Death on Your Conscience: How Systemic Shame Poisoned the Public Discourse on COVID-19

Photo by Sarah Kilian on Unsplash

Throughout 2020, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot emphasized the role irresponsible individuals played in the spread of COVID-19, leveraging shame to downplay the role city policy played in rising case numbers. In Lightfoot’s response, we can see a microcosm of how COVID-19 was bungled by public institutions at just about every level: government…