LONG COVID AND DISABILITY JUSTICE: Critiquing the Present, Forming the Future

In this chapter, I explore long COVID’s complex realities by analyzing what I call the “temporalities of pandemic harm,” which challenge prominent before-and-after narratives that conceal the interlocking injustices surrounding long COVID. I argue that the COVID-19 pandemic, because of the widespread experience of post-viral syndrome it has generated, is a mass disabling event that entails a moral and political imperative to provide medical, economic, and social support to those who continue to suffer from long COVID. I then draw on the work of several disability justice scholars first, to critique the myriad shortcomings of current understandings of and responses to long COVID, and second, to envision a better future, which I consider through the application and expansion of four of the “Ten Principles of Disability Justice” from Sins Invalid. I ultimately argue for a refusal of the push to return to “normal” not only to combat the ongoing injustices of long COVID but also to underscore the necessity of meeting future pandemics and the post-infection syndromes they generate with heightened attention to justice and equitable care.