For The Disabled Community, Letting COVID ‘Rip’ Isn’t An Option
"We’re the ones who will die in droves - and they are willing to sacrifice us."
For people with disability and compromised immune systems, letting COVID ‘rip’ isn’t an option — it’s a matter of life or death.
Omicron has swept through Australia, and while most people might bounce back and make a full recovery, not everyone has the luxury of scrapping wearing masks or being relaxed with social distancing recommendations. For a lot of Australians, this is the most terrifying stage of the pandemic.
Necessary Steps
According to the Department of Health, approximately 500,000 Australians are severely immunocompromised. In order to avoid contracting the virus, Julia Bak from the Disability Justice Network told Junkee they’ve had no choice but to stay indoors.
“I don’t think people understand quite how isolated immunocompromised people have become, how little social interaction we can have while case numbers are so high and restrictions so low, as well as the long-term impacts of sustained loneliness and isolation.”
“Watching abled-bodied people stop taking precautions and resign themselves to COVID case numbers soaring has been deeply heartbreaking,” they said. “We might all get COVID, but it will not impact us all equally.”
If they did test positive, Bak could face ongoing health risks and debilitating complications like long COVID, while already being at higher risk of developing the virus in the first place.
“I do understand that opening up the economy is incredibly important, but people with disability already face extreme barriers to inclusion and isolation,” said chief executive Jo-Anne Hewitt from service provider Achieve Australia last year, amid the start of ‘let it rip’ mentality.
Six months on, the same pleas are being voiced, but continue to be ignored. “The idea of letting COVID rip in the community actually sentences people to a life of exclusion,” she told the ABC at the time.
Government Failure
Advocacy group People With Disability Australia have expressed concern at the impact Omicron has already had on vulnerable groups. This month alone, there have been significant shortages of support and assistance workers due to mandated isolation, and apprehension about the prioritisation of private markets by decision-makers.
The infamous lack of rapid antigen tests for people who can’t safely get around at the moment continues to prove a problem, alongside wishy-washy plans for free distribution of RATs when disabled people rely on them to continue accessing healthcare and hospital admissions, Bak explains.
It comes off the back of a botched vaccine rollout for the priority group, where even to this day, double-dose rates among people with disability in regional Australia are as low as 50 percent, according to The Guardian.
While Scott Morrison has been peddling personal responsibility around COVID, society’s relaxed approach to COVID safety has been entrenched by state and federal policy; the ableism has been enabled and encouraged by our leaders.
“We’re the ones who will die in droves – and they are willing to sacrifice us.”
After the summer holiday season, looser regulations around close contact definitions and isolation times left people with disability and immunocompromised systems feeling less protected than ever during the pandemic. “These policies are pro-eugenics,” said Bak. “The policymakers know that they’re putting vulnerable populations at risk — that we’re the ones who will die in droves — and they are willing to sacrifice us.”
The backflip from COVID-zero to “living with the virus” as the Prime Minister puts it, without implementing appropriate safety measures, is yet another failure in the Morrison Government’s handling of the pandemic, and its treatment of disabled communities.
“This mentality that ‘we’re all going to get it’ makes us believe that COVID is inevitable, which discourages us from interrogating the decisions — the policies — that allowed our situation to become so dire in the first place,” said Bak. “It dissuades us from seeing public health as a collective responsibility. People can stop wearing masks and stop social distancing because hey, what’s it going to matter if we’re all destined to get COVID regardless?”
“They aren’t protecting us — this system was never built to protect us,” they said.
Alternative Routes
Bak, alongside many, has instead turned to local disability groups to fill the gaps where officials, mainstream media, and society have failed. Collectives like the Disability Justice Network have been driving mutual aid efforts including financial support, RAT distribution, and crisis forums that support the community in raising their concerns.
Reflecting six months on from the start of the pandemic, American author Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha wrote “when I think about disabled mutual aid, I think of a million examples of subtle, diverse forms of disabled survival work. Work that is mostly not seen as ‘real work'” by abled-bodied people.
Everything from infographics, social media, organising, petitions, and more are being used to communicate as broadly as possible what she describes as a “heroic, epic battle”.
“Disabled people have a legacy of resilience. We know how to take care of one another,” said Bak. “I don’t think I would have survived this pandemic without that love and solidarity.”
Millie Roberts is Junkee’s social justice reporter. Follow her on Twitter.