Es gibt ja nicht nur leichte Momente auf Reisen. Das National Covid Memorial hat mich sehr berührt und erschüttert. Bereits von weitem sieht man, dass die gesamte Wand des Ufers gegenüber des britischen Parlaments rot ist. Jedes dieser Herzen steht für einen Menschen, bei dem COVID auf der Sterbeurkunde vermerkt wurde. Die Zahl ist seit meinem Besuch weiter gestiegen.
“It’s absurd for ODOT to claim that their proposed $1.9 billion 10-lane highway is in compliance with the city’s existing plans for #climateAction, sustainable #transportation investment or neighborhood development. We filed this lawsuit because state law requires ODOT to follow the city’s #cleanAir and climate goals. ODOT shouldn’t be allowed to advance a project that brazenly violates the city’s adopted plans.” -- #NoMoreFreeways#ODOTGTFOpdx#Portland
The Biden Administration’s commitment to invest in replacing diesel school buses with cleaner electric buses reflects a significant step toward prioritizing children's health and addressing environmental and climate concerns. This initiative not only aims to reduce air pollution linked to health issues but also aligns with broad efforts to combat climate change by minimizing greenhouse gas emissions. #ClimateAction
With funding from theInfrastructure Law, the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean School Bus Program offers $5 billion over five fiscal years (2022-2026) to replace current school buses with zero-emission and low-emission models.
Through the Program's various grant and rebate funding opportunities, the EPA has allocated nearly $2 billion to finance approximately 5,000 school bus replacements at over 600 schools. 🚌💨 #CleanAir#SustainableTransportation#Education
The EPA has awarded $206 million to restore the Chesapeake Bay, the largest single contribution to the Chesapeake Bay Program to date. The funds will support projects to reduce pollution, enhance ecosystems, and restore wetlands and waterways.
Ventilation can reduce exposure to respiratory viruses in indoor spaces.
“Steps for cleaner air to prevent the spread of respiratory viruses can be taken any time, especially when:
• Respiratory viruses are causing a lot of illness in your community.
• You or those around you were recently exposed to a respiratory virus, are sick, or are recovering.
• You or the people around you have risk factors for severe illness”
Between 2018 and 2022, CO2 emissions from all sources across the San Francisco Bay Area dropped about 1.8% annually, a decrease the researchers attribute to the rise in EVs.
The Bay Area has the highest EV adoption rate in the country: last year, electric cars, pickup trucks, and SUVs made up nearly 40% of new auto registrations in San Jose and 34% in San Francisco.
This attitude that chronic illness is a moral failing is the one that hurts me the most. People seem to feel it more strongly since Covid. Those who know me know how healthy I was… until I wasn’t. Disability can & does strike everyone - you can’t make yourself bulletproof.
“Congrats - you’re old! Maybe this year you will try and be normal again.”
This was a birthday message I received from a relative. They’re referring to my disabilities and to my Covid caution. They consider both “abnormal”.
I’m sick & tired of the insinuation that being disabled means we’re abnormal. That we simply need to “try harder” and we will no longer be sick - or that our illnesses are a personal failing. Temporarily abled people always seem to think it’s OUR fault we are sick.
This assumption stems from people being unable to comprehend that certain illnesses can be permanent but not fatal.
People tend to see illness as two pronged - you get sick and die or you get sick and recover. They don't understand the spectrum that lies in between.
As a result if you become chronically ill - people may be supportive at first but that support wanes when you don't get better. They assume if you're not improving and you haven't died that you're either faking, not really "that sick" or that you don't want to get well.
It's incredibly hurtful considering most chronically ill people spend the vast majority of their energy trying to be well. We do so much to try and retain or improve our baseline - but most of it is stuff others will never see. Compromise & sacrifice are daily occurrences.
The reality is that you can't "try harder" your way out of chronic illness. If you could no one would be sick. We try very hard - but our bodies aren’t well. Just because something doesn't kill you doesn't mean it won't debilitate you and rob you of your quality of life.
I know that's unpleasant for many people to think about - but looking away & refusing to acknowledge our reality doesn't change our situation. It just hurts us and lets you remain in denial. As for faking? Most people are trying to fake being WELL.
Putting on a happy face to make others more comfortable. There's no benefit to faking disabilities. It's a hard life with very little support & many cruel comments like the one I received.
Finally let's consider the word "normal". This person was referring in part to my illnesses (as they see them as an abnormality) and in part to my COVID caution which they see as nonsensical & unnecessary.
