Pandemic presents additional challenges for people with disabilities
When a spooked America locked its doors in March, nearly everyone, it seemed, had a simultaneous thought: This is hard. Many worksites were off-limits. No one could easily mix with friends or go to the movies. Even a stroll around the neighborhood was fraught with risk.
Susan Verde’s reaction?
“Literally, welcome to my world,” said Verde, 53, who lives in Cloverdale. “I’ve had to create a life that doesn’t involve going out.”
Vance Taylor had a similar response.
“Something like COVID comes our way, and I see some of our friends complain they can’t go for indoor dining,” said Taylor, who grew up in Petaluma and is now chief of the Office of Access and Functional Needs within the California Office of Emergency Services. “They were like, ‘I can’t handle this.’ For me, I call this ‘Tuesday,’ you know?”
Verde and Taylor both use wheelchairs to get around. They are two of the estimated 80 million Americans who have some form of physical disability. And they were way ahead of most of us when it came to the new demands of social distancing. The shift to remote interaction has even delivered unexpected benefits to some people with disabilities.
But any head start has been outweighed by new layers of hardship imposed by the novel coronavirus and its effect on public health and social interaction. Long accustomed to functioning in a world that doesn’t always accommodate them, those with disabilities have had to adapt once again.
Take, for example, public transportation. A lot of people with impaired vision or mobility don’t drive. They have come to rely heavily on mass transit. But bus routes have been severely reduced during most of the pandemic, and riding in an enclosed space with strangers is an uncomfortable proposition especially for those with pre-existing conditions.
That has deterred many people with physical impairments from getting tested for the virus. More fundamentally, it has compounded the sense of aloneness that commonly plagues many who live with a disability.
“A lot of what we’re seeing is isolation, people feeling this lack of community,” said Lake Kowell, program director at Disability Services & Legal Center of Santa Rosa.
Kowell, who has used a wheelchair since suffering a spinal injury in 1989, said her organization used to host monthly gatherings that featured art and roundtable discussions. Those have been replaced by once-a-week Zoom sessions. The disability center also has organized socially distanced hikes in parks, but Kowell said many of clients are struggling to feel connected.
“Most everything’s online now,” she said. “We have a lot of seniors who have no idea how to access this. And a lot of low-income people can’t afford a computer. It’s been an issue.”
Verde lost access to her adaptive physical education class at SRJC, which had included weight training and sessions in the pool.
“Of course that’s going to have an impact on my physical health,” she said. “And there’s no workaround for that. It might be irreparable in that sense.”
People with deeper levels of disability tend to require in-home aides to help clean, dress and feed them, and to monitor medications. That, too, has been affected by the virus, as both patients and caregivers have weighed the health risks of intimate proximity. Kowell said that was always an issue in Sonoma County, even before the pandemic.
“It’s very difficult to find in-home support,” she said. “What is it, $13 an hour? Not everyone is lining up for those jobs.”
Even the recent round of California wildfires exposed existing inequities. Counties have gotten to be fairly efficient at moving threatened residents to evacuation centers and providing for their needs there. But the coronavirus changed the equation for people with disabilities.
“We don’t want people to be in a congregant setting,” said Taylor, whose office integrates residents with special needs into California’s emergency planning. “So we used hotels and motels. That seems better, right? Yes, unless I am experiencing food insecurity. Yes, unless I require assistance toileting or bathing, and my personal care assistant isn’t with me. Yes, unless I need special transportation to get to work or to my family.”
Particular forms of disability bring specific challenges during the scourge of COVID-19. People using wheelchairs find it hard to maintain distance on city sidewalks and at grocery stores. And you think it’s hard for the average citizen to sanitize? Consider propelling yourself by hand.
“I have to do a little extra cleaning with the wheels,” Kowell said. “Because I put my hands on those wheels. People spit, cough and who-knows-what on the sidewalk. I have some friends in chairs who just have not left the house.”
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