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ABSTRACT
COVID-19 has crystalized how Western sociopolitical, cultural, and biomedical understandings of health advance the spaciotemporal logic of “the end.” This logic defines health in terms of linear accessibility to cures while ignoring the intersectional mechanisms of systemic inequality. Such logics stress an individual’s ability to mobilize along the timeline of health, ignoring the stoppages shaped by race, class, ability, and gender. This effectively casts public health as a matter of managing individual choice without attending to systems of power. The logic of “the end” works in tandem with the metaphors of “darkness” and “light.” Within the context of COVID-19, these metaphors demarcate health as a universally attainable good defined by Western medicine, whiteness, and normative ability. This temporal logic of the pandemic crystalizes how whiteness and ability shape notions of health in ways that render precariously situated bodies immobile and essentially ill.
Notes
1 Elizabeth Weise and Karen Weintraub, “What Does Victory against the COVID-19 Pandemic Look Like? USA TODAY’s Vaccine Panel Weighs in,” USA TODAY, March 11, 2021, https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/health/2021/03/11/vaccine-panel-experts-disagree-what-end-pandemic-means/4631291001/.
2 Sigal Samuel, “Despite Omicron, Covid-19 Will Become Endemic. Here’s How,” Vox, January 1, 2022, https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22849891/omicron-pandemic-endemic.
3 Ibid.
4 Scott Neuman, “Fauci Says COVID-19 Won’t Go Away Like Smallpox, but Will More Likely Become Endemic,” NPR, January 18, 2022, https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2022/01/18/1073802431/fauci-says-covid-19-wont-go-away-like-smallpox.
5 Aris Katzourakis, “COVID-19: Endemic Doesn’t Mean Harmless,” Nature, January 24, 2022, https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00155-x.
6 Ersula Ore and Matthew Houdek, “Lynching in Times of Suffocation: Toward a Spatiotemporal Politics of Breathing,” Women’s Studies in Communication 43, no. 4 (2020): 443–58.
7 Pricilla Wald, Contagious: Cultures, Carriers, and the Outbreak Narrative (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008), 2.
8 Ibid.
9 Marina Levina, Pandemics and the Media (New York: Peter Lang, 2015).
10 J. Blake Scott, Risky Rhetoric: AIDS and the Cultural Practices of HIV Testing (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2003).
11 Huiling Ding, Rhetoric of a Global Epidemic: Transcultural Communication about SARS (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2014).
12 Paula A. Treichler, How to Have Theory in an Epidemic: Cultural Chronicles of AIDS (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999).
13 Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1978).
14 This was when we finished collecting data during the initial submission of the essay. Since then, endemic discourses have become more prominent throughout media coverage of the pandemic. We address endemic discourses later in the essay.
15 Weise and Weintraub, “What Does Victory against the COVID-19 Pandemic Look Like?”
16 Ibid.
17 David Ignatius, “Opinion: How Did Covid-19 Begin? Its Initial Origin Story Is Shaky,” Washington Post, April 2, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/how-did-covid-19-begin-its-initial-origin-story-is-shaky/2020/04/02/1475d488-7521-11ea-87da-77a8136c1a6d_story.html.
18 Kathy Katella, “Our Pandemic Year,” Yale Medicine, March 9, 2021, https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/covid-timeline.
19 Lauran Neergaard and Carla K. Johnson, “How Will Pandemic End? Despite Omicron, COVID-19 Will Become Endemic,” Fox29, January 3, 2022, https://www.fox29.com/news/how-will-pandemic-end-despite-omicron-covid-19-will-become-endemic.
20 Ibid.
21 Ignatius, “How Did Covid-19 Begin?”
22 Ibid.
23 Robert Kuznia and Drew Griffin, “How Did Coronavirus Break Out? Theories Abound as Researchers Race to Solve Genetic Detective Story,” CNN, April 6, 2020, https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/06/us/coronavirus-scientists-debate-origin-theories-invs/index.html.
24 Ibid.
25 Alan Kraut, Silent Travelers: Germs, Genes, and the “Immigrant Menace” (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994).
