Fear of others: thinking biopolitics.

It has been observed that COVID‐19 infection does not distinguish by social class, nor gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation No particular social group can be stigmatised as the infected other, as with the ethical‐moral weight that fell on gay men during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s or disdain for the poor, as with leprosy Emerging (but still inconclusive) research challenges this view, and attitudes are in any case susceptible to change in the future as new hierarchies take form with access to care But, for the moment, COVID‐19’s ostensible egalitarianism poses a curious situation in which the only precondition for infection seems to be life itself, and the only discerning category of the contagious is the body of the other Although the enterprise of quarantine is obviously nothing more than separation of people from other people who might carry the virus, the existential emergency of the endeavour, and its scale, is perhaps less obvious