In the spring of 2022, JMU was hinting that the mask mandate was soon to be obsolete. The campus took it as permission to officially stop caring. In class, there was a boy sitting right next to me, maskless, mask mandate still in place. I asked him to wear a mask. I used a mobility aid, and being visibly disabled was usually enough to make people wear one just to escape the discomfort of my stare. He wasn’t cowed, and I tried to stay calm.
“I am disabled. COVID could kill me. Please wear a mask.”
The response? “Why should I care?” Or maybe it was a more straightforward “I don’t care.”
The memory is hazy with anger, but I clearly remember the message I received that day: I don’t care if you die. Now everytime I see someone maskless it repeats. They don’t care if I die. They don’t care if they kill me. It’s not seen as violence, this chronic disregard for human life, but what other word could describe it. I can ask people to wear a mask, I can beg people, and they might even listen, but why should I have to beg for you to stop killing people?
COVID kills everyone, but it especially targets disabled people. This fact seems to be reassuring for some. In January 2022, the CDC director at the time, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, said “The overwhelming number of deaths, over 75%, occurred in people who had at least four comorbidities, so really these are people who were unwell to begin with, and yes [it’s] really encouraging news…” The majority of people who are dying from COVID are disabled, so it’s great news! Can you imagine if this same statistic was about infants, or any other category of people that the government deems worthy of protection?
Society’s response to COVID has been startlingly similar to the response to the AIDS crisis. Discussion of the epidemic led to outright laughter from Ronald Reagan’s press secretary, Larry Speakes in 1982. It was a display of violent disregard for queer lives. This isn’t unique to any one community. American culture has been steeped in this venom for its entire existence. There is not a time in American history free from immense suffering, and this violence is not happenstance – it was chosen. We’ve been taught that needless deaths are natural parts of a society. We are the acceptable casualties in the war of life that is America.
Desmond Tutu said “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” Choosing not to wear a mask, keep your vaccine updated, and social distance means making an individual choice that negatively impacts the entirety of society. To ignore COVID precautions means you accept your own personal risk of death and severe illness as well everyone else’s around you. Who are you willing to sacrifice?
COVID is not just a concern for the disabled community, just as police violence is not just a concern for the black community, and sexual assault is not just a concern for women. Our communities are interwoven in blood and joy, and they don’t separate neatly into little boxes. Our problems are not disparate; we have to fight all parts of a hydra at once. Community care means sacrificing time and labor. You don’t have to sacrifice people.
ShoutOut! James Madison University 