At What Point is Inaction a Form of Genocide??

This impressive and prescient thread worthy of saving is from Miles W. Griffis. He interweaves a speech from Vito Russo, AIDS activist, back and forth with current headlines on Covid-19 to show how easily we write-off a group of people when they become inconvenient:

Vito Russo's 1988 ACT UP speech "Why We Fight" has many parallels to the continuing Covid-19 pandemic currently causing 1,000+ deaths per week plus mass disability. Russo delivered "Why We Fight" during an ACT UP demonstration at the Department of Health and Human Services, D.C. on October 10, 1988. 

"My family thinks two things about my AIDS diagnosis. One, they think I'm going to die, and two, they think that my government is doing absolutely everything in their power to stop that, and they're wrong on both counts." 

"'A slow-moving glacier'" NIH's sluggish and often opaque efforts to study long Covid draw patient, expert ire." (Stat, March, 2022)

"If I'm dying from anything, I'm dying from racism."

"People of color less likely to receive Paxlovid and other Covid-19 treatments, according to CDC study." (CNN, October, 2022)

"If I'm dying from anything, it's from indifference and red tape, because these are the things that are preventing an end to this crisis. . . . If I'm dying from anything, I'm dying from the President of the United States."

"Millions will start losing Medicaid coverage as Covid safety net is dismantled." (CNBC, March 2023)

"Living with AIDS in this country is like living in the twilight zone. . . . Everyone is walking the streets as though we weren't living through some sort of nightmare."

"As Queer spaces return to 'normal,' disabled LGBTQ+ people are being left behind." (them, February, 2023) 

"It's worse than a war because during a war people are united in a shared experience. This war has not united us. It's divided us. It's separated those of us with AIDS and those of us who fight for people with AIDS from the rest of the population." 

"War on empathy: A growing chorus of prominent journalists and pundits have taken aim at another target--the proponents of a more vigorous public health response." (Peste Magazine, January 2023) 

"The media tells them that they don't have to care because the people who really matter are not in danger."

"Triple jeopardy: Disabled people and the Covid-19 pandemic." (The Lancet, March 2021)

"Trying to figure out how to get hold of the latest experimental drug and which dose to take . . . how are you going to pay for it? And where are you going to get it? Because it isn't happening to them, so they don't give a shit." 

"Millions suffer from long Covid--and it costs them $9,000 a year in healthcare expenses, on average." (CNBC, December 2022)

"And they don't spend their waking hours going from hospital room to hospital room and watching the people that they love die slowly--of neglect and bigotry because it isn't happening to them, and they don't have to give a shit."

"Covid has left thousands of US children orphans. Few states are addressing the crisis." (The Guardian, April 2023)

"Why the only television movie ever produced by a major network in this country about the impact of this disease is not about the impact of this disease on the man who has AIDS, but of the impact of AIDS on his white, straight, nuclear family?"

"Hollywood pretends there is no pandemic: Hollywood is abandoning covid precautions everywhere but black tie events." (Peste Magazine, March, 2023)

"All the newspapers I read tell me that IV drug users and homosexuals still account for the overwhelming majority of cases, and a majority of those people at risk."

"CDC director under fire for troubling comments about 'encouraging' deaths of disabled people." (Accessibility, January 2022).

"It is more than a horror story exploited by the tabloids."

"Three years later, Covid-19 is still a health threat. Journalism needs to reflect that: Too much coverages minimizes the health risks researchers attribute to the virus." (Nieman Reports, April 2023)

"When future generations ask what we did in this crisis, we're going to have to tell them that we were out here today. And we have to leave the legacy to those generations of people who will come after us."

"The long Covid revolution: Millions of American adults are impaired by long Covid. They have a vision for what our society owes to chronically ill and disabled people." (The Nation, April 2023)

"We're so busy putting out fires right now that we don't have the time to talk to each other and strategize and plan for the next wave, and the next day, and next month, and the next week, and the next year."

"Family caregivers of people with long Covid bear an extra burden." (NPR, February 2023)

"After we kick the shit out of this disease, we're all going to be alive to kick the shit out of this system so that this never happens again."

"Covid study finds 18 million deaths, three times official tally." (Bloomberg, March 2022)

Russo's above ending quotation is heart-wrenching to read as the world counts ~18 million excess Covid deaths and at least 65 million people with long Covid. Russo died of AIDS-related complications in 1990.

Back in August 2022, a Canadian neurocognitive disorder expert spoke up against suggesting this is a disease of the elderly and disabled, and the problem with the profound lack of concern for a demographic makes it okay to let it spread without mitigations. Any time we decide, top down or communally, that it's acceptable for an entire group of people to get sick and die, we're in a morally corrupt place. She said,

We have done and continue to sweep all crucial information under the rug regarding airborne transmission, long Covid, and the impact this has on the entire population--including the most vulnerable and our children. We have yet to properly inform the public of the consequences this virus has. The primary issue is how the virus is transmitted. We spent our time gaslighting, making people believe that they could only get sick by droplets, by close contact, that they were protected behind these 'magical plexiglass' dividers. . . . Long Covid is a major public health crisis and one we will be faced with for decades to come. We may think we have recovered, but months later suffer from cardiac diseases, blood clots, strokes, brain fog, kidney damage, and the list goes on and on. Long Covid affects anyone of any age, from the smallest to the oldest. If this information was shared more publicly, I'm sure people wouldn't be so cavalier about this virus. . . . It's the 'economy first.' Schools must be opened so that parents can go to work. The economy must function at full capacity, and we have to 'live with the virus.' . . . We had a chance here in Canada to have this crystal ball that is Europe to warn us two weeks in advance of what was coming. But with each wave we have been told, 'We didn't know it was that contagious and virulent.'

To say, 'They are old, they can die,' -- it's criminal. . . .  [With Monkeypox] once again, governments refuse to talk about it, including the fact that this virus can be fatal to children. We are being told it's mainly gay men who get infected. They always hide the truth so that people falsely feel safe. . . . All around the world, there are labour shortages and people unable to work or continue a normal life because of long Covid. Children are also affected, and this virus could be robbing them of a healthy future. In the long-term, we will face waves and waves of cognitive decline and massive disabilities. 

And in today's The Star, Kenyon Wallace reports on the current state of Covid: "at 'a high tide' --and staying there." 

Covid hospitalizations in Canada are about six times higher today than they were at the lowest point of the pandemic. . . . The virus was the number one illness-related cause of hospital admissions for all of last year. And the trend appears to be continuing in 2023. . . . Omicron's first wave was terrible, the worst of the entire pandemic, and I think what's happened is people have started using that wave like a new standard against which subsequent hospitalization levels are judged. . . . This steadier state can mean a higher total burden over time. . . . The persistent cases are creating a continuing drag on the health system--one that simply didn't exist three-plus years ago. We do not have a system that is designed for any additional drag in a persistent, chronic way. . . . Ontario . . . was tied with Mexico for fewest [hospital] beds in the western world. . . . So far this year, Canada is seeing an average of 4,170 daily Covid hospitalizations . . . nearly triple what they were in 2020.

The comments on that article are sobering. Many people really don't believe Covid exists anymore, so successful was all the minimizing, and no amount of data or visible proof will sway them. We are loathe to witness our own demise. 

It's a beautiful day, the last for a while, and I'm sitting outside listening to horrible ongoing hacking coughs coming from three different directions, and it's almost enough to force me indoors. I've never seen any of my neighbours wear a mask. More victims of bureaucratic gaslighting.

I have no answer to my titular question. But this period of history won't look good in hindsight, if there's anyone left to critique it.