Repercussions of irrresponsibility, denialism and necropolitics on mental health during the covid-19 pandemic

Abstract

This article deals with the repercussions and meanings of denialism and political irresponsibility in the relationship between risks of death and protection of the population during Covid-19 between 2019 and 2022. Vaccines, masks and isolation were denied. It aims to understand and deepen the relationship between lack of protection, misinformation, fake news and mental health. The official discourse was analyzed as a case study of bionecropolitics with repercussions on the population's health. The result shows that both physical and mental health are affected by denialism, misinformation, bad information and a lack of ethics and responsibility, with repercussions on representations of reliability, sociability and the incidence of anxiety, stress and depression. Meanings of life and death are paradoxically attributed to Covid-19 and established politics. The repercussions of diseases are more evident in the poorest and most peripheral layers in a society structured by economic, racial and gender inequality with the intersectionality of these dimensions.

Keywords:
pandemic; denialism; mental health; political ethics; disinformation