The ethical frameworks for rationing often put people like me at the bottom of the list.īioethicists and philosophers like Peter Singer, a utilitarian philosopher infamous in the disability community as someone who advocates for our erasure, have applied cool, rational, elegant arguments and thought exercises on who should live and die during crises like this. While the federal health department’s Office of Civil Rights released a bulletin on non-discrimination during the pandemic, I’m still worried. Already, disability rights groups have filed complaints that some states, such as Alabama and Washington, are making triage recommendations that discriminate against people with disabilities. As news warnings of overcrowding in hospitals and scarce resources push hospitals to consider rationing care, I’m deeply concerned. My family and I have been sheltering in place for over three weeks in San Francisco. How I sound, move, and look elicits pity and discomfort by many in public. I am tethered to and embedded with a number of things that keep me alive: a power wheelchair, a non-invasive ventilator that is connected to my chair’s battery, a mask that goes over my nose attached to a tube, metal rods fused to my spine. Technology, accessibility, and a hardcore will to live shaped me into a cyborg oracle ready to spill some hot truths. Want to avoid touching door handles by hitting the automatic door opener with your elbow? You can thank the Americans with Disabilities Act and the disabled people who made it happen. For many disabled, sick, and immunocompromised people like myself, we have always lived with uncertainty and are skilled in adapting to hostile circumstances in a world that was never designed for us in the first place. The coronavirus pandemic in the United States has disrupted and destabilized individual lives and institutions. It is a strange time to be alive as an Asian American disabled person who uses a ventilator.
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