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Short abstract:

Long Covid has been identified by global health authorities as a medical, scientific, and economic problem affecting all countries. In our study of Long Covid and Covid-19 recovery in the US, Brazil, and China, we find a wide range of patient identities around post-Covid symptoms.

Long abstract:

Long Covid has been identified by global health authorities as a medical, scientific, and economic problem affecting all countries. As Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Secretary-General of the WHO declared, “It is critical for governments to invest long-term in their health system and workers and make a plan now for dealing with long Covid”. But what’s in a name? The WHO’s “view from the center” assumes that there is a single illness, representing a common challenge across the globe. The view from the center dials forward to a future when the WHO will count Long Covid as a uniform and standardized disease category, just as it now counts Malaria or Tubercolosis cases globally. However, in our study of Long Covid and Covid-19 recovery in the United States (survey n=334, interviews n=92), Brazil (survey n=144, interviews n=32), and China (interviews n=44), we find a wide range of patient identities around post-Covid symptoms. In this article, we ask: (1) What explains differences in naming and identification among patients in the three countries; and (2) What do these differences tell us about the global politics of expertise more generally? Patient identity, we find, is determined by a different constellation of the politics of expertise in each country, along three 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.