With the emergence of new variants and rising rates of infection and hospitalization, Covid is making a comeback in our consciousness. People who last wore masks in public places six months ago or more could wear them again. And those who lost count of their booster shots a year or more have a vested interest in returning as soon as possible.
But many of us, who are part of the highest-risk populations with disabilities and chronic illnesses, have never stopped thinking about Covid, taking personal precautions, and advocating for more prudent public health policies. Some of us have adjusted our precautions as we go along. Infection, hospitalization and mortality rates have declined. But we also continue to practice and advocate for hybrid in-person and virtual meetings and encounters, vaccine tracking, promotion of greater indoor ventilation, and wider use of masks, especially in key indoor public spaces such as hospitals. , schools and public meetings.
And because of that, many of us have earned more than a little ridicule, contempt and outright condemnation. The pandemic is over. Why do we continue to act as if it were an emergency?People with disabilities and chronic ailments whose lives would possibly still be disrupted or threatened by Covid also have to face the inner doubts and misfortune of those around us.
But if we are asked to respect the individual freedom of other people who have definitely abandoned all Covid-related precautions, then other people who choose otherwise also deserve to have a good reputation.
Unfortunately, other people who are still worried about Covid (who wear masks in public places and ask certain professionals, such as doctors and nurses, to also wear masks when we are around us) are subject to strong social tension and gas lighting on a daily basis. We are forced to return to the paintings on the spot and prevent it by wearing masks. And we are subject to a tweet: we are continually told that there will have to be something bad, politically motivated, irrational, even pathological, in anyone who still takes precautions. .
There is also some degree of doubt, especially in disability communities, about whether we have overestimated the risk of Covid or taken it seriously enough. Were we too zealous with the precautions or not too jealous enough?
The key reaction at this level would possibly be to fight shame and doubt, so that other people with disabilities and chronic ailments reaffirm their confidence in their own instincts and reactions. Here are five feelings about Covid that incapacitated and chronically made other people sick. Rightly or wrongly, never be ashamed.
It has been sensible that other disabled and chronically ill people were afraid of suffering and dying from Covid-19. No, Covid wasn’t as bad as the “Captain Trips” flu in Stephen King’s The Stand, but it was actually devastating.
As of August 16, 2023, 6. 9 million people have died from Covid, according to the World Health Organization. And 1. 1 million more people have died from Covid in the United States as of August 12, 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control. It is an excess of mortality from a cause that did not exist before the end of 2019 and that has not disappeared, although it is less widespread and less deadly than it was. And the lingering effects of Long Covid continue to manifest themselves, worsening the death toll. suffering and more disabling the idea that Covid is actually us.
Covid was bad for everyone, and still is. But some other people with disabilities had direct and express medical reasons to fear Covid much more than most. Many other people with disabilities also had indirect and less explicit reasons to fear. It has been difficult to distinguish the increased threat of contracting Covid from the threat that Covid is incredibly difficult to combat. Regardless, there are millions of other people with disabilities or chronic ailments who have had valid, rational reasons to be terrified of Covid. threat to other people with disabilities, not a scarecrow.
The feeling of being unusable made the impression among other people with disabilities and chronic illnesses almost as soon as the pandemic was declared in March 2023. There were shortages of staff and ventilators in hospitals. This resulted in emergency classification policies, discussed and implemented. which explicitly called for allowing other people with disabilities and chronic illnesses to die in order to reallocate resources to young and otherwise “healthy” people.
Most of the precautions were aimed in particular at protecting other “vulnerable” people. But it is exactly because of this that the popular reaction against precautions has given the impression of intentionally excluding us, consenting to our suffering and death. And some have explicitly expressed that the loss of vulnerable people is an appropriate value to maintain a normal life.
Let’s not forget the weeks and months that other people with disabilities and chronic ailments had to wait in some states between the arrival of vaccines and the authorization to access them. Not prioritizing disability seemed like a mistake at the time, perhaps because of a basic false impression. about other people with disabilities.
Finally, the end of official policies related to Covid and the misfortune of those who are still worried has underscored for many of us the feeling that even our supposed allies have washed their hands and have neither the time nor the patience for our lingering concerns. In a way, we are more absolute today than at the height of the pandemic.
While many other people with disabilities struggled to take stricter precautions and not end them, others of us saw them as an added burden because of our disability.
For one, wearing a mask and isolating was particularly complicated for others with certain specific types of disabilities, such as lung disease, autism, and certain types of developmental disabilities. In general, Covid precautions were mandatory to protect other people with disabilities. Others made false claims of disability claiming they might simply not tolerate masks. But some of us, who suffer from very serious conditions, actually have difficulty wearing masks. Maintaining segregation in care services was essential. But this isolation was also terrible for the inhabitants. Remote education was a boon for some youth with disabilities, just as remote work was for many adults with disabilities, but remote participation hasn’t worked for everyone, and youth with disabilities have mostly suffered from a lack of educational and socialization services.
Communities of others with disabilities and chronic ailments have never understood how to balance the struggle for precautions while also advocating for flexibility and adaptation. However, debates about Covid have led some disability communities to feel even more ignored and disrespected than before through activism and a wider disability culture. They deserve to have their objections heard and their wishes respected, if only through their disabled peers.
Most official advisories still advise high-risk Americans to take individual precautions. But prominent politicians of all political persuasions are not content to celebrate the end of Covid, but are actively urging others to abandon their precautions. Public disgrace to others who are Continuing to take precautions is passively and actively validated. It is very complicated to wear a mask in public without being looked at or harassed.
Even if Covid really does become a manageable form of flu, it would possibly be sensible to wear a mask and practice some degree of isolation in reaction to periodic outbreaks. These can also become smart new practices for other people who contract diseases without problems. and for those who, due to a disability, have more difficulty coping with severe influenza. At the very least, masks don’t deserve to be considered stranger or more stigmatizing than wheelchairs, consultant dogs, or hearing aids.
Covid still poses a threat to other people with disabilities and chronic illnesses. It is perhaps now more of an individual danger than a threat to public health and the wider social order, as it once was. But even that can also replace at any time. time. At least it is some other disease that adds to the list that other people with disabilities and chronic ailments face for as many as one or two years, and that can plunge our lives into chaos or threaten our survival.
But now we will also have to confront the popular cynicism and political stigma associated with any discussion of this issue. At first, Covid revealed some examples of social cooperation to protect other people with disabilities and chronic illnesses. But it didn’t last long. Those of us with disabilities or chronic ailments have discovered some of the limitations of other people without disabilities to protect us. We found that those barriers were much narrower than many of us thought.
This is the explanation of why it is enough to continue to be at least a little afraid, and in the face of Covid and the social and political pressures that still surround it.
What states, the federal government and politicians deserve to say and do about Covid remains a critical debate. But others will have to decide first each day what we will do to protect ourselves and how we will negotiate how our friends, family, co-workers, employers, teachers, doctors, and community businesses react to us.
Those of us with disabilities or chronic illnesses deserve to be not put under pressure or embarrassed for how we approach Covid, even now. It deserves to be anything we’re smart at. After all, other people with disabilities or chronic illnesses enjoy more than most people in the practice and equipment that other people don’t have. And we’re used to being criticized by other people who don’t understand why we do what we do and who, frankly, think we’re weird.
So as long as we are thoughtful, analytical and motivated through practicality and principles, this will be a challenge for us if other people without disabilities think our current reaction to Covid is strange.