"The disability community sees disaster looming — more mass death and disablement, and a choice between hospitalization and death, or almost total isolation while everyone else enjoys maskless flying, parties, and eating in restaurants. Meanwhile, individual disabled and chronically ill people increasingly feel like they are now seeing exactly how they will die."
-Andrew Pulrang, Forbes
When the pandemic first began in March 2020, disabled people sounded the alarm. We tried desperately to talk about how deadly and disabling this pandemic would be, and the general response was to dismiss us. We were "othered", told our lives didn’t matter, told not to disrupt your fun and stay over there. As we so often are.
As it became increasingly clear the pandemic would affect the masses, a national emergency was declared. The country, at least for a while effectively shut down. Precautions were taken, and for a brief time it seemed we were all in this together.
Over two years, and 1 million deaths, later it seems the pendulum has swung back toward indifference. The reason so many able-bodied people shout from the rooftops about “learning to live with COVID” is because they very well can. For them, a battle with COVID, particularly if vaccinated, may not prove lethal. For folks like myself with cerebral palsy, which affects the most basic forms of mobility, a potential battle with COVID can go from miserable to life-threatening in a heartbeat.
Cerebral Palsy Alliance Research Foundation USA writes:
“….individuals with cerebral palsy will likely experience trouble quickly. This trouble includes inability to generate sufficient force to clear the airway and in fatiguing with the increased work of breathing.”
An Axios/Ipsos poll this week found just 36 percent of Americans said there was significant risk in returning to their “normal pre-coronavirus life" however, the disability community remains at incredibly high risk from COVID.
With the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shift from deemphasizing infection focusing on risk assessment, the need for more accessible data surrounding infection rates and daily cases remains paramount. At home test kits and personal protective equipment (PPE) need to be more widely available, affordable, and accessible. Perhaps most importantly there needs to be clear indication of the relative safety of public spaces. We need to know what precautions businesses are talking to protect the vulnerable populations they serve.
The pandemic is not over, its impacts are still being seen and felt globally, and the disability community is here to tell you that you are ignoring its current state at your own peril. Every one of you could become one of us at any time. The difference is. when you do, we will welcome you and not cast you aside.