Some people might wonder why St. Margaret’s continues to take precautions against the spread of Covid in our community when it feels like the rest of the world has moved on. Our decision may make you feel confused or even uncomfortable which we understand never feels good, so after reading “During the Pandemic” is Now: Why E&W Still Has a COVID Policy by Daniella Barreto and Daniel Sarah Karasik we have decided, with their permission, to adapt their article for our context and help explain a little more about why it is we are making the choices we are in regard to Covid safety.
Despite Covid being around since 2020, unfortunately it is not always easy to access well researched scientific data and there is still a lot of misinformation about it. Covid is a preventable disease that continues to infect thousands of people each week in Canada, yet our public health institutions and governments have all but eliminated their response.
COVID is the third-leading cause of death in Canada, and mounting evidence suggests it may contribute to the leading two: heart disease/strokes and cancer. But death isn’t the only negative outcome. Each first infection comes with at least a 1 in 10 risk of contracting long COVID, leading to persistent, long-term symptoms and by the third infection the risk is closer to 40% (see below)
As a church, St. Margarets strives to be a community that lives out God’s call to love our neighbours and part of living out that love means doing all we can to be an equity-focused community that pays particular attention to the needs of the most vulnerable. We are committed to acknowledging the ongoing equity impacts of COVID. COVID is worse for some groups compared to others because of systemic oppressions: racism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, and the exploitation and resulting precarity of low-income people.
We also acknowledge the reality that nobody is invincible. There is undeniable evidence that COVID is a full-body disease that damages our brains, hearts, blood vessels, lungs, and immune systems. Despite what we are told, COVID is not mild. The “S” in SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID, stands for “severe,” after all. The virus’s immediate impact may not feel extreme, but it’s not always possible to tell what damage our brains or blood vessels or immune systems have sustained until later.
Some people experience long-lasting symptoms after contracting COVID (Long COVID), which can include extreme fatigue, cognitive damage (“brain fog”), breathing difficulties, and organ damage. While some people improve, many do not; instead, they experience ongoing debilitating symptoms. The unmitigated spread of COVID, which is transmitted mainly through the air, has been described as one of the biggest mass-disabling events in history, and the oncoming impacts of Long COVID on society “so large as to be unfathomable.”
Faced with this reality, and understanding that places where people sing together indoors results in a higher risk of transmission of Covid, we have the decision at St. Margarets to do all we can to make St. Margarets a safe place for all, by cleaning monitoring and displaying the air quality, asking that people who are able wear a mask and continuing to offer an engaging online opportunity for people to participate in from home. We are committed to providing high quality masks for anyone who does not have one.
We are aware that many people would prefer to believe that Covid is over and that its impacts are not serious, but ignoring it will not make things better nor make spaces safe for the most vulnerable.
Here’s why else St. Margaret’s feels it is so important to continue to take Covid seriously:
1. There is no anti-oppression without disability justice. Immunocompromised people — including people who’ve had organ transplants, those receiving cancer treatment, or those on immunosuppressive drugs to treat autoimmune conditions such as lupus or rheumatoid arthritis — are more vulnerable to really bad outcomes if they get COVID.
Immunocompromised and other disabled people who would be badly impacted by COVID should be able to engage in public life. All groups that experience systemic oppression include disabled people, and groups that experience systemic oppression consistently face health inequities.
Children are another equity-deserving group that includes disabled people. Their agency and power is limited in society; they’re required to attend schools in-person with no prevention or mitigation strategies in place to protect them. Despite claims to the contrary early in the pandemic, children are also susceptible to the harms of COVID and often silently struggle with the impacts of Long COVID and repeat infections which could last their entire lifetimes. COVID isn’t only a risk to “vulnerable” people: every COVID infection makes a person more vulnerable because of the silent and accumulating damage it does to the body.
Early in the pandemic, we saw many examples of community care that imagined a world where disabled people were cared for and prioritized. At St. Margaret’s, we believe this is a part of the God’s vision for God’s kin(g)dom here on earth and we as a church community are called to help bring it into being.
2. Solidarity with Black, Indigenous, and/or Palestinian people means stopping the spread. In addition to trying to survive a genocide, Palestinians are still exposed to COVID, with little to no way to mitigate that added risk. Forced into close quarters, which exacerbates airborne viral transmission, they have little to no access to hospitals, vaccinations, or treatments for COVID (or other medical conditions).
We also know that the spread of disease has been a colonial weapon throughout history. Poor access to healthcare is reflected globally in the difference in health outcomes experienced between Indigenous and settler communities. In Canada, Indigenous Peoples have experienced massive harms from COVID: losses to culture, family, and language.
According to Statistics Canada in a 2023 report, Black people in Canada were most likely to have had multiple COVID infections. In this context, slowing the spread — and viral mutation — of COVID reflects an anti-colonial commitment: we want to do our part to stop new variants from developing and spreading around the world.
Taking inspiration from legacies of queer resistance to institutional abandonment, we insist on trying to protect each other from unnecessary suffering and death in the face of the threat posed by a novel virus whose long-term effects are still unknowable. The ongoing harms of COVID are serious, however aggressively and systematically they’re denied.
Sadly, the church has a long tradition of being on the wrong side of history when it comes to issues of social justice, and we believe that our call to follow Jesus comes with a special obligation to love our neighbours by providing a safe and welcoming place for those on the margins.
Additional Resources
Despite Covid being around since 2020, unfortunately it is not always easy to access well researched scientific data and there is still a lot of misinformation about it. Covid is a preventable disease that continues to infect thousands of people each week in Canada, yet our public health institutions and governments have all but eliminated their response.
