A year after it began, other people with disabilities are still experiencing the Covid-19 pandemic than others. Through those experiences, we have learned a lot about ourselves and our true position in society.
Even before Covid-19 declared a global pandemic in March 2020, other people with disabilities and the chronically ill knew we were in an exclusive position, entangled in a web of medical and social factors. contracting Covid-19 due to our underlying physical conditions, as well as the side effects of our disability-related practical scenario and our prestige as a disabled user in society.
At the same time, many of the demanding situations of the pandemic were already familiar to us. Although we were most at risk, we felt we were better prepared to deal with the pandemic than other people without disabilities. People with disabilities have suffered and died disproportionately from Covid-19 over the past year. The disability network has also learned a lot about the social disadvantages we face as an organization in cultures that are still rooted in ableism. However, we have also reconnected with some of our unique strengths and talents.
Here are five observations that other people with disabilities have turned to in the fight against the pandemic over the past year.
1. “We, like this!”
There’s a reason other people with disabilities often half-jokingly call us “oracles” or “canaries in the coal mine. “Like other people with disabilities, we face new issues and threats before most people realize them or truly realize their potential magnitude. .
For example, we know what it means to need help with some of the simplest daily tasks, long before other people have to due to illness, accident, or aging. And many of us have long felt the weaknesses of popular contingency plans. before mistakes happen. We seek to warn people. But we are rarely listened to or believed until it’s too late. Although we are considered overly worried Cassandras and our worries are rarely exaggerated, we are more prophetic than panicked.
So it is with Covid-19. Many of us were afraid of it long before it caught the world’s attention. Our fears, which at first might have seemed exaggerated, particularly with regard to other people with disabilities, have become reality. largely well-founded.
Although degrees of risk vary widely among us, in general, other people with various types of disabilities, including millions who are under 65 years of age, have been shown to be among the most vulnerable to Covid-19. or developmental disabilities have been greatly affected and it was not known until a long time ago that they needed greater coverage and full inclusion in pandemic plans.
To make matters worse, community life has been among the hardest hit by COVID-19. This includes nursing homes, assisted living facilities, organization homes, and psychiatric facilities. During the pandemic, a combination of logistical shortages, chronic mismanagement, and above all the inherent risks of trapping dozens of other medically vulnerable people and their caregivers under one roof, led to devastating infection rates and deaths.
These were all consequences that disability advocates and other people with disabilities in general were wary of as early as February and March 2020, and were almost desperate to hear about them in April and May. Through it all, people seemed to notice and react with anything. Getting to the right horror and urgency. But until then, much of the pain had already been done.
For a broad sampling of how other people with disabilities have responded to our worst fears of Covid becoming a reality, search for the Twitter hashtag #DisabledPeopleToldYou. We don’t like to be right about those things. But forgive us for taking at least a little. pride in our prescience.
2. “Forgotten Again”
In the disability community, we have a lot of debate among ourselves about how to interpret precisely the tactics we revel in with discrimination and disadvantage. Are we the target of hatred or simply negligence?Are we intentionally excluded or passively ignored? However, while we disagree on certain points, we are forgetting something that most people with any type of disability enjoy over and over again, separately and collectively. This feeling has rarely been as intense or biting as it was during the pandemic.
It seemed pitiful and overdue at the time, but it’s remarkable how much financial aid was actually provided: two pretty massive systems in less than a year. But while many other people with disabilities have benefited from individual assistance like other fellow citizens, many have also been excluded from the front lines of help.
For one thing, adults who relied on other people’s taxes didn’t get stimulus checks in the first two rounds. This included many adults with disabilities, who have their own desires and participate in the economy, but are cared for through family members. And by extension, their families were excluded from any of the first aid programs.
In addition, neither of the first two pandemic relief expenditures provided assistance to home care providers who were suffering, nor “home and network services” (HCBS). This is despite the fact that home care is a much safer option for the elderly and disabled than collective care, especially in a pandemic. It was incredibly frustrating to hear other people lament the death toll in nursing homes, while forgetting the main option they had in the face of the otherwise great federal reaction to Covid-19. It was frustrating. But for other people with disabilities, it was quite familiar.
Finally, when effective vaccines were developed but still in short supply, states did not consistently designate other people with high-risk disabilities as a priority for early vaccination. Some top-priority groups, such as people over the age of 65 and retired citizens households, also have many other people with disabilities. And some states have put other people with long-term fitness situations on the priority list. But they were slow to recognize that the broader diversity of physical, cognitive, and intellectual disabilities demanded a higher priority for vaccination. For more information, use the hashtags #HighRiskCovid19, #HighRiskCA, #HighRiskCT, and other diversifications of the “HighRisk” hashtags for other states.
