Long Covid and other kinds of awareness

[cosmolinguist]

I read something that seems particularly relevant on Long Covid Awareness Day, a day which as an online pal who has LC says says,

We are combatting willful ignorance. People actively do not want to know about Long Covid, and the long-term health consequences of Covid infections. They do not want to see us.

The thing I read is about "AI" as currently understood, and grief. And I'm glad it connects both of these things to covid.

Generative AI emerged during a global pandemic -- a global trauma of mass death (1.2 million people in the US died of COVID, and about 7 million globally -- these are, no doubt, figures that undercount how many actually died of the disease, let alone those like my son who died during that time period of other causes -- overdoses, suicide, murder, and deaths related and unrelated to the pandemic).

Mass trauma, mass death and, as such, mass grieving. But it was, at the time and still to this day, a grief interrupted, a grief buried, a grief denied, a grief unobserved. We were often not able to bury our dead, not able to hold funerals, not able to have wakes, not able to observe the rituals of death, not able to gather, to bring food, to hold and comfort one another.

And when we were told the pandemic was over -- it hasn't really ended; the World Health Organization says there were around 150,000 cases of COVID reported in the last month -- we didn't deal with our trauma. We didn't deal with our grief. We were supposed to bury our feelings; we were supposed to forget. It was back-to-school, back to work, back to "normal."

There was, in fact, a massive demonstration of grief – an outpouring of grieving in public – during COVID; and that was the Black Lives Matter movement, the protests that occurred in cities throughout the country particularly after the murder of George Floyd. This grief was not private or hidden; it was collective. This grief was not just personal, expressed by those impacted directly by racism and police violence; it demanded from protestors and onlookers, empathy, solidarity. This grief was expressive – even as we are always told with protest, as with grief, that that is not the “good way” to say it. The grief of Floyd’s death – and all the deaths – was not sufficient. It was not simply a marker or memorial of death; but it was an act of life, an act of repair. It was a demonstration of love and loss and fury; it was a commitment to the future.

Comments

[otter]

thank you for sharing this

[angelofthenorth]

Thank you. I feel like 7m deaths worldwide is an under count.

Reminds me of Bernard's lecture on what is the cost of value of a human life that he gives to university students each year, and why do cancer patients count double for QALY and it feel like me and lc patients count half if that.

Oh!

[jesse_the_k]

Audrey Watters essay on grief and AI is very down to earth and meaningful

I always feel the need to remind people that neither robots nor AI are coming for our jobs. But management probably is.