Covid and disability

Two-thirds of the people who have died from Covid-19 have had disabilities. Despite this chilling statistic, the impact of the pandemic on disabled people as a group is rarely acknowledged, at best treated as an ‘afterthought’ in provision, and, at worst, disabled people have been considered as ‘disposable’. Obliged to shield in order to survive, people with disabilities have also faced terrible isolation and the curtailment or restriction of vital support services. The health and mental health of disabled people has been severely affected, and many carers put under intolerable pressure. The term ‘disabled people’, describes a remarkably heterogeneous group of people with widely different characteristics and needs, and is a contested term. Medicalised conceptions of disability have been challenged by the ‘social model of disability’ that separates impairment from disability and focuses on the responsibility that society holds for the disablement of others. Nor are ‘disabled people’ merely the passive recipients of care and support, but, clearly are active agents in their own right. Within this complexity, how have different groups of disabled people been affected by the pandemic? Why have their needs been overlooked? Are issues of fundamental human rights at stake? What actions need to be taken? How can the voices of disabled people be made to be heard? Despite the overwhelmingly negative effects of the pandemic, are there possibilities for positive change in its aftermath?

The Pandemic Perspectives group debated these issues on 11th February 2021, guided by The Office of National Statistics reports on Coronavirus Deaths by Disability Status and the Social Impacts of Coronavirus on Disabled People; Disability Rights UK‘s article, ‘Lockdown 17 times harder for disabled people‘; The Disability News Service article by John Pring, ‘Disabled people treated as an afterthought again‘; Zipporah Arielle’s HuffPost piece, ‘Please stop treating me like I’m Disposable when you talk about the Coronavirus‘; The Triple Cripples post, ‘Coping with Covid-19: Coronavirus and Disability’ and Edel Harris’ Guardian article ‘Lockdown has brought families of learning disabled people to their knees‘. In the course of the debate, reference was also made to The National Autistic Society’s written evidence to the Parliamentary Human Rights (Joint Committee) inquiry into the human rights implications of the government’s response to Covid-19. To further the group’s understanding of disability, we were referred to Elizabeth Barnes’ work ‘Minority Body: A Theory of Disability‘ and Nancy Doyle’s Forbes article, ‘We have been Disabled: How the Pandemic has Proven the Social Model of Disability‘, and the work of Kimberlee Brownlee, editor of Disability and Disadvantage, through her Philosophy Bites podcast on Social Deprivation.

Richard Kendall began by outlining two competing models of disability. He explained that the traditional, medicalised, model that saw disability in terms of a catalogue of disabling conditions (such as physical or mental disabilities or learning difficulties), has been challenged and largely refuted, by the ‘Social Model’ of disability. The Social Model, he explained, separates impairment from disability, noting that impairments only become disabling as a consequence of the structures of society itself. He illustrated this by explaining that most forms of visual impairment are not ‘disabling’, as there are opticians in every high street and glasses are widely available. He also noted that the conception of ‘a disabled person’ as utterly separate to an able-bodied person was a false binary, and that given the inevitable consequences of ageing, every ‘able-bodied person’ could be equally considered as the ‘not yet disabled.’ He also expounded the way disability was societally constructed, by noting that in the internet age, the absence of a broadband connection and Wifi could be equally disabling, yet was unconnected to any form of individual impairment. In light of this, Liam Knight observed a possible positive outcome from the pandemic, where a universal connection to the internet, a long-held demand of the disabled community, could, given its necessity under lockdown, become adopted as public policy. Richard concurred that this was possible, noting that thanks to the actions of disabled groups in the mid-1990s, gains in the accessibility of public transport aided ‘non-disabled’ groups such as the elderly too.

