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1/ I had the first dose of the AstraZeneca Oxford vaccine yest morning ('clinically extremely vulnerable') & of course, I am relieved, but can't stop thinking about people with illness & disability who will not be on these lists because medical model of 'diagnosis' is so violent
2/ we all know there's a lot of issues with the vaccine roll outs - the vaccine nationalism, the patents & delayed timelines (if at all) of vaccine delivery to much of the 'global south', who gets counted as a key worker in the UK (supermarket workers aren't getting it yet e.g.)
3/ I am thinking here about those of us designated 'clinically extremely vulnerable' and the limits and problems of diagnosis to determine clinical vulnerability. Large numbers of disabled ill people do not access medical treatment through the NHS
4/ some due to the #hostileenvironment that is entangled into the NHS (solidarity to many fighting this and abolishment of borders) and closes channels of care and medical help to those who might not have the 'right paperwork'
5/ some because austerity and privatisation has been steadily destroyed the NHS for years before the pandemic. You might have been waiting 'in queue' to have tests /see doctors. You might not have been seen thoroughly because of lack of resources.
6/ then there is the ableism, fat phobia, racism, sexism, queer and trans phobia of the medical model itself. It can take years to be 'believed' that you are indeed ill - if you get there at all. How many of us have been gaslit, turned away, told we're imagining things?
7/ all of these are of course tied together - the medical model of 'diagnosis' is flawed & violent, the privatisation and austerity cuts to the NHS are killing people, borders & #hostileenvironment making some even more vulnerable..
8/ I was 'diagnosed' months before the pandemic after being ill for years and not believed - everything was made to be about my fatness (racialised gendered fatness).. If I didn't have the diagnosis on paper, no vaccine.
9/ I spoke about this earlier in the context of workers being asked to come into institutions and work places unless they have 'evidence' that they are 'clinically vulnerable' - when the model of determining vulnerability is built on violence - what does this do?
10/ similarly universities asking students to provide 'evidence' for no detriment and extensions (now and before the pandemic) - you are sustaining an ableist flawed system.
11/ being ill is a constant negotiation, I am learning, between knowing that these medical systems might make things better/save your life but also that they are inherently built to only protect a few & to be violent. All of this compounded by austerity.
12/I'll end by saying, the NHS workers and volunteers doing the vaccine roll out - thank you, we are grateful, but gratitude and thanks is just not enough,we know and need to remember that in our vaccine euphoria.
13/ also, I was only informed I was on the shielding/clinically vulnerable list in June 2020, months into the pandemic. I didn't ask them about this earlier because I am tired of doctors gaslighting me with their fatphobic racist BS. How many people with 'diagnosis' missing?
So much more to be said about the coloniality of our medical systems, the anti-Blackness of it - these conversations are of course happening within crip, disabled, ill, mad communities - but can able bodied people pay attention?
We can't discuss austerity and #hostileenvironment and #savingtheNHS without also centering crip of colour critique and any crip understandings are only crip if they centre borders, austerity, coloniality, race-gender-sexuality and fatness
