a banner. it says thank god the pndemic is over in a pixelated font and there are skeleton hands praying.

thank god the pandemic is over is a free monthly zine about the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

the zine is made on the land of the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin Nation. sovereignty was never ceded and this always was, always will be Aboriginal Land.

January 2023

***

Hello and welcome to the zine. As I'm writing this, I am thinking about the fact that there are two days left where Victorians are able to get a free PCR test without a GP referral. I've also been thinking about how to engage with the pandemic in my writing. So here we are.

As of Dec 29 2022, 17,052 people have died from covid in australia. 16,964 of those people died in 2022. There were around eleven million cases this year here. I don't know how many cases of long covid. (Stats from news.google.com/covid19)

I find when I try to talk to people about the pandemic, they don't want to hear what I'm saying. Or we will be saying the same things, but the next day they'll post a selfie of them in a shop without a mask. I don't know how to deal with this disconnect. I am scared my friends will get sick. I am scared they will die. I don't know how to live in this world that has forgotten the pandemic is still here but I'm hoping to figure it out.

This zine will be a witness to what happens in 2023, and I hope 2023 will see us come together, acknowledge the people who have died, got sick, been traumatised.

***

I don't want to shame people. Shaming them achieves nothing and I am trying to keep my heart kind and to have compassion imbue my every action. Love is how we have a kinder future, and I am trying to remember that. However, I do want to shame the government because they are supposed to keep us safe. They are supposed to work for us. But I also know these institutions of colonial power will never properly look after us.

***

I do and I don't understand why so many people don't seem to care about any covid restrictions. If everyone is saying it's fine, why wouldn't you believe them? No one wants the bad thing to be true. I feel the temptation to forget constantly.My friend Marlee sent me this article: "It's not cool to overreact: how normalcy bias will define our future"

In the Journal of Community and public health, Carl Ross explains how normalcy bias has hampered our approch to the pandemic. As he writes, "We are sensitive to the perception of others viewing us as abnormal. Within social relationships, very few want to be seen as alarmist, overreactive or a fool because if they are wrong about a threat then they will be regarded as less credible in the future." he goes on to state that "social shaming reinforces our normalcy bias. It's not cool to overreact."

And it basically explains what's happening inside people's brains. J breaks it down like this:

This can be applied to any crisis, J says. I think this explains a lot of the disconnect I mentioned earlier – 50% of people are acting like the pandemic is over because that's what we've been told to do despite all evidence to the contrary.

We've been fed so much misinformation. We have been let down by so many people. We were in lockdowns for so long which exacerbated so many issues. Of course people want to think it's over. So do I.

Politicians and billionaires are going to exploit our biases to keep everyone believing that everything's fine, even when it's not. The more acute the dangers grow, the more pressure we'll feel to act normal. Don't.
My wife Rabia was watching a movie set during WW2 and the same thing was happening. People wanted the war to be over, so they just pretended it was. Knowing this has happened before was comforting, in a way.

I don't want us to forget. During the pandemic I learnt I was disabled and have been my whole life and I'm finding great comfort, solace in disability justice, moreso than in the queer communities and circles I have been calling home for the last decade and more.

***

Do you remember when there was a brief glimpse into a better world? That maybe they'd keep the dole raised, that regional artists could participate in the city-centric arts easily, that people could work from home, that we didn't have to spend hours on public transport going to jobs we hated?

The powers that be also badly want us to forget that there was a moment -- a long, two-year moment -- when people felt that everything could be different, that revolutionary change was possible.
This is from an article "Able bodied leftists cannot abandon disabled solidarity to "move on" from covid" by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha.

I saw an Instagram post which asked the question, how do leftists justify going unmasked into a retail setting where the staff are wearing masks, when they clearly do not want to be infected by covid? As a retail worker, I ask myself the same question every shift.

How do my friends justify coming into my place of work unmasked, when they know my wife could barely walk for 7 weeks after contracting covid from a stranger?

I think it's the normalcy bias, people want to feel normal again. In the shop I work at, I watch parents frantically make their kids use the hand sanitiser, but none of them are wearing masks. Hand sanitiser and washing your hands is normal, wearing a mask is not. How can we make it normal?

Through this zine I want to help do that. We can live in a kinder world, one that is bearable, where the air isn't riddled with a virus that could kill us, or permanently disable us, etc etc.

If you have stopped wearing a mask, it is never too late to start again. Yes, they should be free, yes the govt should be giving them out. They should be available at the door of every shop, at every train station, on every bus. But they're not yet.

Wear a mask if you're inside a public space. Open a window, meet outside if you can. Ask people how they feel safe meeting up. Offer free masks to people if you can afford it, keep spares in your bag. Every action we take to minimise harm could save someone's life.

I want us not to abandon the revolutionary dream some of us touched and made in 2020-2021 -- of a world where community care, mutual aid for collective survival and a refusal to obey are not just possible, they make up the bones of the new world.
The future can be good, it can be a future worth fighting for. And I think we should fight for it.

***

THANK GOD THE PANDEMIC IS OVER is a free monthly zine. You can subscribe to the physical copy on patreon or leave a tip.

Send thoughts, contributions, clippings etc to Alison Evans at thank.god.zine@gmail.com or PO Box 8012, Reservoir, VIC 3073.

Need masks but can't afford them? Send me an email or a letter.

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