IF THERE IS ONE THING this pandemic is making abundantly clear, it is that our health is interconnected: we are joined to each other, to our political and economic systems, to the broader ecology, and to the other species we share the planet with.
The pandemic, after all, has made disturbingly visible that we are all only as healthy as our social support systems. As Anand Giridharadas put it: “Your health is as safe as that of the worstinsured, worst-cared-for person in your society.” In the United States, decades of cuts to our nation’s social safety net have left us struggling to respond to COVID-19 with an appallingly inadequate public health sector, almost nonexistent job security, and a government more concerned with maintaining profits than saving people’s lives.
At the same time, the pandemic reveals that our bodies function more like sponges than fortresses. In a variety of visualizations, we see our bodies extending beyond their usual bounds: graphics of our coughs, sneezes, and even breath show how far beyond our own skin our bodies reach; the six-foot rule of social distancing a daily acknowledgement that our bodies not only leak and ooze, but that they absorb the conditions of others. Our sensitivity to each other’s physical presence has never felt more visceral.