Disabled & chronically ill individuals are not abnormal. Health does not equal normalcy.
Health is a temporary state for everyone - not a bar to measure one's worth or commonality with others. It's discriminatory, ableist and cruel to suggest we are somehow abnormal.
As for the Covid caution - I look around at what we are doing and can't understand how anyone could think it abnormal that I'm trying to avoid catching (and spreading) this virus. When did it become "normal" to catch bugs all the time?
When did we decide it was "normal" to throw away our health, the health of the elderly, vulnerable and children? When did we stop caring for other people? We have become a society that looks down on people trying to protect themselves & others. That's ANYTHING but normal.
I don't think anything about the way society at large is responding to covid is “normal" but if it IS? I don't want any part of it. I'm proud to be someone who still cares about what's left of my health. Who cares about the health of others & breaking chains of transmission 1/2
@mu@pezmico@seawall What a lot of people (esp. those in charge) still don't get is that cleaning the air is actually not that hard and it would be much cheaper than dealing with staff shortages all the time.
We have the expertise, we have the evidence, we have all the tools... it's a choice not to do anything about it. Wonder how much longer until the crucial bits stop working.
Ongoing breathing problems continue after COVID | inquirer.com
"I have seen an uptick in cases of diaphragm paralysis since the COVID pandemic and worldwide studies have shown patients who had COVID may experience long-term diaphragm weakness"
@DenisCOVIDinfoguy@auscovid19 It just completely baffles me that doctors who are seeing this and connecting the dots to #Covid aren't screaming for #cleanair, #masking, #airfiltration, etc to avoid as many infections and reinfections as possible ... just wow 😭 😭 😭
People keep shouting that if disabled people can’t cook or clean they should be institutionalized. Apparently accommodating us so we can live independent lives is angering others. Setting aside how awful many care homes are - do you realize there aren’t nearly enough beds?
I get that many ppl seem to want to completely disappear us from society. Seem to think we would be “better off” institutionalized even though many homes are dangerous places for disabled ppl. Even IF they were all sunshine & lollipops …do you think there’s enough of them?
Do you think they accept people of all disabilities? This idea that we should all have families or full time caregivers to support us is nonsense. It’s unrealistic and in many cases unnecessary. Many of us can & do learn to adapt on our own with part time help where available
The reality is we don’t have enough long term care beds to support everyone who’s chronically ill. Many places won’t take you until you’re a certain age. Many deny if you’re too unstable or don’t have rehabilitation goals. I know. I tried to find one & was repeatedly denied.
Stop assuming there’s some society wide program that places disabled people in homes that suit their unique circumstances. Many congregate settings are vectors for disease and neglect. We have to beg for access to places that often make us worse & reduce our quality of life
When you’re tempted to shout that we belong in a home - consider if it’s where YOU would want to be. Also look around - many countries are rapidly expanding their euthanasia programs to include disabled people with non terminal illnesses. Why do you think that is?
We are seeing rising disability numbers due to Covid - and the sad fact is we didn’t have enough supports for disabled people before the pandemic. We certainly can’t support the influx that’s currently occurring. So we are offering DEATH instead. Dead people cost less money.
I know folks are stuck in denial. They don’t want to accept the society wide risk associated with unmitigated COVID spread. But we are begging you to try. Try and think critically about WHY governments are expanding euthanasia programs.
Believe us when we tell you the dire lack of support available. We aren’t shouting about this because we want sympathy or enjoy complaining - we’re shouting because we can see the writing on the wall. We know our systems can’t support this much disability & people will suffer 1/2
Contrary to popular belief—fueled by policy makers, media, and even medical staff—COVID-19 is not over, rather still an ongoing threat to humanity. #WearAMask#CleanAir
I'm never going to not be angry at the fact that we've collectively accepted that it's fine to infect kids repeatedly with a virus that causes, among many other problems, brain damage and immune problems.
We could have at least given them clean air.
It's absolutely despicable, villainous behaviour for which some of them will suffer for the rest of their lives.
All so the money keeps flowing to the rich.
@pezmico Look what Boston Public Schools did. You can click on individual schools and even dial down to specific classrooms and see what the air quality was all day any day.
Why couldn’t all the kids have this? Funding was passed for upgrades in the US. Where did it go?
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?
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.
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.
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?”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
1/2
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”.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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
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
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.
“Bad air(…)promotes the spread of contagious disease, and not infrequently makes closing as a prevention necessary. Schools which have suffered such almost yearly loss of weeks have, after the introduction of good ventilation, been for years free from such interruption.”