The assumption that you could ever treat such a crisis as “apolitical” requires the existing power structures to not be designed to literally kill off whole segments of the population (poor people, disabled people, old people, immigrants, anyone defined by capitalism as “burdens”).
It’s political because they won’t act (like they haven’t so far) until it threatens the economy they depend on to maintain their power and/or rich households, at which point their solutions will only ever be in defence and service of those things, not the general population.
So sure, in utopia it wouldn’t be political and the obvious thing would be that we help society and everyone in it, but that’s not the reality we live in, and those in power aren’t going to just put their entire ethos to one side to do the right thing, and expecting them to, at this point in time, and especially fresh out of a pandemic that isn’t actually over, is extremely naive, at best.
The assumption that you could ever treat such a crisis as “apolitical” requires the existing power structures to not be designed to literally kill off whole segments of the population (poor people, disabled people, old people, immigrants, anyone defined by capitalism as “burdens”).
It’s political because they won’t act (like they haven’t so far) until it threatens the economy they depend on to maintain their power and/or rich households, at which point their solutions will only ever be in defence and service of those things, not the general population.
So sure, in utopia it wouldn’t be political and the obvious thing would be that we help society and everyone in it, but that’s not the reality we live in, and those in power aren’t going to just put their entire ethos to one side to do the right thing, and expecting them to, at this point in time, and especially fresh out of a pandemic that isn’t actually over, is extremely naive, at best.