Thanks for the link, it’s a good piece. And I definitely agree on it being an intentional path by our government not a failing per se. It’s not just the disabled that are and always have been afterthoughts, it’s everyone. Covid’s lasting damage is well-known, but that’s your problem not theirs, they have mitigations in place for themselves and the best care available if needed.

It’s very little but if you’re US based and want to remind your state officials that they’re killing people with their negligence, a group I organize with has a letter to send them about masking in healthcare. I really hope that this year we see actual progress on addressing covid instead of just ignoring it. We’re in the second highest ever surge currently, a lot of people are going to be sicker by November.

Same. I don’t even know how to respond to questions like this. It’s such a failure of our governments that people think loss of taste and smell from an infection years ago is the only lasting impact they’re experiencing. It’s a vascular disease that can damage every organ in the body and we’re being forced to experience repeat infections. Unfortunately most won’t realize what is happening until after it does, and there’s very few treatments and even little care for prevention.

I’m a disabled organizer focused on covid issues, and every day I hear constantly from people about the barriers covid has to their lives. Some are new barriers like new health conditions, increased precarity, and rising debt. Others are finding existing issues that were already hard to navigate become near insurmountable. Many of us haven’t had regular healthcare in years due to lack of covid safety or the system’s complete overwhelm. So many of us are fighting to just see a dentist without getting covid, and it’s nearly impossible.

And this is just from the folks who are aware of why covid should be avoided and what the current situation is, every day I talk to people who have long therm health issues from covid that now have to navigate a world they thought wouldn’t affect the. Covid has and will continue to impact every aspect of everyone’s life and it sucks seeing so many ignore it.

Edit to add- and yea, at least 7 million people died worldwide with over a million of that just in the US. The amount of people forever missing loved ones is hard to grapple with. A quarter of a million kids lost one or both parents, it’s had profound impact to their life trajectories that we’ll see for decades, and that’s not even accounting for the health implications they’ll endure along with the rest of society as we have continued repeat infections.

Hey friend, it’s 2024. Please leave the r-slur in the past where it belongs.

I highly recommend doing research on the situation that isn’t filtered through Western propaganda or a zionist lens and doing some introspection on why you believe the people being caged, controlled, and experiencing ethnic cleansing for decades are nazis.

Yes. Why do you think this terrorist group is there and constantly attacks?

Because Israel is the occupying force with a full military and international backing currently bombing a captive population compromised mostly of children. Why is that hard to understand?

If Israel hadn’t blockaded Gaza for a decade and a half, or occupied Palestine for 75 years, or or or. We can play this game for eternity, or look at the reality that people, actual people not abstract arguments, are dying. And that needs to stop.

No, this is created obfuscation in an attempt to justify what’s happening. Ask yourself, if Isreal wasn’t continuing this onslaught, would these people be dying? That’s the clarity.

we have no way of knowing the full true picture of why these civilians are dying

Let me clear this one up for you, they’re dying because Israel is killing them.

Have been masking since early 2020, haven’t been sick with any contagious illness in 4 years. Infection is preventable, not inevitable, and I’ll never willingly expose myself to it again. Sucks people were convinced otherwise, would be nice to not have overwhelmed health systems (not that it’s new, definitely worse now though).

Ableism is so ingrained in our society that folks have trouble even recognizing it. OP is absolutely experiencing ableism, being dismissed and treated differently because of their health issues, recognized and intentional or not, is ableism.

Your example is a very legal perspective of ableism that barely scratches the surface of ableism and makes it difficult to address wider impacts. This is a similar thinking to racism only being legal segregation and the KKK, when it shows up in everyday life in far broader ways.

Yes.

able·ism /ˈābəˌlizəm/ noun A system of assigning value to people’s bodies and minds based on societally constructed ideas of normalcy, productivity, desirability, intelligence, excellence, and fitness. These constructed ideas are deeply rooted in eugenics, anti-Blackness, misogyny, colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism. This systemic oppression that leads to people and society determining people’s value based on their culture, age, language, appearance, religion, birth or living place, “health/wellness”, and/or their ability to satisfactorily re/produce, “excel” and “behave.” You do not have to be disabled to experience ableism.

This is also tied to healthism/health supremacy, recommended researching more about these topics to better understand how they impact everyone’s lives, disabled or not.

Why, because Israel didn’t stop where they agreed? Maybe stop projecting the real actions of the oppressor onto the ones being oppressed.

We have no idea what Hamas would or wouldn’t do in the future, only what has already happened and what they publicly declare. In any situation, what Hamas wants is largely irrelevant if nothing is done to stop Israel from continuing their decades long ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.

No, actually.

People care because we’re people and don’t like to see unnecessary suffering, especially if we’re able to change it. In western countries, our governments (and taxes) are supporting this, we have significant power to influence the outcome.

We also understand that our struggles are connected. The problems in my community are tied to the US support of Israel and their ongoing violent oppression of Palestinians. They cannot be separated, and to create any lasting change we must address the issues in whole, which requires examining how they relate and working to break those connections. The “popularity” in the media is a moment to facilitate doing the good you’re talking about, that’s why so many long time organizers in social just areas are doing exactly what needs doing, seizing the moment.

They likely still want what they always have, freedom from the violence of their oppressors and a return to their indigenous lands. Until Israel, by choice or force, stops it’s decades long settler colonial violence against Palestinians - or succeeds in their annihilation attempts - this will continue.

Books Fiction, Slaughterhouse-five by Kurt Vonnegut. I first read it in high school and even then it hit very hard. I had friends going off to war at the time and it was a very different perspective than the pro-war media I had been immersed in to that point. I’ve read it every couple of years since and find more I love about it every time.

Non fiction, The Future Is Disabled by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha. It’s a beautiful piece that felt less like a book and more like a conversation with a friend. It helped me imagine what a world centered on care could be like.

Movies Gaza Fights for Freedom. It’s a few years old now but extremely relevant, a documentary about the 2018/19 peaceful protest in Gaza and Israeli response. It was horrifying to watch and realize many things, and the horrors in it pale compared to the last few weeks. I think about it a lot right now.

That “coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus that causes COVID-19, can have lasting effects on nearly every organ and organ system of the body weeks, months, and potentially years after infection (11,12). Documented serious post-COVID-19 conditions include cardiovascular, pulmonary, neurological, renal, endocrine, hematological, and gastrointestinal complications (8), as well as death.”.

This is true regardless of symptom severity or health status, every person is at risk. I think most people really aren’t aware of this, they absorbed the narrative that it’s gone, mild, only kills/harms the vulnerable, etc. This isn’t really their fault, there are a lot of factors that have led people to that belief, but people should know their lives and livelihoods are much more at risk now than 4 years ago.

And that this isn’t inevitable, there are simple methods of disrupting transmission and protecting yourself and others. COVID-19 is here to stay (unless we do something about that) and it has impacts on every person infected and on society at large. That shouldn’t mean folks accept illness and worse quality of life. We adapt and adopt precautions in our life to reduce long-term health impacts, like we’ve done before with many other illnesses that plague humanity.