Joanna Frith on how disabled people are treated in a pandemic and every day
It’s a harrowing scene in a care home in Madrid... ...Residents were thought to have been abandoned by the staff during the Covid-19 pandemic. The army counted 19 people dead in their beds. Everyone had been left to die alone. The Spanish military was brought in to disinfect care homes across the country. It was not reported on or clear how many disabled people may have been left abandoned and endangered. It is unknown how many subsequently died due to neglect during the Covid-19 crisis. According to a BBC report of March 24, 2020, “the army, during certain visits, found some older people completely abandoned, sometimes even dead in their beds”. As a disabled person, the thought of the carers and personal assistants who keep me alive everyday abandoning me is terrifying. Why does it seem the news does not report on the deaths from Covid-19 of disabled people? The news tends to highlight the unusual deaths of non-disabled people, who are in good health before passing away from the virus. Why has an entire care home of disabled people who appear to have been abandoned not shocked the world? Why is this not spoken about more? Why is there not more support for disabled people during this crisis that they are left to die? Disabled people are reminded every time they go outside that, to many, we are not considered as equal human beings in the world. I say this without doubt thanks to my lived experiences. The sometime daily condescending tones, the hostility, the aggression. “In the UK, violent hate crime against disabled people has risen by 41 per cent in last year” –the Independent, March 9, 2019. Human Rights Watch reports, “UK’s Coronavirus Act, which becomes law today, has serious implications for the rights of people with disabili-
‘Disabled people need to remind the general public that we are human with equal rights worthy of respect and dignity’
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ties and older people...” In Italy patients with Covid-19 over 70 were said to have been taken off ventilators . In the U.K the BBC reported concerns from disability activists over the new measures to treat patients depending on their level of health. To pick and choose who to save based on a disability? Are we hinting towards eugenics? Are fears concerning basic disabled human rights, and our right to live based on our abilities? According to: Disability Rights UK from 3/04/2020, Covid-19 and the rights of disabled people: “Where we have existing health conditions or impairments that are unrelated to our chance of benefiting from treatment, they must not play any part in decision-making regarding our equal right to access such treatment.” Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, above, said she was worried that disabled people “might be seen as expendable”. Vulnerable people have been abandoned, as though they are dangerous to be around, and spreading Covid-19. I feel like we, as disabled people, need to remind the general public that we are human with equal rights worthy of respect and dignity. It is a sad state of play that disabled people must continuously remind the general public of this. It was my big fear that disabled people would die in huge numbers. The world does not seem to care because disabled deaths are not considered as tragic news or as upsetting as the deaths of people without disability. Is it accepted disabled deaths are just inevitable? Better measures could have been put in place to protect disabled people and carers, such PPE for hospital staff for carers and personal assistants. Nurses, doctors and carers were running out of masks. One carer told me she had been given two
