//CW: This article is me venting. I don’t even try to be fair. And why would i? I am fucking fuming. Also, sadly, this is written from the wound, instead of from the scar. Because there is no scar. Yet. It is still a festering wound, i am still sick, and i do not know if i will ever heal. If a bitter rant is not your thing, please feel free to stop reading now.
Five years ago around this time i helped organize the winter-hike against the #WEF, #Winterwanderung zum WEF, a protest against that year’s edition of the World Economic Forum in Davos. The hike to cover the 45 kilometer distance between Landquart and Davos was split into three parts, spread out over two and a half days. We gathered on Sunday 19. 2020 in Landquart and the hikers arrived in Davos on Tuesday, late in the afternoon. The first night was spent in Schiers, the second one in Klosters. Around 1’500 people attended.
Most of the people slept in huge multi-use halls. I did not sleep there, but heard reports that many were sick and there was lots of heavy coughing all night long. In recent times i have started to wonder if #COVID-19 was already present then. But more on that later.
I was one of the drivers, and in that role i often had to transport people, who were ill, either too weak or feeling too debilitated to hike.
On the first evening i was asked to drive a group of twelve people to a separate housing arrangement in a chalet up the hill. During the entire drive one woman would not stop coughing. She had come to join the hike from NYC. Her voice was so raspy, that it was almost inaudible. Her breathe sounded wheezy.
This woman also happened to be the person in charge of the group, who held the key and all the information on how to find the chalet. I remember telling her, that she should not be there, that she sounded too sick for a hike in cold weather. Her response, she would not miss this for the world. What i wanted to tell her, but didn’t dare back then, was that she was bound to infect other people.
The following day i drove several people who had overestimated their physical fitness levels and were not able to finish the twenty kilometer hike through cold winter air. On the last day–after cleaning all the bathrooms and showers, yuck–i again was asked to drive a person who was feeling too sick for the last portion of the uphill march. He was a middle-aged German man, who had just come back from Asia. Yet again this man was coughing nonstop and i remember noticing that he never even covered his mouth. Again i did not dare to say anything, just cracked the window on my side a bit.
To situate this, at that point in time we had barely started to hear about a certain dangerous virus that had started to spread in China.
After coming home from the protest, as anyone would been predicted, i fell ill within a few days. It was such a tough bug that i had trouble to recover from it, my asthma never did. Wheezing, coughing, fevers, the works. When talking to friends they described similar experiences. One friend in particular told me, that she had never had so much trouble to recover from a flu-like infection.
To be clear, i do not know for sure what virus this was. But what was certain, is that it had circulated widely among the group. Was it RSV? Or influenza? Or could it already have been COVID-19?
For a long time i never considered the latter option. I was under the assumption that early in 2020 the SARS-CoV-2 virus was mostly found in China, about to spread worldwide. However, recent studies have found that the COVID-19 virus was already spreading in NYC as early as January 2020. And people had traveled to Switzerland in order to attend the winter-hike from all around the world, most of them from all around Europe, but some even from Africa, Asia and so-called America. Which is why i started to believe that it is a definite possibility that COVID-19 was already present during that protest.
At any rate, my health took weeks to improve. My asthma stayed bad, a new phenomenon for me. My asthma had always been mild up to that point. I had never even needed a steroid based asthma-spray.
Then in March 2020 i fell ill yet again. Compared to the earlier infection this one was milder. So far i always assumed that this second virus was COVID-19. But what if it was the other way around?
I am aware that this is speculation, and that there is no way to be certain. Tests did not exist yet. But maybe i indeed had COVID-19 as early as January 2020 and the second infection in March was something like RSV or influenza and threw me over the edge.
It does not even matter which one came first, whether it was indeed COVID-19 in January or something else. What i can be sure of is that this first infection, the one i got during the winter-hike, did play a major role in what was to follow. It must have weakened my immune system.
After the second infection i never recovered, not even to this day. I had #LongCOVID ever since. Five years on and no cure in sight.
To be clear, i never received an official diagnosis for Long COVID, still not. Fuck you, doctors. And this is not likely to change, since i now avoid all health care facilities, because they have dropped all mitigation measures. I absolutely need to avoid any further infection with any virus. I have a strong hunch that another infection might kill me. I might be overly cautious, but i prefer not to take my chances.
My fellow organizers know about my health issues and my Long COVID, after i told them in 2021. Since then not one of them has ever checked in on me, not even to ask me how i was doing. Before that i had considered some of these people to be my friends. Some of them i had known for decades. But apparently they are not my friends.
Here’s the kicker, though. The winter-hikes to the WEF in Davos have continued to happen every year, except in 2021, which was the only year the protest was skipped. In 2022 only a few people participated, but in the more recent editions the event has been growing again. They still spend at least one night in a huge gym hall dormitory, this year only one, since the hike is now shorter, only on two days.
Next weekend on 18./19. January 2025 the next edition will take place. It might create more chronically ill people like myself.
Do the organizers care? Nope. Not one bit.
On the website an awareness concept is found, which is commendable. An event of this size needs to have an awareness concept and team. But one fails to find any type of a COVID-19 policy, or even the most basic of infectious disease protocol. Nowhere does it say that people should get tested before attending. Nor that people should stay away if they feel sick.
Yet another superspreader event organized by the so-called radical left, read the ableist left.
On the website it also says: “Whether young or old, this fight concerns us all and we welcome everyone!”
Everyone is welcome. If they are able-bodied. But not the chronically ill and disabled people. No one cares about us.
The ableism among the European left-wing activists is staggering, five years into an ongoing pandemic, what a disgrace.
This experience that has left me stranded, felling like i lost my political home. This crowd was the people i had always thought i could count on during a time of crisis. But they dropped me like a hot potato, like a nuisance, reminding them of a time they wanted to forget. Instead they continue the same practices, while pretending that the pandemic never happened. They play make-belief that the pandemic didn’t disable some former comrades, and could disable more.
Shame on you, fucking assholes.
If you think this sounds bitter, that’s because i am bitter. This experience has made me bitter. Other traumatic experiences with political organizers soon followed.
During the last five years, my former friends have consistently been some of the worst COVID-19 normalizers.
For me as a chronically ill and disabled person they are now the enemies.
But where are my friends?
I have only one (you know who you are).
[Illustration above is by @fr3nzin3]