COVID-19, Risk, Fear, and Fall-out (original) (raw)

We, like others worldwide, have spent much of the last week tracking the exponential spread and toll of COVID-19, and the consequent retraction of social engagement, shifting from the joking "Are we still kissing?" to maintaining "social distance" without remark. And we are beginning to witness unanticipated harsh measures to enforce lockdown. As we wrote this (March 15), Australia, like many other countries, introduced self-isolation of two weeks for travelers returning from overseas, enforceable by fines of up to 20,000 AUD or detention. This assumes that all travelers are in excellent health, and have a stockpile of essential medicines, and sufficient food, bathroom supplies, and toilet paper. This is not necessarily so. We are beginning to take stock of the social, economic, and political fallout that will follow as the virus surely spreads, with colder weather, to the global and geographic south. We are witness to: mediatization of the pandemic; closing of schools and universities, libraries and museums; cancellation of conferences and smaller meetings; and loss of income for people who run stalls and streetside services and work in the informal economy. Political leaders and managers are under enormous pressure as they must decide what to keep open, what to close, what workers to keep, and who and when to retrench. The fear and panic come less from the risk of infection and more from the growing reality of its fall out. Medical anthropologists have contributed substantially to understanding the impact of epidemics and pandemics, their effects on social and economic life, and their toll on health services and health workers. In recent decades, in monographs and articles, we have attended to HIV, including on how people drew on historical imagery of the plague, and how fear of infection fed social exclusion and discrimination (for reviews,