Things are starting to change for us. Dependent adults get controls in the third circular of stimulus measures approved in March 2020. HCBS facilities now also benefit from really extensive additional support. And more and more states are starting to prioritize other people with disabilities in access to vaccines. But the wait has all been too long, and none of this would have happened without the near-constant advocacy of other people with disabilities. The most productive thing we can say is that, once again, we were an afterthought, which is more than anything. think about it. But being forgotten, once again, not only hurts us, it hurts us as well.
3. “Ableism is real”
Covid-19 and the responses provided have highlighted how we, like other people with disabilities, are more likely to be left behind in a crisis. It also showed what many of us have long believed but are implausible to others. Ableism is not theoretical, but it is real and can be deadly.
One of the first, and most frightening, threats faced by many other people with disabilities during the pandemic was the possibility of being denied treatment for Covid because of our “pre-existing conditions. “With ventilators scarce and extensive care teams overwhelmed, we have been faced with the very genuine prospect of being intentionally abandoned, and not simply forgotten, in favour of Covid patients deemed more likely to live a ‘normal life’.
Meanwhile, as resistance to lockdowns and mask mandates intensified, some elected officials, economists, and other reputable thinkers saw fit to say, in essence, that the elderly and disabled were replaceable. At least for a while, other people actively argued that our preventable deaths were preferable to a slowdown in the economy.
Other policies and practices also endanger the lives of other people with disabilities and condemn some of us to unnecessary suffering and death. This includes sending recovering patients to nursing homes, where they further endanger a predominantly disabled population, who have virtually no skills for themselves. It also continues to reach states that “reopen” too soon, leading to new waves of transmission that are doubly harmful and restrictive, especially for other people with high-risk disabilities.
In particular, one of the main arguments in favor of downplaying the pandemic and abandoning precautions has been the chosen technique of restricting only those in the greatest danger and letting everyone else run wild, which necessarily makes those in the greatest danger entirely to blame for our own ion. While each of us is obviously guilty of key aspects of our own fitness, public fitness exists. Some fitness threats cannot be addressed individually. They require cooperative technique. But apparently, other people are only willing to make sacrifices to some extent for the elderly and the disabled. And some seem to think it’s better for society, the weaker members of the pack, to fend for ourselves and probably die.
Post-Covid, we find it much harder to cling to the comforting illusion that empowerment is largely involuntary and benign. Sometimes, in some situations, training is really harmless or just plain annoying. But the past year has been a clear reminder that ableism can be destructive and even fatal in a crisis.
4. “Join the Club”
Throughout the pandemic, we have noticed that other people without disabilities have been forced to deal with restrictions, adjustments, and practices that many other people with disabilities have had to live with. Many of us have been physically limited due to a lack of mobility aids and transportation deficiencies. Many of us have had to work twice as hard to buy groceries, go to doctor’s appointments, or socialize with friends. Working from home has been a lifesaver for some of us, and for others with disabilities, an option we also occasionally have. They weren’t allowed to decide until it became common practice during the pandemic.
It’s hard to know precisely how we feel about this feeling of “welcome to my world” and, if so, what our reports beyond can teach others. These reflections dominated discussions among persons with disabilities during the year.
We can only hope that this taste of life with a disability has been a learning experience for all that will continue in the post-pandemic world. Perhaps, finally, it will add some urgency to decades-long efforts to make life more accessible. and sustainable for others with disabilities.
5. “We’re afraid, but we’re cowards”
The broader clash over how to respond to the pandemic has been shaped in part through other interpretations of concern. Basically, one faction argues that concern about the pandemic is exaggerated and debilitating, while the other faction argues that we have not been afraid. enough to take the mandatory measures in the face of the pandemic.
On a smaller scale, all of us with disabilities have wondered at some point how scared we really deserve to be about Covid-19. Not all disabilities put us at greater risk. However, it’s not just our medical situations that pose a greater danger. Our economic and social circumstances, as well as our relative ability to protect ourselves, as well as our vulnerability.
A year later, many doubts remain about all facets of the pandemic. But it is clear that the fears of other people with disabilities were actually justified, not irrational. We were right to be afraid.
Yet, despite all of our personal moments of terror and more public complaints, most of us who are disabled or chronically disabled have done what we needed to do. We have demonstrated the folly of an arrogant attitude of denial, but also the choice to be prepared. and cautious without “giving in to fear. “
In fact, there are many other people with disabilities who have noticed the pandemic in a very different way. Some are possibly among those who still think it’s a hoax or, at most, a health crisis of limited past impact, disproportionate to the panic. or for political purposes. Other people with disabilities would possibly be taking the pandemic more or less seriously, but they would be overly concerned about themselves. And many other people with disabilities in general are more frustrated by the additional restrictions they’ve had to endure than by the risk of illness itself. Experiences with disability are diverse, and we don’t all think or react in the same way.
However, other people with disabilities and the chronically ill cannot have lived this year impartially. Disability puts another spin on things. For us, our disabilities will determine how we deal with the Covid-19 pandemic. And the pandemic has already shaped our belief about our own disabilities.