Thread by @bennessb

hey the thing that sucks about getting long covid isn’t Becoming Disabled.

the thing that sucks is acquiring a disability with the baggage of decades of systemic discreditation with which you are more likely to be told Nothing Is Wrong than to be offered appropriate support.

like it should really tell you something how many public health types are still neglecting to mention the relatively significant risk of long covid.

they either don’t think it’s real or don’t think it’s a public health problem, but either way they are perpetuating the problem.

(ps this thread is about language choices as we discuss widespread implications of the pandemic and not crip grief 💗)

also certainly all of this! discreditation does not occur randomly or aimlessly.

everything about our current med system is built on top of a system that emerged to serve comfort & financial interests of wealthy white cis men. the violent implications of this touch everything.

https://twitter.com/GraysonGoal/status/1474467770339319810

like as you’re watching the pandemic unfold, and you are seeing a lot of people you previously respected choose comfort and / or financial interests over what The Science is telling us about how to respond to covid, I invite you to really reflect on where else that bias shows up.

establishing a narrative that Nothing Is Wrong is part of a longer term effort to deny benefits to disabled people who can’t clearly document the genesis of their illness, by the way, which will impact multiply marginalized people the most.