What’s In a Name?: Contrasting the Politics of Post-Covid Symptoms Across Three Countries

Abstract

Long-term symptoms continuing after a Covid-19 infection have emerged as a complex medical, scientific, and economic problem in numerous societies around the world. Moreover, how this problem is addressed may have important consequences in terms of trust or lack thereof in scientific, medical, and political institutions. Drawing on three studies of patient experiences with Covid-19 recovery in the United States, Brazil, and China, we find significant variation in how patients talk about their condition in the three countries. While American patients embrace Long Covid as a disease identity, Chinese patients were wary of using the term, while Brazilian patients were somewhere between the two. These differences in naming become intelligible within a grid composed of three cross-cutting axes of comparison: (1) the symbolic politics of disease classification and representation; (2) institutionalized channels of healthcare and welfare state provision; and (3) position in the global geopolitical and knowledge production system. We conclude that even if global public health institutions manage to institutionalize Long Covid as a standard disease category, there will remain significant differences between countries in the meaning and scope of the condition due to the differences in the politics of expertise in each country.