Some Of You May Die

As 2022 begins I sit here not long out of isolating after being a symptomatic close COVID contact on Christmas day and I wonder, what have we actually learned from this pandemic in the past two years. Because as a person with a disability, and as one of the vulnerable people in our society, I started this year feeling like I was not a valued member of our community but an expendable one. We have gone from ‘we are all in this together’ to ‘you are on your own’ and ‘let it rip’. The fabric of our government and our society is threaded with the notion that the vulnerable and disabled are less than. How can I make such a claim? Recently when doing some research, I discovered that the Australian Government has not bothered keeping statistics on the percentage of people with disability who have tested positive or died from COVID.

Even after the Royal Commission recommended that they do so. This speaks quite loudly to how much the Australian Government actually cares about its vulnerable and disabled community when they can’t even be bothered to understand how much we are being affected. The lack of information available, lack of discussion or consideration from the Government for the vulnerable and disabled during any COVID conversation is shocking – Even while we are constantly being listed as the most at risk in the population. It feels hypocritical, doesn’t it? Left twisting in the wind as policies to protect us are stripped away and we are unable to access clear information on what to do. The defeatist narrative of the ‘let it rip’ strategy along with the ‘oh well, everyone is going to get it’ approach disregards the lives of the vulnerable and disabled. We are just seen as the collateral damage, the acceptable loss. At the start of January, the Government announced changes to the Supervised Quarantine Direction, now allowing those who work in supervised quarantine to work in other high-risk settings. In New South Wales, healthcare workers who are asymptomatic have been told they could be exempt from quarantine requirements and could return to work despite being positive.

The logic of these two announcements is horrifying and ableist. It shows a clear disregard for the spreading of the virus and a disregard for the lives of the vulnerable and disabled. The fear of risking illness and death just to attend your basic, needed and regular medical appointments is now increased. The burden of living with, or should I say dying with, COVID is on us. The message we are given from many around us is that the inconvenience of wearing a mask, having to isolate and get tested to cross borders, not being able to go out amongst hundreds of people to get wasted, or standing a bit further away in a line from someone is just too much to ask. That the isolation, sickness and even death of the vulnerable and disabled is far more convenient - and even preferred. So, let me propose something for you to think about: Is this all just really eugenics? It is pro-eugenics thought and movement that believes that some lives are worth less than others? It is pro-eugenics thought and movement that believes that the more valued lives should not be inconvenienced by the less valuable ones? This reopening at any cost movement, the ‘let it rip’ strategy is not just ableist, it is also classist, ageist and racist. It is a movement of sacrificing the vulnerable, placing most of the burden of isolation, sickness and death on to those at the highest risk. Why? Is there really any acceptable, justifiable reason? Going back to ‘Normal’ should not just be a privilege given to those who are nonvulnerable and non-disabled, it should be a privilege we all have. Learning to live with COVID should not be about abandoning all supports, abandoning testing, opening everything back up with no monitoring. It should not be about accepting the death of people, accepting the sickness and death of those at high risk. It should not be about accepting long term disability from long COVID. It should be about learning to live with temporary precautions, learning to live with low restrictions, learning to live with the quarantining and testing when traveling. It should be about protecting the people and that includes the most vulnerable amongst us. Learning to live with the minor inconveniences to avoid the major ones for the long-term benefit of returning to ‘normal’ for us all. After all, wasn’t the last two years of disruption all about protecting our grandparents and our babies? We are the unconsidered vulnerable, but not the inept contributors to society that the Government has treated us as through this decision-making process. This pandemic will not be over just because you are over it, over the inconveniences, over the inconsistencies in direction and over the lack of support. This pandemic will not be over, and we will not be back to ‘normal’ until I can be, until the vulnerable and disabled can also return to the way their lives were before COVID. It is not acceptable for the vulnerable and disabled to be treated as expendable, let’s stop accepting this movement of eugenics.

Words by Evangelia Karageorgos