I'm concerned with all the talk we have about hospital overcrowding. Yes overcrowding for acute care management for COVID patients depletes the system. But for disabled patients, the system was ALREADY broken and overcrowded. 1/6
Lists to get in to see specialists in chronic illnesses and comorbidities are already endless for us. It's common to wait at least a year per specialist, and with an influx of millions of disabled individuals with long COVID, those wait times will get even higher. 2/6
Treatment options and research is currently being halted, delayed, or terminated in order for the system to focus on acute COVID-related demands. And so we have very few treatment options on the horizon. I was closely following so many clinical trials that just stopped. 3/6
Time-to-diagnosis is already so high for those of us with rare diseases and/or disabilities and/or chronic illnesses. And it's going to get even higher. Post-viral symptoms are so widespread and the system is already SO BAD at handling these patients. 4/6
So when we say we're trying to prevent hospital overcrowding let's be honest - we're trying to prevent ICU overcrowding. Preventing overcrowding should not be the only goal. That goal ignores the millions of disabled people without care right now. 5/6
Because the system will always shift resources to acute based therapies. And it will always shrug at the disabled lives sacrificed by those resource shifts. 6/6 #DisabilityTwitter #MedTwitter
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