Here in California, mask mandates have been eased as COVID cases, hospitalizations and deaths have gone down. One health expert was recently quoted in the Los Angeles Times as saying that “this will allow healthy people to go with their lives.”
As if we disabled folks don’t have lives to go on with.
This is yet another case of the dismissal of the disabled, of the marginalization of disabled people. It’s not that we people with disabilities are unhealthy or sick, but we may as well be.
Yes, COVID cases are falling dramatically, at least here in California, but millions are still getting sick and thousands are still being hospitalized and dying. Contrary to what is being pronounced, this pandemic isn’t over. It may well become endemic, but not yet. Besides, we keep hearing about new, more dangerous variants that may be lurking.
In any case, it’s still all too easy to get the virus, even with vaccines and a booster, and while many Omicron cases aren’t that bad, many of us with disabilities, myself included, don’t want to take a chance and find out how we will be effected. I don’t know if my disability will make it harder for me to deal with COVID, and I don’t want to find out the hard way. And I certainly don’t want to end up in the hospital, where they might be too busy and tired to be patient with my special needs.
As I have written about before, the disabled are often seen as the ill are seen: what no one wants to be, if not flat-out avoided. Yes, there are now more rights and access for the disabled, but these are special rights and access that no one wants to have to have. Disability, if not the disabled, is still a pariah.
Saying that healthy people can now get on with their lives, even as COVID is still being easily spread, is just the latest proof of this casual discarding of the disabled.
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