Fearful Intimacies: COVID-19 and the Reshaping of Human–Microbial Relations

This article explores how COVID-19 could be reshaping human–microbial relations in and beyond the home Media sources suggest that intimacies of companionability or ambivalence are being transformed into those of fearfulness While a probiotic sociocultural approach to human–microbial relations has become more powerful in recent times, it seems that health and hygiene concerns associated with COVID-19 are encouraging the wholesale use of bleach and other cleaning agents in order to destroy the potential microbial ‘enemies’ in the home We provide a brief background to shifting public health discourses on managing microbes in domestic settings over recent decades across the industrialised world, and then contrast this background with emerging advice on COVID-19 from news and advertisement sources We conclude with key areas for future research © Berghahn Books and the Association for Anthropology in Action