Bad Attitudes: An Uninspiring Podcast About Disability

Episode 25: Comorbidities et al.

January 24, 2022 Laura Stinson
Bad Attitudes: An Uninspiring Podcast About Disability
Episode 25: Comorbidities et al.
Show Notes Transcript

Content Warning: Discussion of chronic conditions, Covid, and death

If you aren't comfortable hearing about these topics, feel free to wait until next week's episode.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky made some questionable comments recently regarding the percentage of Covid-19 deaths related to comorbidities in a patient. The disabled community has taken umbrage with these comments, and for good reason.

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TRANSCRIPT OF “COMORBIDITIES ET AL.”

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MALE VO [00:03]
This is Bad Attitudes.

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LAURA [00:20]

Hello friends and strangers! Welcome to another episode of Bad Attitudes: An Uninspiring Podcast About Disability. I’m your host, Laura.

People have been talking about the CDC director’s comments a lot, but we’re going to talk about them again.

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I can’t believe I forgot to say this last week. Guess I’m out of practice. As always, I’d like to remind you that disability is not a monolith. My experience as a disabled person is going to be different from the experiences of other disabled people. I am one voice for the disabled community, but I am not the only voice.

Before I start, let me offer you this content warning. I will be discussing Covid-19, chronic health conditions, and death. If you are not comfortable listening to those topics at this time, feel free to stop this episode and come back next week.

Earlier this month, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the CDC, said that 75% of adults who died from Covid-19 had four or more comorbidities, and called this “encouraging.” 

She omitted some important information when she made these comments. She was referencing a study that followed 1.2 million people who completed, quote, “primary vaccination” between December 2020 and October 2021. Thirty-six of the people in the study died, and 78 percent of those people had four or more comorbidities.

First things first, comorbidity means having more than one health condition at once. So, a person with four comorbidities had four other medical conditions in addition to Covid. In the study referenced, researchers were looking at specific risk factors: being over age 65, being immunosuppressed, having chronic lung disease, chronic liver disease, chronic kidney disease, chronic heart disease, and diabetes. Of the 36 people in the study who died from Covid-19, 78 percent of them had four or more of these specific risk factors.

Now, maybe you’re like me and at the beginning of this whole debacle, you didn’t really understand what comorbidities meant. In my naivete, I envisioned Covid was targeting people who were unhealthy by choice. I imagined a sort of avatar for the people at risk: Someone who smoked like a chimney and drank beyond excess, possibly even regularly took hard drugs. Someone who ate horribly and actively avoided physical exercise. The perfect caricature of an unhealthy human.

And, yes, initially, I breathed a sigh of relief that THIS was who was in the most danger from Covid, because that wasn’t me and it wasn’t the people I loved.

But, alas, I am now older and therefore wiser, and know that this is not the case. As of September 2020, 60 percent of Americans are living with at least one chronic condition that may make them more susceptible to Covid. Forty percent have two or more chronic conditions. When I think about my closest circle of friends and family — and it’s a small circle — at least five of us have one or more of the risk factors that make us more susceptible to Covid, including chronic conditions. My closest friend and two of my family members are immunosuppressed due to medication they take for autoimmune disorders. I’ll join that list when I start medication for psoriasis. A number of my extended family members are already over 65 or are close to it. Which means the chance of someone in my circle contracting Covid is exponentially higher.

But having one of these risk factors doesn’t necessarily mean someone is unhealthy. Consider immunosuppression. Transplant recipients are on immunosuppressants to lower the chance that their bodies will reject the transplanted organ, but that doesn’t make them unhealthy, at least not in the way we often think of unhealthy. Yet, they are at a higher risk of contracting Covid and developing more severe symptoms because of the very thing that likely saved their lives.

The way we view “healthy” versus “unhealthy” is woefully inaccurate. When I was growing up, other parents often explained my disability to their children by saying I was “sick.” I wasn’t sick. I was perfectly healthy. But, they saw my wheelchair and their immediate conclusion was sickness. Maybe they even thought I was dying, though they would never say that out loud.

Being disabled doesn’t automatically equate to sickness or being unhealthy. Having chronic conditions also doesn’t necessarily equate to sickness or being unhealthy. But having multiple chronic conditions can and often does go hand-in-hand with being disabled.

Dr. Walensky’s statements aren’t problematic because she pointed out that people who have more comorbidities are more likely to die of Covid. We knew that already. Anyone with a disability or a chronic illness was immediately aware of our risk when it came to Covid. We knew we would be on the front lines and so we did what we’ve been doing our entire lives: We took the necessary precautions to keep ourselves from being exposed. We looked out for ourselves and each other because we could be sure that society wouldn’t.

