Thread by @broadwaybabyto

Let’s talk about THAT NPR article. I’ve taken a few days to grieve for those forced into dangerous situations by spouses/family who would rather go back to normal than protect their vulnerable loved ones. Where has kindness gone & how do we stop treating ppl as disposable? 🧵/1

I wish I could say I was shocked to read that piece - but after 4 years of being abandoned by more people than I care to admit - little surprises me anymore. We were “all in this together” for a few weeks - and then people got sick of it. /2

People don’t want to change their behaviours. For many healthy & privileged people the pandemic was the first time they ever had to make sacrifices or change their “normal”. Most didn’t like it. /3

Some people were empathetic enough to see the isolation from stay at home orders and connect it to the lives of disabled people. I had a number of people reach out and say things like “wow is this what your life is always like?” /4

Of course my answer was “Yes”. My chronic illnesses isolated me long before the pandemic - Covid only intensified that isolation. When people would draw parallels I felt great hope - I imagined we would move forward to a more inclusive society. /5

Instead what has happened is people got tired of having to make sacrifices. Government & public health told them that they no longer had to protect the vulnerable & that it was OUR responsibility to shield & isolate.
So they stopped masking & went back to normal. /6

There were some holdouts - usually people who love or care for a vulnerable person. But as it became clear that herd immunity wasn’t coming, that Covid wasn’t going away…. Even those people grew resentful of the modifications to their daily lives. /7

They started pressuring their vulnerable loved ones to stop worrying so much & go “back to normal”. Many started doing high risk indoor actitivies and simply lying about it - while others wrote articles for NPR. /8

The sad reality is that people now view the vulnerable as THE people who ruined their lives. After all - mask mandates & stay at home orders were sold as a means of “protecting the vulnerable”. People are angry their “normal” was altered & they’re not being subtle about it. /9

I would argue they should take that anger and direct it where it belongs - at government and public health officials who’ve bungled the messaging around Covid from the very beginning. The people who lied & downplayed the risks & cost us our best chance of containing Covid /10

Of course most leaders and public health officials are telling people what they want to hear. That the threat has passed, that we’ve “defeated Covid” and that they can party like it’s 2019. As a result people aren’t angry at them - they’re angry at the vulnerable instead /11

They’re angry at disabled people for trying to protect themselves, at advocates for reminding them that we’re STILL in a pandemic and at the sight of a respirator. These things & people remind them of that time in their life when they couldn’t do what they wanted. /12

They don’t want to be reminded of the few weeks or months they had to sacrifice for other people. They want their “normal” back. And they definitely don’t want to consider they too could end up disabled like us “vulnerable people”. /13

So they buy the lies despite overwhelming evidence that the threat is still with us. And they direct their anger towards disabled and vulnerable people instead. They put us at risk - often deliberately - so that they can stay in their denial bubble of normalcy. /14

I’m sick of it. It’s made life much harder for so many people and it didn’t have to be this way. We understand Covid & how it’s spread and we have the tools to keep everyone safe. The reason people don’t want to use them is that they fear change & adaptation. /15

They also don’t see themselves as vulnerable. They still see Covid as only an issue for those “other people” that they think they’re so much better than. So they do nothing to protect us. /16

How do we change this? I don’t know anymore. Given most of us can’t even get our loved ones & doctors to take steps to protect us… what chance do we have of convincing strangers? /17

I don’t have the answers but I do know that writing articles shaming your vulnerable spouse is NOT the way. Lying & exposing vulnerable loved ones to reinfection is NOT the way. Refusing to take any precautions & getting Covid over & over is NOT the way. /18

We can clean & ventilate the air we share. We can mask in high risk settings. We can demand mask mandates in hospitals, free access to tests & better vaccines & treatments for Long Covid. There’s much we CAN do if we would stop othering people & admit there’s a serious threat /19

For now the best I can do is protect myself & those around me and continue to tell stories of challenges I face. I encourage others within the disability & Long Covid communities to be ready to welcome many new members - our ranks will keep growing in the ‘let ‘er rip” era /20

We need to remember how scary it can be when you first realize you’re chronically ill - and we need to have compassion for those joining us regardless of how or why they ended up here. When we figure out how to work together as a collective voice - we will be unstoppable. /end