Long Covid as a Collective Experience: A Photo Essay

Abstract

Although diseases manifest themselves in individual bodies, they usually have multiple, and often systemic, causes. They do not only affect one’s immediate social environment, but whole cities and nations. The pandemic has demonstrated the extent of these interdependencies: a butterfly effect which makes clear that a virus, animals, humans and the environment cannot be thought of separately. And yet, this collective dimension of sickness and health is often pushed into the background. On various levels, Long Covid shows, just like the pandemic, that illness is a collective experience. The syndrome demonstrates the complexity, multidimensionality and the contradictory nature of the collective dimension of being sick and getting well; what it also demonstrates is that this collectivity can become a springboard for long-term transformation. This essay is one way of mobilizing the experience and knowledge of Long Covid patients to signal that we need to rethink our conceptions of illness and use them as a foundation for building new (health)care infrastructures that can hold us all. Whatever their possible shape, we should start discussing them now.