#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #FRANCE #ANARCHISM #News #Journal #Update - (en) France, UCL - Press release, For health self-defense (ca, de, it, fr, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Since the end of 2019, the Covid-19 pandemic has caused more than 144,000 deaths

in France and more than 6.27 million deaths worldwide, figures do not take into
account "indirect" deaths caused by postponements of care or other pathologies,
nor do they measure the long-term consequences of the epidemic (long Covid,
mental health, etc.). Today, the virus still kills 80 people a day in France: it
is only since the beginning of May that we have fallen below the bar of 100 daily
deaths. ---- Despite this record, the government continues to put the economy and
the electoral agenda before all other considerations and adopts a policy that
sacrifices the millions of "people at risk" (elderly, immunocompromised,
transplanted, cancer patients, etc.) sometimes cannot be vaccinated, who no
longer have the choice between permanent endangerment and unbearable social
isolation.

The recent abolition of the obligation to wear a mask in transport, without an
awareness campaign or an effort to ventilate or purify the air, is a continuation
of this management, taking place opportunely a month before the legislative
elections. Having chosen to go through only authoritarian management in the face
of the pandemic, the government has created a situation that no longer allows for
an audible awareness discourse, the abolition of obligations being in fact
interpreted (and sometimes presented) as invitations to relax sanitary gestures.
This government management is part of ableist thinking which has made a
spectacular breakthrough across the political landscape in the past two years,
fueling the rise of the far right and the weakening of the left, which seems
incapable of forcefully asserting its rejection of this ideology and the need for
strong solidarity, preferring to remain in denial of the pandemic.

Maintaining covid as an endemic disease, rather than setting up international
health coordination aimed at eradicating it, is also the result of economic and
political management of human health. It is simply a matter of maintaining an
acceptable portion of the exploited workforce in a healthy state, without
worrying about the consequences for the future. Covid seems to be a "tolerable"
evil for capital. It is however unacceptable for humanity, which has methods and
techniques that would allow it to be contained. Once again the gap between what
the capitalist mode of production can offer and the real needs of those who live
there is flagrant. In this context, UCL wishes to make it clear that each
avoidable death is one death too many, that each new wave is a political choice
and that no life is worth more than another.

This notably happened through the adoption of a motion "For health self-defense"
during our last federal coordination, on March 26 and 27, affirming that in the
face of the state's refusal to propose a real collective response to the
pandemic, we must organize ourselves and take charge of our self-defense
ourselves, but also that we refuse to fall into denial of the pandemic and that
we wish to fight the conspiratorial and reassuring discourses that surround it.
We affirm that more than a health issue, we are facing a deeply political
question: to adopt an attitude of denial and abandonment of health measures is to
choose to exclude or endanger millions of people "to risk", but it is also, by
letting the virus run, increase its chances of mutations and the likelihood of
new strains resistant to vaccines and treatments; it means prioritizing
individual comfort over collective management.

As such, UCL will set up training, documents and internal circulars to train and
inform its members of the actions to adopt and the news of the pandemic, even
when it no longer makes the headlines. media. It also sets up the assumption of
responsibility for the costs of this self-defense within the organization, so
that the financial means of groups and individuals are not an obstacle. We
encourage our comrades to adopt similar practices, by informing themselves and
adopting simple gestures that help to make our spaces safer for everyone and to
curb contamination: wearing FFP2 masks as soon as necessary, regular ventilation
of confined spaces, vigilance and caution in the face of the appearance of
symptoms. More broadly, we believe that it is important to continue to be
informed and to communicate on the evolution of the pandemic, and to refuse to
make it a secondary subject or to fall into denial of the pandemic reality: that
would amount to abandon comrades and our ideals of solidarity.

In the current state of the pandemic, we believe it is important to continue to
be informed and to communicate, refusing to make it a secondary topic or to fall
into denial of the pandemic reality. And it is this watch, united and democratic,
which will allow us, soon we hope, to collectively decide on the development and
/ or the abandonment of the health measures currently in force in our organization.

For practical information: https://www.adioscorona.org

The Libertarian Communist Union, June 25, 2022

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Pour-une-auto-defense-sanitaire
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