Denial is a tactic for both the COVID-19 and climate crises

Corporate interests have had more say in our behaviors toward both COVID-19 and the climate crisis than any evidence-based public health response.

A demonstrator holds a cardboard sign that reads "People Not Profit." The demonstrator has long hair and wears a high quality black mask. — Markus Spiske / Pexels

In 2021, the CEO of Delta Air Lines pressured the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) into changing its guidelines for isolation during acute COVID-19 from ten days to five, in order to minimize airline disruption. This is just one of many examples of how big business alters our perception and informs our behaviors, no matter the scale of the crisis.

We’re living in a time highly steeped in denial and minimization. For many, this is protective armor against the sheer intensity of the polycrisis we’re living through, which can be all-consuming and harrowing.

But for oppressive states, denial serves a different function. It’s a tactic governments and corporate powers use to distort reality and avoid responsibility when terrible things follow.

There are many examples of this, from the pervasive nature of sexual violence and misogyny to the genocides worldwide. But as someone who writes about the climate crisis and takes COVID-19 seriously, it’s clear to me that the ways political leaders, mainstream media, and other powerful institutions deny climate, COVID-19, and Long COVID are deeply interconnected, and that similar tactics are employed to downplay each of these crises. Moreover, inaction toward one reinforces inaction toward the others.

Fossil fuel companies have long led climate change minimization and denial, stalling our collective ability to respond. Some of these companies even ran coordinated misinformation campaigns to obscure the real impacts of the climate crisis, despite knowing since the 1970s the deathly consequences of fossil fuel expansion. During the Biden administration, ExxonMobil lobbied to weaken key climate initiatives so that they could continue their business operations, despite public statements in favor of tackling climate change.

This deceit has been the perfect breeding ground for COVID-19 denial to take root. Corporate interests, operating by the same grubby playbook of lobbying, misinformation, and minimization, have had more say in our behaviors toward COVID-19 than any evidence-based public health response. For example, older patients in nursing homes and healthcare facilities in New York were particularly affected in early waves of the pandemic, with many patients disproportionately suffering from repeated SARS-CoV-2 infections and related fatalities. Instead of further inquiry into these institutions, former New York governor Andrew Cuomo passed legislation on April 3, 2020, to protect nursing homes and healthcare facilities and provide legal immunity. (This law was later repealed.)

The partnership between big business and government is so influential that major companies and their leaders can override both public health and environmental concerns in favor of greater profit margins. This is incredibly dangerous for the rest of us.

Despite the complex and systemic implications of both COVID-19 and climate change, our governments whittle down the solutions to individual responsibility. For climate breakdown, we’re told we must reduce our carbon footprint, recycle, and consider carpooling. While there’s obvious merit in us each considering our habits, it’s no measure of where the real responsibility sits — with the 100 fossil fuel companies who have contributed toward 70% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Similarly, government agencies are responsible for mitigating COVID-19’s harms. They should spearhead ongoing COVID-19 adaptations, such as clean air in public buildings and collective spaces, and disseminate accessible information that gives context for why these changes are required.

Instead, everyone must make their own decisions about an unprecedented public health crisis, devoid of community or social consequence. COVID-19 sick leave and protections in the workplace is now variable and, in many instances, negligible. People who continue to take precautions do so based on their own knowledge and determination, and face societal gaslighting and hostility.

Worse yet, much of the healthcare sector and society at large continues to erase, minimize, and deny Long COVID. Some mainstream media outlets have published misinformation on Long COVID, calling it a psychosomatic condition despite the plethora of research that proves it’s a biological disease. This parallels climate nonexperts questioning climate change’s seriousness and calling it a “hoax.”

Our failure to fully acknowledge and give proper care to both Long COVID and the climate emergency, even as the consequences worsen right in front of us, expose a deeply dysfunctional and violent society.

Corporate influences in today’s age don’t look like outright denial; instead, leaders insist on the smoke and mirrors of “business as usual.” When former U.K. prime minister Boris Johnson glibly announced “Freedom Day” in 2021 and former U.S. president Joe Biden declared COVID-19 “over” in 2022 — even as the death toll continued to rise — our leaders sacrificed the collective good for the sake of their shadow interests.

