January 27, 2022 - 16:44
This week's short essays highlights the true cost of opening up (schools, workplaces) - disabled folks and other vulnerable populations such as the elders and immunocompromised. This fact makes me really think about Sim Invalid's Anti-Capitalist Principle from Ten Principles of Disability Justice, and how the society we are functioning and living in truly devalues the lives of the disabled folks. Corporations and institutions have forced reopening and adjustments to science (like the isolation policies) for their own benefit: Money!! over the lives of people. Though that's something I have known, this week's past readings have clarified that disabled communties are consistently undervalued along with Black, Indigenous, and POC communities.
Not only that, Alice Wong’s essay introduced me to the disability paradox. It’s not new news given that there are already so many fallacies in the healthcare field fueled by assumptions and stereotypes. But, it was still disappointing to learn that there are still prominent figures who have these problematic views and are widely sharing them. On June 10, 2020, Peter Singer, who was referenced in Alice Wong’s essay, published an article Is Age Discrimination Acceptable? during the early (ish) stages of the pandemic discussing age discrimination within the medical field and how it is acceptable in hospitals. Like we discussed in class, Singer brings up the DALY metric as a “useful” tool. Just three weeks ago, he also wrote about the rights of unvaxxed vs vaxxed patients stating that the vaxxed patient deserves more care (Victims of the Unvaccinated by Peter Singer - Project Syndicate). It’s just a little disorienting to see that in his view that lives are to be quantified against each other especially within a pandemic.