some in the US are calling to be reviewed as long as such "snotty" attitudes persist). Perhaps a reminder that although HIV/AIDS may no longer be weekly headline news, leaving it to the whims of the powerful could change all kinds of global health trajectories.

From the library I got a book entitled Covid-19: The Pandemic that never should have happened, and how to stop the next one by Debora Mackenzie (Bridge Street Press: 2020), but unfortunately there's little in there on how public grieving and mourning can influence public health policies post-HIV/AIDS treatment activism. And that activism became a victim of the treatment's own success: as a crucial amount of people were living with, rather than dying of HIV with access to ARVs, unfortunately the reality of people still being infected and dying drained away in a fickle public's eye.

Fears of more recent flues, SARS, MERS and other potential pandemics hardly involved much public participation at all, except for the specter of scorn and conspiracies about big pharma profiteering, "false flags" and creating false alarms.

But should public and collective mourning always impact political policies?
Can it be mourning for mourning's sake?
I think it can, and sometimes it should.
So come on you poets, and authors and musicians and bloggers - and shine!

a reply to: halfoldman

No, that was not an invitation to chat. See how wrong you always are?

a reply to: ConcernedCanadian

I don't need an invitation to chat on ATS.
As long as it's within the T&C and the mods are happy, all members can contribute.
And there's nothing factually wrong with anything I wrote.

Perhaps it's not your meaning of "grief" or sensibilities on the issue, fine, just scroll past me.
But replying directly is actually an indication of wanting discussion.

a reply to: halfoldman
Slow to learn, ain't ya? We're done, I said.