I just think this has been handled really poorly in terms of how we're talking about the virus. https://twitter.com/KHandozo/status/1239281562241208322

There are people who will survive and see their lives permanently changed by a new disability. There are people who will survive and yet lose large chunks of a future they expected. Survival isn't a binary, but the media is treating it like one.

I got the flu, probably H1N1, in 2009. I was incapacitated for three months, a full quarter of the year. Even if my recovery was complete, that's a lot of lost time and I don't know what the long term effects might be.

That was a pandemic. It was not as deadly a pandemic as the one we're in now. And how individuals react to the virus is, well, individual. Averages don't mean you, personally.

A virus might mostly harm people unlike you, but you might be one of the low risk people who nonetheless responds very badly to the virus. You can't know unless you catch it.

And of course, you should give a shit about people unlike you and try hard not to expose them to it, but even if you want to look out just for yourself, selfishness should compel you to avoid these foolish risks.

Just because you survive doesn't mean it's fine and you're fine. Being alive is, again, a baseline, not the pinnacle.

I dunno, man, I just spent the better part of a week in the hospital for something much less serious or painful than covid and it was actually a pretty big trauma and while I am mostly physically healed, I'm not doing so great. Why court this?

The news gets worse daily and the worst people in the world hold the reins and I'm scared and sad and unable to handle my own shit, let alone everyone else's right now. We don't need to deliberately make things harder or worse. We can care for each other. It's truly possible.

For all the despair I'm feeling daily, many people, probably most people, care about other human beings. Imperfectly, often, but it's there. And we need that, because right now, we really do need each other.

But yeah, change the rhetoric around "survival." Many people survive injuries and traumas that radically change their lives in ways that matter. Talk about survival in terms of disability and disability rights. Think about disability as a state in flux rather than a monolith.

Thank you to all the brilliant disability activists who have been on this from day one despite their own challenges, traumas, and perilous security nets.