Unfortunately, there was never a truly mass organizing strategy to push for that kind of ambitious agenda, so governments rarely felt obliged to consider it seriously, opting instead for the easier (and big-donor-friendly) route of looking to vaccines and verification apps to carry almost the entire load of virus control in North America and Europe. Like so much else in our culture, from abusive labor practices to climate breakdown, the burden of pandemic response was shifted from the collective to the individual, all in the name of getting back to business as usual: “Did you get your jab?” “Show us the proof.” Less frequently did we ask employers if they had provided safe workplaces, or if governments had guaranteed safe learning environments or transportation systems.

XREF: Parallels critiques of individual-carbon-footprint approaches to climate change versus systemic solutions.

Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, loc. 248