posted on annabookwriter.medium.com To My Unmasked Friend in the Fifth Year of COVID
But you didn’t wear a mask.
For whatever reason — you wanted to show off your makeup, it makes you itchy, you believed the messaging that COVID is endemic (what does that actually mean?), you just don’t think about it anymore — you made a choice that actively excludes people like me from participating not only in an event like a convention, but society at large. And yes, it is a choice. Every time you step out into the world without a mask on your face, you have made a decision that your very good reason, whatever it is, supersedes the right of disabled and at-risk people to exist safely in your orbit.
Well, hold on, you say. It’s not any one individual’s fault, it’s the inadequate public health messaging. Isn’t that what you’ve been saying?
And I have. In the past, I have talked about how it is unconscionable that health authorities have thrown their hands up and rescinded guidance that would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives and prolonged a pandemic that, to hear them tell it, has been bested. It hasn’t. Worst of all, the financial motivation that we all know is driving this premature victory lap isn’t even being fulfilled. Long COVID and other post-COVID complications are costing the global economy one trillion a year. Meanwhile, article after article handwrings about nobody wanting to work anymore, about the sagging college application scene, about declines in military enlistment, and the strain on our healthcare systems.
All of this is very much the fault of our leaders, who have decided the political ramifications of “normalcy” are more important than the health and lives of the 400 million people living with long COVID across the globe, the immunocompromised folks who are increasingly being shut out of every conceivable public space, and the disabled community which has been screaming into the wind about our marginalization since before the virus even hit US soil.
But I want to be very clear. You are helping them do this.
This hard but important post captures something I've wanted to express for years but have never found the words (or the courage) to say out loud. I try very, very hard to avoid getting outright angry at the people in my life who take no precautions against COVID. I tell myself over and over that their behavior is a product of larger structural forces that shape their understanding of themselves and of reality. This helps. It keeps me sane in an insane world.
And when I talk to people about COVID, I am as non-confrontational as I know how to be. I frame everything in terms of my own safety measures and say nothing about theirs. This keeps me sane as well, because I do not have the energy or the skill or the grace to try to convince everyone I interact with that their actions are harmful to themselves and others. All I know how to do is stand by and watch while they drive the possibility of a world where everyone can safely exist a little further away.
But in my heart, the words that Anna Holmes expresses here are echoing constantly. These people, my friends, my family, maybe even you the reader are participating in the creation of a crueler, more dangerous world. In a word, what they are doing is eugenics: working towards a creation of a society without disability through the violent exclusion of people who are disabled[1].
And this exclusion is violent, even if it's passive. It is the violence of forcing people to remain at home, to remain isolated, to inflict upon themselves every time they look out their window or browse their social media feeds the knowledge that their friends are loving a world without them in it and they barely even seem to notice.
I don't know what to do about this. I don't know how to change anyone's mind. I've tried before and it's failed miserably. All I can do is echo Anna's words:
You know better. You can do better. For your community, yourself, and me, do better.
Please. I love you.
-
Which, as I've argued in the past, includes those who continue to take precautions against COVID even if they have no other disabilities. ↩︎
This hard but important post captures something I've wanted to express for years but have never found the words (or the courage) to say out loud. I try very, very hard to avoid getting outright angry at the people in my life who take no precautions against COVID. I tell myself over and over that their behavior is a product of larger structural forces that shape their understanding of themselves and of reality. This helps. It keeps me sane in an insane world.
And when I talk to people about COVID, I am as non-confrontational as I know how to be. I frame everything in terms of my own safety measures and say nothing about theirs. This keeps me sane as well, because I do not have the energy or the skill or the grace to try to convince everyone I interact with that their actions are harmful to themselves and others. All I know how to do is stand by and watch while they drive the possibility of a world where everyone can safely exist a little further away.
But in my heart, the words that Anna Holmes expresses here are echoing constantly. These people, my friends, my family, maybe even you the reader are participating in the creation of a crueler, more dangerous world. In a word, what they are doing is eugenics: working towards a creation of a society without disability through the violent exclusion of people who are disabled[1].
And this exclusion is violent, even if it's passive. It is the violence of forcing people to remain at home, to remain isolated, to inflict upon themselves every time they look out their window or browse their social media feeds the knowledge that their friends are loving a world without them in it and they barely even seem to notice.
I don't know what to do about this. I don't know how to change anyone's mind. I've tried before and it's failed miserably. All I can do is echo Anna's words:
You know better. You can do better. For your community, yourself, and me, do better.
Please. I love you.
-
Which, as I've argued in the past, includes those who continue to take precautions against COVID even if they have no other disabilities. ↩︎