What makes her comments problematic comes down to one word. Encouraging. It’s “encouraging” that our most vulnerable citizens are the ones most likely to die from Covid and its complications. Aren’t we meant to protect our most vulnerable? Isn’t that how things are SUPPOSED to work?

Obviously, we all know that isn’t how they work at all. Remember how politicians were ready and willing to sacrifice our grandparents as long as it meant the “economy” was okay? I think we’re all finally realizing that “economy” is just a code word for “rich people.” It was fine if old people died as long as their coffers were full.

On the largest scale, this isn’t about money. Because a lot of the people who are willing to throw disabled and chronically ill people under the bus called Covid aren’t rich. They’re barely middle class. But, they are fine throwing away people’s lives if it means they get to live “normally.” If it means their “freedoms” won’t be hindered. Harken back to episode 23 to hear what I think of those supposed “freedoms.”

They want to go on vacation and go out to dinner and get drunk and rowdy at bars, and the lives of a few million people aren’t too high a price to pay for them to get to do that. They have shown that time and again by refusing to get vaccinated, refusing to wear masks, refusing to do anything that might make them a little uncomfortable in order to protect more vulnerable people.

I’ve heard a lot of specious arguments in favor of ableism, but none that applies so much now as “survival of the fittest.” But “survival of the fittest” wasn’t about who could best survive a virulent pandemic, it was about who could adapt to survive as the world changed. And disabled people are nothing if not freaking masters of adaptation. Considering the state of our country and how many non-disabled people simply cannot handle adapting to a world where they might have to take some personal responsibility proves that “survival of the fittest” is bullshit. 

Think about the number of stories we hear about intellectually disadvantaged individuals doing something that could kindly be called questionable only to live to tell the tale. Surely they are not the “fittest” we speak of.

And just so you know, doctors told my parents it was unlikely I would live past the age of two. But here I am, aged 40 and, as Hagrid might say, thrivin’! Survival of the who what now?

If you want to feel a bit of relief at the fact that you don’t have one of the risk factors mentioned earlier and therefore your risk of contracting Covid might be lessened, that’s okay. It’s understandable. What’s not okay is feeling “encouraged” by the deaths of vulnerable individuals. Because if you feel “encouraged” by those deaths, what you feel is that their lives don’t matter.

Remember that all the individuals in the study Dr. Walensky was referencing were vaccinated. Every disabled and chronically ill person I know catapulted themselves to the front of the line the second they were eligible for vaccinations. Unlike no small number of non-disabled folks who didn’t just drag their feet in getting vaccinated, but sat their asses in molasses about it. (That was fun to say.) My uncle, who has multiple risk factors and an immunocompromised wife, STILL refuses to get vaccinated and I don’t have a blessed idea why. To be honest, I don’t know if HE knows why he won’t get vaccinated. He just won’t.

So explain to me how it’s “encouraging” that people who took every precaution to protect themselves are dying but we’re supposed to feel sympathy for those who twiddled their thumbs and just waited for Covid to catch up to them. Because I don’t. Not a bit of sympathy. We are going into year 3 of this nightmare. We have been given multiple opportunities, multiple methodologies to protect ourselves and so many of us refuse to do that basic thing. Get the shot. Wear the mask. Stop killing people.

Because if you refuse to do these basic things, I believe you have blood on your hands. You have contributed to these Covid deaths by pretending you somehow understand science better than the experts. When you won’t get a vaccine because you don’t know what’s in it, but you don’t know or care what’s in half of the stuff you put in your body.

The rhetoric needs to be changed. Stop calling them “comorbidities.” The general public doesn’t understand or care what that means. Call them by their names: heart conditions, liver disease, things people understand. Because they may not know anyone with comorbidities, but they definitely know someone with a heart condition.

Put faces on these nameless deaths. We only hear about a tiny fraction of patients who have died from Covid. And given what I’ve seen, they are all cut from a similar cloth. No one talks about the disabled or chronically ill people who have died from Covid. The disabled or chronically ill who took every precaution but because of the carelessness and callousness of the general public still succumbed.

Acknowledge that these people were just as loved, just as worthy as any non-disabled person reported on. And acknowledge that they were abandoned due to a lack of common decency.

It isn’t encouraging that 75 percent of vaccinated adults dying from Covid have four or more comorbidities. It is painfully discouraging that so many people are STILL dying when we have within our grasp the ability to protect ourselves and those around us.

Thanks for listening and I’ll talk to you in the next one.

[13:14]
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