On Monday night's installment of Amanpour & Company on PBS, the password was "Ableism." Yes, your tax dollars funded a segment where a guest proclaimed lifting COVID restrictions would be cruel to the "disability" community.
The guest was Matthew Cortland of Data for Progress, a leftist polling and messaging collective founded by " serial socialist entrepreneur Sean McElwee." Cortland suffers from Crohn's Disease, and many immuno-compromised people ardently pick up the mantle of disability. He said they've been "left on our own to fend for ourselves during this pandemic. There's no organized response that centers the disability community to protect people who are at higher risk."
Sreenivasan estimated that there may be 3-4 million Americans like Cortland and asked why they don't "have a voice, doesn't have a seat at the table?" Cortland estimated the real number is "really tens and tens of millions" and then declared that anybody who seeks to move on from COVID restrictions is guilty of "ableism."
I think the answer, it's complex and there are a lot of factors, but I think fundamentally public health and medicine are ableist. There's a history of pervasive ableism in these disciplines and by ableism I mean the sort of systemic devaluation of the lives of people who are chronically ill or disabled or immunocompromised. You know, we have a sad and enraging history of ableism in public health. People with these sorts of medically complex conditions have been viewed just as disposable really, and that thinking is unfortunately still pervasive among public health professionals and politicians and policymakers, and I think that has a lot to do with why the response has not been as protective as it should have been.
Sreenivasan followed up: "So give me examples of how your community's being left behind." Cortland criticized CDC guidelines:
They issued guidance for the general public, and they issued guidance for health care professionals. The guidance for the general public tells folks that they can stop isolating and go about their lives, even if they have COVID-19 after five days if they wear a mask and they avoid immunocompromised folks like me, and people who are at higher risk because of a chronic illness or a disability. I don't wear a sandwich board that says “immunocompromised” when I go to the grocery store or the pharmacy.
Cortland left out the CDC's five day guidelines were in reference to asymptomatic individuals and to say that normal life is ableist is another way of saying that COVID restrictions should last forever because it will never be completely risk-free for people like Cortland.
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Here is a transcript for the January 25 show:
PBS
Amanpour and Company
12:41 AM ET
HARI SREENIVASAN: What you're describing is what New York might have gone through in March of 2020. I mean, are we really just kind of keeping ourselves indoors? You're telling me two years later there are still people having to live like that?
MATTHEW CORTLAND: That's absolutely correct, and it doesn't have to be this way. For so many of our folks, disabled and chronically ill and immunocompromised, this category of people who are at higher risk of a bad outcome, there, there's poverty that goes along with disability, oftentimes in this country. Folks who are disabled are more likely to be impoverished, to be living in poverty, and so even some of the measures that in March of 2020 folks were able to take in the city and elsewhere to protect themselves, things like having someone else do their grocery shopping, paying for Instacart or whatever company it may be, that’s, that's not an option available to many folks in the disability community just because of economics in our community tends to be disproportionately impoverished. And so you're absolutely right, it is, it is still a high threat environment for many folks, but there's this disproportionate poverty that goes with it that makes it really hard to take some very basic steps because we have to a large extent been left on our own to fend for ourselves during this pandemic. There's no organized response that centers the disability community to protect people who are at higher risk.SREENIVASAN: But why do you think that is? Why do you think that this population as you've described, might be, what, 3, 4 million people in the United States or more, doesn't have a voice, doesn't have a seat at the table?
CORTLAND: It's really tens and tens of millions of people who have multiple underlying health conditions that put them, all of us at increased risk, and why haven't we been centered in this, in this pandemic response? And I think the answer, it's complex and there are a lot of factors, but I think fundamentally public health and medicine are ableist. There's a history of pervasive ableism in these disciplines and by ableism I mean the sort of systemic devaluation of the lives of people who are chronically ill or disabled or immunocompromised. You know, we have a sad and enraging history of ableism in public health. People with these sorts of medically complex conditions have been viewed just as disposable really, and that thinking is unfortunately still pervasive among public health professionals and politicians and policymakers, and I think that has a lot to do with why the response has not been as protective as it should have been.
SREENIVASAN: So give me examples of how your community's being left behind. I mean, what are policies where you’re not considered in the first place or what are effects that, sort of, social policy or public health is happening at a local level? Kind of personalize it for me if you can.
CORTLAND: There's a great recent example in the guidance, the technical guidance that the Centers for Disease Control, that’s CDC, issued, around ending quarantine and isolation. They, they issued guidance for the general public, and they issued guidance for health care professionals. The guidance for the general public tells folks that they can stop isolating and go about their lives, even if they have COVID-19 after five days if they wear a mask and they avoid immunocompromised folks like me, and people who are at higher risk because of a chronic illness or a disability. I don't wear a sandwich board that says “immunocompromised” when I go to the grocery store or the pharmacy. CDC's technical guidance suggests that average people on the street are supposed to know, just visually, who is in these higher risk categories when it's often not apparent at all, and so that's what I mean when we're not really being considered in the -- even in the technical guidance from the premier public health agency in the country. And it's really, you know, it's remarkable that two years into this thing they are still not consulting with the disability community and experts about how to actually, you know, issue workable technical guidance that would actually protect people.
