Dr. Walensky and @cdcgov: Gerard John Schaefer got into law enforcement because he too had a calling, and then he murdered many.
Your calling doesn’t rid you of ableism, just as his calling didn’t rid him of his criminality: it just gives you a bigger outlet to express it.🙃
The mission of the CDC is not something that should ever waver, and the words of its Director should reflect it without fail. There is no back-tracking on eugenic talk at that level.
There is no excuse for that high-visibility public air time being used to talk the way that she talked, to an ableist audience (society IS ableist, with few awake to it), ignorant to how fickle and fleeting our health *truly* is. Words spoken to an audience who subconsciously respond with a “yeah, their lives don’t matter anyway, and the CDC just ok’ed my continuing to not give an F about #covid_19 because I’ll be ok!”.
She could’ve used that time to promote the masking need, spoke to the global threat of Long COVID, discussed the COVID pediatric crisis, or how ableism kills and disables us all. But no. Able pride, amiright?
It’s clear that so long as you’re presently “healthy” and able-bodied, your existence is the only existence that matters…until you fall into chronic illness or disability overnight…because health is *not* within our control, no matter how much celery juice we drink or 5K runs we do [or high-peak mountains you scale, in my case].
The steps spoken are not steps that exist: they’re performative and crumble under our feet.
CDC, want to uphold your mission? Open your door to the disability and chronic illness community. You’re inaccessible all while claiming to be accessible.
Drop the act.
Build the ACCESSIBILITY RAMP (read: fuck your #accessibility nightmare steps) that you speak of and with the insight of people with lived experience…or we’ll make sure that the world continues to see the broken steps you sell as solid ground.
Long COVID Study: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2784918?utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_term=101321
Long COVID @aapmr Dashboard: https://pascdashboard.aapmr.org/