26 Ibid.
27 Steven Soderbergh, dir., Contagion (Burbank, CA: Warner Bros. 2011).
28 Levina, Pandemics and the Media.
29 Wald, Contagious, 8.
30 Emanual Goldman, “Antibiotic Abuse in Animal Agriculture: Exacerbating Drug Resistance in Human Pathogens,” Human and Ecological Risk Assessment 10, no. 1 (2004): 121–34.
31 Levina, Pandemics and the Media, 86.
32 Raka Shome, Diana and Beyond: White Femininity, National Identity, and Contemporary Media Culture (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2014).
33 Stephen J. Collier and Andrew Lakoff, The Government of Emergency: Vital Systems, Expertise, and the Politics of Security (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2021). The authors point to the rhetoric of “global health” and how the management of disease events functions similarly to that of national security threats.
34 Treichler, How to Have Theory in an Epidemic, 101.
35 World Health Organization, “Listings of WHO’s Response to COVID-19,” June 29, 2020, https://www.who.int/news/item/29-06-2020-covidtimeline.
36 Smriti Mallapaty, “China’s COVID Vaccines Have Been Crucial—Now Immunity Is Waning,” Nature, October 14, 2021, https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02796-w.
37 Levina, Pandemics and the Media, 86.
38 Richard Galant, “The 30% Who Could End the Pandemic,” CNN, April 11, 2021, https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/11/opinions/voting-for-vaccine-opinion-column-galant/index.html.
39 AJMC Staff, “A Timeline of COVID-19 Developments in 2020,” American Journal of Managed Care, January 1, 2021, https://www.ajmc.com/view/a-timeline-of-covid19-developments-in-2020.
40 World Health Organization, “Listings of WHO’s Response to COVID-19”; Thiago Cavalho, Florian Krammer, and Akiko Iwasaki, “The First 12 Months of COVID-19: A Timeline of Immunological Insights,” Nature Reviews Immunology 21 (2021): 245–56.
41 Eli Clare, Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017).
42 Ibid., 28.
43 Jonathan M. Metzl and Anna Kirkland, eds., Against Health: How Health Became the New Morality (New York: New York University Press, 2010).
44 Sarun Charumilind et al., “When Will the COVID-19 Pandemic End?” McKinsey & Company, March 1, 2022, https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/healthcare-systems-and-services/our-insights/when-will-the-covid-19-pandemic-end.
45 Ibid.
46 Jackson Mah, “Back in the Game, COVID-19 Vaccine Education Initiative,” YouTube, April 1, 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2TS2kzBYBE.
47 Emily Stewart, “Anti-maskers Explain Themselves,” Vox, August 7, 2020, https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/8/7/21357400/anti-mask-protest-rallies-donald-trump-covid-19.
48 Clare, Brilliant Imperfection.
49 Western media outlets have questioned the efficacy of non-Western vaccines. BBC, Nature, and mint have challenged the effectiveness of vaccines produced in India and China. Meanwhile, Western vaccines are discussed in higher status, with Slate reporting on how Pfizer has been declared the “CEO” or “upper class” vaccine. See BBC Staff, “Chinese Official Says Local Vaccines ‘Don’t Have High Protection Rates,’” BBC, April 12, 2021, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-56713663; “Covovax, Biological E: What We Know about India’s New Covid-19 Vaccines,” BBC, February 7, 2021, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-55748124; Smriti Mallapaty, “China’s COVID Vaccines Are Going Global—but Questions Remain,” Nature, May 12, 2021, https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01146-0; mint Staff, “Are Chinese Vaccines Less Effective?” mint, April 14, 2021, https://www.livemint.com/science/news/are-chinese-covid-vaccines-less-effective-11618369100990.html; Heather Schwedel, “How Pfizer Became the Status Vax,” Slate, April 17, 2021, https://slate.com/human-interest/2021/04/best-vaccine-choice-pfizer-joke.html.
50 Sara Ahmed, “A Phenomenology of Whiteness,” Feminist Theory 8, no. 2 (2007): 149.
51 Marina Levina, “Whiteness and the Joys of Cruelty,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 15, no. 1 (2018): 73–78.
