Coronavirus has changed a lot of things, and it has changed a lot of things very quickly. Everyone is being forced to adjust to a radically new routine, and nobody really knows what to expect next. Living through a global pandemic is, undoubtedly, a scary time for everyone. But it’s an especially scary time for disabled and chronically ill people.
It’s not the transition into social distancing or self-isolation that many of us are struggling with—disabled people have been forced more or less into isolation for as long as we can remember. From unaccommodating schools to inaccessible workplaces, society has created an environment that assures disabled people spend the majority of their time in their homes, to begin with.
We’ve carefully watched everything unfold, starting with the constant reassurance to the able-bodied population that came in the form of “only the sick and the elderly will die.” Besides this, we were painfully aware of the speed and care with which major institutions transitioned to remote work and online schooling—accommodations that many disabled people have been told were impossible in the past. It seems that in every facet of the world’s response to the COVID-19 crisis, disabled people have been consciously left behind.
We continued to observe while orders for social distancing were put in place, and we were not shocked to see many healthy people disobeying them. After all, when “only the sick and the elderly will die,” why should anyone else be concerned?
What we’ve watched happen now is the world turning against us, and in a way more directly malicious than we’ve seen in a long time. As the strain on healthcare systems all around the world began to increase, disabled people knew what would come next. We knew that we would be the ones suffering the most. Many in North America continued to go out, meet with friends, and live their lives with no fear of repercussions. As they continued to live their lives without fear, we retreated further into what little safety our homes might grant us. We were not just afraid because for many of us, contracting the virus would mean much more severe symptoms and greatly increased risk. We were afraid because, depending on our home’s healthcare system policies—contracting the virus would mean being left alone to die.
However dark that may sound (though I don’t hesitate to bum you out a bit when talking about eugenics making a comeback) it is absolutely necessary that you understand the gravity of it. Hospitals everywhere are now being overwhelmed with cases of coronavirus, and governments have been vastly unprepared for the numbers they’ve seen. Hospitals being caught off guard and a general population that ignores pleas to help lighten the load are not a good combination for anyone involved. A lack of resources has led various states to craft emergency preparedness plans that carefully outline who of the coming COVID-affected patients will receive care. It should come as no surprise to you that disabled people simply did not make the cut.
In Tennessee, for example, patients with spinal muscular atrophy (the condition I have) are listed as “excluded from admission or transfer to critical care.” This means, in very plain language, that if a person living in Tennessee with spinal muscular atrophy contracted coronavirus, they would be refused care at any hospital they sought help from. Spinal muscular atrophy affects lung capacity and strength, which means that they would very likely die without medical intervention. People with spinal muscular atrophy are kept the company on this list by those with MS, ALS, TBIs, and burn victims.
In Alabama, policymakers expanded on the list of disabilities to discriminate against to include those with “severe mental retardation,” meaning these individuals too would be sacrificed to save a ventilator for an able-bodied person affected by COVID-19. It is one (repulsive) thing to make a list based on predicted chances of survival and physical conditions that would complicate the recovery of a patient. It is an entirely different thing to refuse care based on mental capacity or intellectual contributions to society, and this ‘different thing’ is called eugenics. If you haven’t heard of it, it had some pretty vocal supporters in the past—including one you might’ve heard of named Hitler.
Even if we disregard the fact that lists like these are sending a very clear message about which lives society values more, it’s important that we understand the impacts of these policies on actual disabled people living through this pandemic, as well as why policies like these can slip under the radar, to begin with.
Many of us have been self-isolating from the very first moment we realized the true threat that coronavirus was. We still, however, need groceries, medical supplies, and help to care for ourselves while we are doing everything in our power to stay safe at home. This means that we cannot avoid human interaction, even those of us who are lucky enough to live with someone that can go out for us to obtain the things we need to live in these upcoming weeks. Community transmission can mean that those we rely on for care and supplies could contract the virus unknowingly, from people who chose not to social distance, did not take proper hygiene precautions, or left their house with symptoms. It is not just those who disregarded social distancing recommendations in the past weeks who will suffer or contract the virus. Their recklessness and refusal to minimize unnecessary contact puts disabled people once again at risk, and we will be the ones who pay.
Many of my best friends are disabled people, and they live all over the world. Knowing that they could become sick and be refused care because of a condition they cannot control—all to save the life of a person who is currently lucky enough to have stronger legs or better genes—is indescribably terrifying.
The lives of my friends are not dispensable. My life is not dispensable. Disabled lives are not dispensable. We are not burdens, nor inconveniences, and we are not worth less than anyone else.
In the midst of a crisis unlike any we’ve seen before, we as a society cannot regress back to abandoning certain groups to try and alleviate the impact on abled bodies. If we begin to accept the systematic disposal of disabled people, I can assure you that we will be losing some of the most important, impactful, and worthy voices of our generation. Now is not the time to leave us behind.
It was the flippant attitudes promoting the idea that “only the disabled and elderly” had to worry that got us into such a massive worldwide mess. Now that we’ve been shown we don’t get the best results from worrying about ourselves exclusively and selfishly ignoring our individual impact on the community, it’s time we also realize that we have to start working together. None of us can truly thrive until we’re protecting the most vulnerable among us and doing everything in our power to ensure we make it through this. Now is the time to support each other, and the best way you can support disabled people during COVID-19 is by vocally and resolutely condemning the dangerous policies that are allowing us to be forgotten.
