1 in 5 adults who get COVID become Disabled with Long COVID. Stop fucking around with those odds. Wear a fucking face mask.
People with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/ME have been forcibly detained, even killed by negligence, in psych wards, for decades. Acknowledging our physical disease would mean unravelling the fabric of capitalism. The groundwork has already been laid for the same to happen to people with Long COVID.
1 in 5 adults* who get COVID become Disabled with Long COVID.
Stop fucking around with those odds.
Wear a fucking mask.
People with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/ME have been forcibly detained, even killed by negligence, in psych prisons, for DECADES.
Acknowledging our physical disease would mean unravelling the fabric of capitalism.
The groundwork has already been laid for the same to happen to people with Long COVID.
* Source: The CDC, quoted here — "A long-hidden disease is pulled from the shadows by its cousin, Long COVID-19" [ back-up link ]
Note: Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/ME is also known as "ME/CFS (chronic fatigue syndrome)".
"ME/CFS" is the term that is the most widely recognized.
However, the dominant narrative using the term "chronic fatigue syndrome/CFS" for ME is just another means of gaslighting and downplaying the seriousness of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/ME.
The term "chronic fatigue syndrome/CFS" has done grave, irreparable harm to the Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/ME community, and it must be completely eliminated from medical terminology.
Content:
Ableism.
Sanism.
Euthanasia/s**cide.
"Leftist" hypocrisy.
1 in 5 adults who get COVID-19 become Disabled with Long COVID.
Please stop fucking around with those odds.
Wear a fucking mask.
Please stop gambling with the lives of your children, your elderly relatives, your Disabled/chronically ill/immunocompromised friends, your neurodivergent/Mad/mentally ill friends, your poor and Unhoused friends, your most vulnerable friends.
Please stop being complicit in eugenics, and the genocide and mass disabling of working class peoples, Black and Indigenous peoples, and oppressed peoples all over the Global South.
Please, for fuck's sake, just stop.
It takes so little.
Keep your masks on.
Tell your friends.
Do you know how full hospitals are with COVID-19 cases still?
Do you know that people like me cannot access life-saving care right now because the system is so overburdened, not to mention that setting foot in a hospital right now means certain death?
Do you know that people are dropping dead a few months/years after "recovering" from COVID-19, suffering strokes and sudden cardiac failure, and their deaths will never be attributed to the virus that killed them?
Do you know that, like HIV, COVID-19 has a period of latency after initial infection, where you feel better before it begins to dismantle your body's systems?
They're burying this just like they buried AIDS.
And just like AIDS, we'll have to fight for our communities' survival.
Do you know that if you have ADHD, autism, depression, or any other mental diagnoses, that you are at higher risk of severe illness from COVID-19?
"People with some types of disabilities may be more likely to get very sick from COVID-19 because of underlying medical conditions, living in congregate settings, or systemic health and social inequities, including:
- People with any type of disability that makes it more difficult to do certain activities or interact with the world around them, including people who need help with self-care or daily activities
- People with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
- People with cerebral palsy
- People with birth defects
- People with intellectual and developmental disabilities
- People with learning disabilities
- People with spinal cord injuries
- People with Down syndrome"
If you are neurodivergent.
If you have ADHD.
If you are autistic.
If you are Mad / "Mentally Ill" / have a mental diagnosis.
You are at higher risk of severe illness from COVID-19.
Yes, you.
Yet, ableists, you still don't give enough of a shit to dismantle your own internalized ableism and sanism?
Source: The CDC: People with Certain Medical Conditions (fuck the CDC's recommendations when they do not recommend universal masking, however.)You didn't believe Trump when he minimized COVID-19. So why are you believing Biden when he says it's over?
Feminists—do you know that the burden of Long COVID will be carried mostly by people of marginalized genders — women (cis and trans), nonbinary people, gender nonconforming/gender expansive people, Two-Spirit people, intersex people, trans men, etc. — anybody who isn't a cis male?
Do you know that we are sentencing powerless children, little babies, to a lifetime of this suffering?
Do you know that the burden of Long COVID—a hellish, torturous, living death—will be carried by Black and Indigenous peoples the most in usameriKKKa, and by multiply marginalized peoples all over the Global South?
Do you know that there is no cure, and even if they find one, the most impacted people won't be able to access it?
Do you know that for decades, people with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/ME have been forcibly detained, even killed by negligence, in psych prisons because acknowledging our physical disease would mean unravelling the fabric of capitalism?
Do you know that the groundwork has already been laid for the same to happen to people with Long COVID? I've heard media and even public health doctors talk about it as a mental health issue.
Do you know that in Canada, there is a euthanasia pipeline already in place to kill Disabled/chronically ill people?
Medical assistance in dying.
DuckDuckGo it:
Do you know that they are expanding that pipeline to include people with mental health issues, at the same time when millions of people with Long COVID will be falsely diagnosed with psychological disorders, because of medical gaslighting and sanism?
Do you know that they plan to expand that pipeline to include CHILDREN???
The state would rather legalize Disabled and Mad people killing themselves, instead of providing them genuine support, care, and housing.
Disabled people in Canada are choosing, if not being actively encouraged to choose, legalized suicide — Medical Assistance in Dying, or MAiD — because they don't want to be poor and Unhoused and Disabled, and the state would rather legalize committing suicide, instead of housing and real care for all.
And ableists, you still don't give enough of a shit to dismantle your own internalized ableism and sanism?
Do you know that this eugenicist propaganda originating in the imperialist core is trickling down to countries like Pakistan and India, where oppressed caste/class people are carrying the burden of this disease and dying in silence, while governments happily let them?
Do you know that in Pakistan right now, half the overflowing hospital wards are filled with dengue, and the other half with COVID-19, but only the former is being mentioned by name anywhere? Do you know that nobody there is mentioning COVID-19 by name?
Do you know that as horrifying as the official death counts for COVID-19 have been in the past 3 years, they have been a fraction of the actual deaths that have occurred, because of underreporting, people not getting tested, and other factors?
Do you know that, because the medical industry is so woefully ignorant about illnesses like Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/ME and Long COVID, people will never get diagnosed before they die agonizing deaths, so we will never know the true toll of this pandemic?
Do you know that new variants of the virus are escaping vaccine immunity? Do you know that herd immunity is a myth perpetuated by fascists and eugenicists?
And finally, do you know that in all of this, the biggest disappointment has been abled leftists, especially those with class/caste privilege?
Abled leftists have always claimed to care about all of this, but when caring began to require the tiniest bit of inconvenience to them, they were more than willing to immediately join the fascists in this global genocide, and even more willing to silence the most impacted.
If you're a leftist, and after learning all of this,
you still can't care about making sacrifices to dismantle ableism —
you still can't care to speak up, and are still going to traipse around without your mask, going to restaurants and parties and superspreader events, and taking flights —
then you need to rectify your praxis, comrade.
Else you are no comrade of mine.
Rabia (any pronouns respectfully used) is a Panjabi artist and writer, Disabled and bedbound by severe Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/ME.
水仙 shuixian (pronouns: they/them/theirs) contributed to several sections.
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