New member, Christopher Griffin, put the breaks on any such panglossian views, noting that two-thirds of the deaths under Covid had been disabled people, and that the charges of the disposability of disabled people made in the Huffpost piece were in many ways justified. He noted that disabled groups outside those with direct comorbities were not being prioritised for vaccination, and that it had been proposed that with limited access to ventilators, those with disabilities would be routinely classified as ‘do not revive’. David Christie concurred, noting that it was not uncommon to hear the idea that the deaths of the very elderly and the most disabled was not a tragedy akin to the deaths of able-bodied people. Ronan Love noted that the that the State’s primary role has been conceived as the support of the ‘productive nation’ since at least the French revolution, and felt that provisos to support the most vulnerable had weakened rather than strengthened since then. Chris noted that under the Coronavirus Act, the obligation to deliver services to SEND groups had been downgraded from a duty to a power, reducing a previously held right, to an option for local government, and was an extraordinarily regressive step. Richard concurred that the government had ignored the needs of disabled people, pointing out that the deaf community’s call for a signer to accompany covid announcements had not been acted upon, despite it being commonplace in other European nations. David noted that as a group they too had clearly neglected the issue of disability, while considering the impact of Covid-19 through the lens of class, race and gender among many others, they had been debating for ten months before the issue of disability had arisen. He also speculated that one of the long-term consequences of the pandemic might be the rendering of disabled people invisible, returning to a time before the closure of institutions and the advent of inclusive education in the 1990s.

Chris went on to couch the treatment of disabled people in terms of human rights. Citing the National Autistic Society’s submission to the parliamentary subcommittee on human rights, he noted how for autistic people the need to adjust to sudden changes in their lives and routines was particularly difficult. However the government’s response had been to downgrade their right to access support, worsening an already inadequate service. He advanced Friedrich Engels’ conception of ‘social murder’ , where policies enacted by government were considered to lead to the premature death of the poorest in society. The concept, (revisited by people such as Kamran Abbasi and Owen Jones), he argued, could be equally applied to the government’s policies applied to disabled people, who are often also some of the poorest in society. Although anxious to avoid hyperbole, he noted that for many autistic people, not only was access to obtaining food problematic (not being granted priority for home food deliveries had rendered some unable to access basic sustenance), but that separation from a tight circle of supportive family/carers and effectively imposing solitary confinement for this group had potentially devastating consequences. Gah-Kai Leung picked up this thread, noting Kimberley Brownlee’s work on social deprivation, which sees social contact as a fundamental human need and therefore a human right. The isolation imposed on people as a consequence of covid restrictions and withdrawal of support services could therefore be seen as a denial of a human rights. A discussion of isolation under covid ensued. Liam suggested that perhaps the wide-spread use of zoom might help reduce the isolation that many disabled people experienced. Richard speculated that the experience of lockdown might even inspire empathy from able-bodied people now forced into the same isolated conditions. Chris was more hesitant, noting that whilst technology might open up some opportunities, it could not replace the physical proximity and interaction of being part of a neighbourhood, producing only weak ties and not the sense of being part of a community.

Ronan questioned the government’s long-term intentions toward those with disabilities, noting both the privations of austerity had fallen hardest on the most vulnerable groups including the disabled. Utilising the social model of disability, he also questioned if the political will existed to ensure equal access to technology, seeing it more likely that the ‘digital divide’ would only worsen. He argued that in the scramble for resources in the wake of the pandemic only the clearest voices would be heard and doubted whether those with disabilities would be able garner the necessary attention. Richard concurred, noting that, given the breadth and differing needs of disabled people, it was impossible to create an easily definable group and therefore to speak with a single voice. David recalled the impact of the militant activism of disabled groups such as the Disabled Peoples Direct Action Network (DAN) in the 1990s, and Ian Dury’s apoplectic response to the Year of the Disabled in 1981 that led to the recording of Spasticus Autisticus, and wondered if similar actions would be necessary again. Gah-Kai argued that an endogenous shock such as covid was fundamentally disruptive, and speculated that many who had not considered themselves vulnerable to mental stress would perhaps be more aware of the importance of services for mental well-being. However, he felt conversations about the necessary institutional changes were yet to be had. David advanced his view that change was not necessarily driven by conscious political decision making from above, but diffused from multiple nodes of power. He argued that the poverty of disabled people living on benefits had long been ignored, but the dependency of many people on universal credit for the first time in their lives would put to bed notions of the life of luxury of people on the dole, and engender pressure for change. Ronan remained sceptical about the impact of this, noting that provision of universal credit was essentially passive, but that improvements for disabled people would require active changes, in infrastructure and institutions as well as benefits, which he thought unlikely to take place. Chris concluded on a hopeful note, arguing that previous crisis had led to positive change, and that with the necessary political will ideas such as universal basic income might come of age.

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