52 Adia Benton, Thurka Sangaramoorthy, and Ippolytos Kalofonos, “Temporality and Positive Living in the Age of HIV/AIDS: A Multisited Ethnography,” Current Anthropology 58, no. 4 (2017): 454–76.
53 AMJC Staff, “A Timeline of COVID-19 Developments in 2020.” See also World Health Organization, “Timeline.”
54 Vincanne Adams, “Against Global Health? Arbitrating Science, Non-Science, and Nonsense through Health,” in Against Health: How Health Became the New Morality, ed. Jonathan M. Metzl and Anna Kirkland (New York: New York University Press, 2010), 40–58.
55 Ibid.
56 Christina Maxouris and Holly Yan, “To End This Pandemic, ‘We’ve Got to Get Everyone in Our Country Vaccinated,’ US Surgeon General Says,” CNN, April 20, 2021, https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/19/health/us-coronavirus-monday/index.html.
57 Ibid.
58 Brianna Abbott and Garbriele Steinhaus, “What Does Endemic Mean and Will Covid-19 Become an Endemic Disease?” Wall Street Journal, December 31, 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/will-covid-19-become-endemic-11636222687.
59 Ibid.
60 Berkely Conner, “Mapping Redesign: Gynecological Neoliberalism and the Spatiality of Project Yona’s Speculum,” Women’s Studies in Communication 44, no. 4 (2021): 611–31.
61 Christina Maxouris, “Officials Say the US Is Getting Closer to the ‘Finish Line’ for Coronavirus. What Does That Mean?” CNN, April 25, 2021, https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/25/health/us-covid-19-pandemic-finish-line/index.html.
62 Ibid.
63 CDC, “Health Equity Considerations and Racial and Ethnic Minority Groups,” updated January 25, 2022, https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/health-equity/race-ethnicity.html.
64 Annie Correal and Andrew Jacobs, “‘A Tragedy Is Unfolding’: Inside New York’s Virus Epicenter,” New York Times, April 9, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/09/nyregion/coronavirus-queens-corona-jackson-heights-elmhurst.html.
65 Keith Churchwell et al., “Call to Action: Structural Racism as a Fundamental Driver of Health Disparities: A Presidential Advisory from the American Heart Association,” Circulation 142, no. 24 (2020): e454–e468.
66 Nina Feldman, “Why Black and Latino People Still Lag on COVID Vaccines—And How to Fix It,” NPR, April 26, 2021, https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/04/26/989962041/why-black-and-latino-people-still-lag-on-covid-vaccines-and-how-to-fix-it.
67 Lisa A. Flores, “Stoppage and the Racialized Rhetorics of Mobility,” Western Journal of Communication 83, no. 3 (2020): 247–63.
68 Lee M. Pierce, “For the Time(d) Being: The Form Hate Takes in The Hate U Give,” Women’s Studies in Communication 43, no. 4 (2020): 414–28.
69 Daniel C. Brouwer, “From San Francisco to Atlanta and Back Again: Ideologies of Mobility in the AIDS Quilt’s Search for a Homeland,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 10, no. 4 (2007): 704.
70 Ore and Houdek, “Lynching in Times of Suffocation”
71 Ibid., 445.
72 Achille Mbembe, “The Universal Right to Breathe,” Critical Inquiry, April 13, 2020, https://critinq.wordpress.com/2020/04/13/the-universal-right-to-breathe/.
73 Kundai Chirindo et al., “Coda: A Rupture in Time,” Women’s Studies in Communication 43, no. 4 (2020): 459.
74 Ibid., 467.
75 Vissia Ita Yulianto, “We’ve Been Facing a Pandemic of Racism. How Can We Stop It?” The Conversation, June 16, 2021, https://theconversation.com/weve-been-facing-a-pandemic-of-racism-how-can-we-stop-it-140284.
76 Ibid.
77 Levina, Pandemics and the Media, 5.
78 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Penguin, 2020); Michel Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic, trans. A. M. Sheridan, 3rd ed. (London: Routledge, 2017).