Make no mistake, the Omicron variant is a result of western imperialism and capitalism working as intended.
The Western imperial core continues to leverage the pandemic as part of a geopolitical chessboard.
With its manipulation of vaccine production and rollout plans towards profit motives, as well as to reassert itself as a global superpower, the Global South (and other countries of the non-Western world) has been repeatedly targeted with disproportionate blame and association to the virus.
We have seen this with the equation of Chinese identity/presence to the virus via “China virus”; we have seen this with decontextualized critiques of Vietnam’s later pandemic management struggles.
And now, we are seeing this on an even wider scale, not only with new variants being falsely attributed as “from” South Africa, but with travel bans encompassing various uninvolved countries from the region, rather than elsewhere with confirmed cases.
Of course, in all of these cases, it is the marginalized people in these countries who end up dying.
As such, we must recognize that the racialization of disease is nothing new, having originated from the belief of non-white people and societies as inherently dirty, full of diseases and thus disposable. It is a bioessentialist, ableist concept that forms part of the idea that the white Man is by nature superior to all Others.
Imperialism in our world operates on this white supremacist, ableist logic, and relies on capital as a measure of oppressive power to enact its violence accordingly. (Disability Justice is thus a Must 🔪)
“White people lied, and marginalised people die.” — a history of humankind 👁👄👁
