From Medicalizing State to Medicalizing Civil Society: Consideration Power, Suffering, and Social Mobilization during COVID-19 Crisis First Wave Conditions in Thailand

Abstract

This article investigates the state of Thai society during the first wave of the Novel Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) crisis with respect to power, social suffering, and social mobilization. The discussion will endeavor to grasp why the Thai government, which demonstrates administrative and managerial incompetence, leads to suffering and increased suicide rates, while maintaining relatively low death and infection rates during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. The article suggests that under the present day’s Thai medicalizing state, which, in an administrative aspect, does not prioritize people as the highest objective, including how biopower has been promoted to legitimate absolute power. Although the latter leads to a decisive force in handling the crisis, it also leads to increased social melancholy as an aftermath effect. It finds that the strong extant medical structure together with public health reform as well as the rise of medical civil society are the key factors in mitigating the pandemic crisis. The medical civil society, in particular, plays a major role not only in data stabilizing but also in remedying the effects that occurred in the neglected and marginalized groups and filling the void of the government administration in rectifying the pandemic crisis in Thailand.