COVID is the third-leading cause of death in Canada, and mounting evidence suggests it may contribute to the leading two: heart disease/strokes and cancer. But death isn’t the only negative outcome. Each first infection comes with at least a 1 in 10 risk of contracting long COVID, leading to persistent, long-term symptoms and by the third infection the risk is closer to 40% (see below)
As a church, St. Margarets strives to be a community that lives out God’s call to love our neighbours and part of living out that love means doing all we can to be an equity-focused community that pays particular attention to the needs of the most vulnerable. We are committed to acknowledging the ongoing equity impacts of COVID. COVID is worse for some groups compared to others because of systemic oppressions: racism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, and the exploitation and resulting precarity of low-income people.
We also acknowledge the reality that nobody is invincible. There is undeniable evidence that COVID is a full-body disease that damages our brains, hearts, blood vessels, lungs, and immune systems. Despite what we are told, COVID is not mild. The “S” in SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID, stands for “severe,” after all. The virus’s immediate impact may not feel extreme, but it’s not always possible to tell what damage our brains or blood vessels or immune systems have sustained until later.
Some people experience long-lasting symptoms after contracting COVID (Long COVID), which can include extreme fatigue, cognitive damage (“brain fog”), breathing difficulties, and organ damage. While some people improve, many do not; instead, they experience ongoing debilitating symptoms. The unmitigated spread of COVID, which is transmitted mainly through the air, has been described as one of the biggest mass-disabling events in history, and the oncoming impacts of Long COVID on society “so large as to be unfathomable.”
Faced with this reality, and understanding that places where people sing together indoors results in a higher risk of transmission of Covid, we have the decision at St. Margarets to do all we can to make St. Margarets a safe place for all, by cleaning monitoring and displaying the air quality, asking that people who are able wear a mask and continuing to offer an engaging online opportunity for people to participate in from home. We are committed to providing high quality masks for anyone who does not have one.
We are aware that many people would prefer to believe that Covid is over and that its impacts are not serious, but ignoring it will not make things better nor make spaces safe for the most vulnerable.
Here’s why else St. Margaret’s feels it is so important to continue to take Covid seriously:
1. There is no anti-oppression without disability justice. Immunocompromised people — including people who’ve had organ transplants, those receiving cancer treatment, or those on immunosuppressive drugs to treat autoimmune conditions such as lupus or rheumatoid arthritis — are more vulnerable to really bad outcomes if they get COVID.
Immunocompromised and other disabled people who would be badly impacted by COVID should be able to engage in public life. All groups that experience systemic oppression include disabled people, and groups that experience systemic oppression consistently face health inequities.
Children are another equity-deserving group that includes disabled people. Their agency and power is limited in society; they’re required to attend schools in-person with no prevention or mitigation strategies in place to protect them. Despite claims to the contrary early in the pandemic, children are also susceptible to the harms of COVID and often silently struggle with the impacts of Long COVID and repeat infections which could last their entire lifetimes. COVID isn’t only a risk to “vulnerable” people: every COVID infection makes a person more vulnerable because of the silent and accumulating damage it does to the body.
Early in the pandemic, we saw many examples of community care that imagined a world where disabled people were cared for and prioritized. At St. Margaret’s, we believe this is a part of the God’s vision for God’s kin(g)dom here on earth and we as a church community are called to help bring it into being.
- READ: 10 Principles of Disability Justice; What Does Disability Justice During a Pandemic Look Like?; “There are disabled people in the future”; You are not entitled to our deaths; What will never be again.
2. Solidarity with Black, Indigenous, and/or Palestinian people means stopping the spread. In addition to trying to survive a genocide, Palestinians are still exposed to COVID, with little to no way to mitigate that added risk. Forced into close quarters, which exacerbates airborne viral transmission, they have little to no access to hospitals, vaccinations, or treatments for COVID (or other medical conditions).
We also know that the spread of disease has been a colonial weapon throughout history. Poor access to healthcare is reflected globally in the difference in health outcomes experienced between Indigenous and settler communities. In Canada, Indigenous Peoples have experienced massive harms from COVID: losses to culture, family, and language.
According to Statistics Canada in a 2023 report, Black people in Canada were most likely to have had multiple COVID infections. In this context, slowing the spread — and viral mutation — of COVID reflects an anti-colonial commitment: we want to do our part to stop new variants from developing and spreading around the world.
- READ: Palestinian Solidarity, COVID-19, and the Struggle for Liberation (zine - free option available); World’s slow recognition of airborne transmission of COVID was ‘most egregious public health error in modern history’; Racism in the Time of COVID-19; Systemic Inequities Increase Covid-19 Risk for Indigenous People in Canada
- READ: It’s long past time for a more comprehensive Covid treatment approach; CDC COVID-19 Vaccine Effectiveness Update; Current COVID boosters offer good protection against severe outcomes but less so against JN.1
Taking inspiration from legacies of queer resistance to institutional abandonment, we insist on trying to protect each other from unnecessary suffering and death in the face of the threat posed by a novel virus whose long-term effects are still unknowable. The ongoing harms of COVID are serious, however aggressively and systematically they’re denied.
Sadly, the church has a long tradition of being on the wrong side of history when it comes to issues of social justice, and we believe that our call to follow Jesus comes with a special obligation to love our neighbours by providing a safe and welcoming place for those on the margins.
Additional Resources
- Post-COVID-19 Condition in Canada: What we know, what we don’t know, and a framework for action — Office of the Chief Science Advisor of Canada
- Updated database of 400,000+ COVID-19 research articles
- John Snow Project for COVID-19 information
- Ontario School Safety coalition
- You Have To Live Your Life: A resource for COVID-19 research and information