Living in this denial, and subsequent neglect, is catastrophic on both a practical and existential level. What does it do to our sense of self and safety to be routinely gaslit out of reacting in real time to the crises that surround us?

Corporate influences in today’s age don’t look like outright denial; instead, leaders insist on the smoke and mirrors of “business as usual.”

Mainstream society and the many institutional actors that shape it teach us there is no crisis big enough to stop the corporate machine, often at the expense of our lives.

Institutional figures, from healthcare professionals to politicians, repeatedly claim society is “post-COVID” despite suffering worsening illnesses from repeated infections. Many people who experience some of the 200 potential symptoms of Long COVID deny their sicknesses, despite what their bodies may be telling them. Media portrayals insist growing struggles around Long COVID are personal failures that can be solved by health fads and “getting stronger.” Governments make disability benefits harder to apply for.

Instead of developing collective responses to Long COVID and the climate crisis, people turn inward and look for siloed solutions. People with Long COVID develop individualized health survival strategies, often learning more about Long COVID than their healthcare workers, who may or may not believe them. People navigating the climate crisis fortify individual resources to survive.

These strategies always leave many more of us behind, instead of holding state powers accountable to work on behalf of all of us. As a consequence, ideals of social progress fall to the theoretical: rhetoric about what should and could be done. But theory gets us no closer to embodying the values and behaviors required for real collective action. So while some people conceptually understand the dangers of COVID-19, fewer are prepared to act on them.

This is a terrifying status quo, especially as future pandemics are likely in our “pandemicene” era. The impacts of climate breakdown, such as extreme weather patterns, will make more parts of the planet inhabitable and increase the likelihood for new pathogens to spread and mutate.

Support independent Long COVID journalism

Climate movements that operate without COVID-19 awareness — and more broadly, a solid pandemicene analysis — are missing a vital part of the conversation. They miss opportunities to push for pandemic preparedness and build robust mechanisms of care.

The climate movement is also harmed by COVID-19 and Long COVID. In a time where we need mass mobilization, many people are pushed out of organizing by the chronic and disabling nature of Long COVID and because the movement refuses to be accessible and develop COVID-safer practices.

Is masking truly too difficult in a world changing due to climate catastrophe — or is it actually a relatively simple way we can protect each other at a time where our care systems are disintegrating? How can the climate movement campaign for clean air while completely ignoring the lack of precautions in place for current and future airborne viruses which continue to disproportionately affect marginalized people, much like air pollution?

Given that the mainstream climate movement has been slow to move in an intersectional direction, we must push progressive organizations not to replicate the same tactics of COVID-19 denial, as this minimization undermines much of the work that many community-minded organizations set out to do. Also, if the movement is willing to change only once it becomes more socially acceptable to do so, it is no more than an echo chamber of the very same corporate interests that wish to kill us. We must be bigger than the denial.

For those of us still committed to understanding the true nature of COVID-19, our behaviors are grounded in reality. This makes us sharper, albeit exhausted, and much more pragmatic about the changes that are required of us during this time. This is a strength. Our actions, often guided by the wisdom of disability justice movements, are consistently rewriting the script of what it is to rebuild care and solidarity in the face of personal and collective crisis.

For those of us still committed to understanding the true nature of COVID-19, our behaviors are grounded in reality. This makes us sharper, albeit exhausted, and much more pragmatic about the changes that are required of us during this time. This is a strength.

Mask blocs and clean air groups demonstrate how well positioned people of conscience have become to put what we know into action. Mask Bloc LA and other clean air groups, for example, were more proactive in disseminating masks during the 2025 Los Angeles–area wildfires than the government agencies, who only responded a week later.

Amid the terrifying realities of life during this time, we continue to see past state propaganda that would have us live by eugenicist behaviors and call it “normal.”

We must become just as well attuned to seeing through similar denial tactics in the face of other injustices, like the climate crisis as well as transphobia and mass surveillance. This is what oppressive states fear: our bravery, our collective solidarity, and our capacity to call out the lies and stand in the truth.

Selina Nwulu is a strategic advisor and award-winning writer. She’s the author of Black Climates and founder of Echi, a strategic change consultancy that advises groups and organizations on intersectional climate transition.

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