Skip to main contentSkip to navigationSkip to navigation
Woman looking out of window alone.
‘It still stings when Covid-related deaths are prefaced with a caveat about “underlying health conditions” – because that is what I have, and I love my life.’ Photograph: martin-dm/Getty Images
‘It still stings when Covid-related deaths are prefaced with a caveat about “underlying health conditions” – because that is what I have, and I love my life.’ Photograph: martin-dm/Getty Images

For those of us with disabilities, lockdown won’t end as long as Covid strategies leave us behind

This article is more than 2 years old
Anthea Williams

As restrictions lifted in mid-December, my world closed down. I’m so disappointed by the rhetoric of our leaders of ‘personal responsibility’

On 14 December I took my last shopping trip, stocked up, and went home. Apart from a few necessary work events and trips to (vaccinated and tested) friends’ houses, I’ve stayed at home ever since. Coming from a huge New Zealand family, Christmas for me is all about people. I love summer and swimming, and my partner is always surprised by just how much energy I have for socialising in our extrovert v introvert relationship. But when the New South Wales government opened up on the 15th, my world closed down. I have rheumatoid arthritis and a few other autoimmune diseases, so I am on medications that leave me immunocompromised. And the science was clear: with my vaccines completed in early August, I had considerably reduced protection from Omicron.

The last two years have been tough. At the start of 2020, I was living in a sharehouse in Sydney’s Newtown, working in theatre and film, and spending as much time as possible in the US with my partner. When Covid first broke, I wrote an opinion piece about my anger at society’s complacency around the deaths of those in the disability community. It still stings when Covid-related deaths are prefaced with a caveat about “underlying health conditions” – because that is what I have, and I love my life. Just after that article was written I moved out of my beloved share-home, put all my belongings, bar two suitcases, into storage, and moved back to Aotearoa for five months. I never did get to direct that show in Canada, my Sydney Film Festival debut was online, and I didn’t see my partner for more than a year.

Lockdown sucks. I get it. But I’m alive. And that’s no small thing.

Around 60% of the 148,000 people who died in the UK were part of the disability community. In the United States, where 1 in every 500 people have died, those with underlying health conditions were four times more likely to lose their lives.

Living with an underlying health condition during the pandemic has been incredibly difficult. Despite government claims that people at risk would be prioritised for vaccination, my health providers didn’t know when or how I could get vaccinated, leaving me and many others to roam government websites searching for an appointment. I was eventually allocated to an inner-city hospital with a very low vaccine supply, and I wasn’t able to change this allocation. While I spent hours in vain calling the vaccine hotline begging for a new and earlier appointment anywhere in Sydney, friends my age without health conditions were able to book and get vaccinated before me. I am educated, articulate, mobile and can advocate for myself; it’s troubling to consider how others in the disability community navigated the system without these privileges. Eventually I travelled to Aotearoa again where common sense seemed to prevail: I was finally able to get vaccinated within a few weeks and stayed out of Sydney, my home, for another four months.

Despite government promises, Australia moved out of lockdown before vaccine rates for many at-risk communities reached the levels set for the broader community, in what I think is a careless and avoidable decision. The way the Perrottet government has managed the transition from lockdown has been nothing short of bizarre. Ending mask mandates, capacity limits and QR registrations just as a new strain of Covid was hitting, vaccine immunity was waning, and boosters were yet to be rolled out was always going to be the disaster we are currently facing. At the same time, I’m so disappointed by the rhetoric of our state and federal leaders of “personal responsibility”. Wearing a mask is more than an individual protection. It is an act of solidarity and community care. It acknowledges that you have no idea who might be vulnerable around you and that you value the health of others. To not wear a mask is not an act of freedom; it is callous.

Focusing on “personal responsibility” during a pandemic is an elitist and ableist luxury. It also doesn’t work. Beyond personal protection, vaccination availability and acceptance is about community protection. Vaccinations only work when they are available to everyone, creating herd immunity across the community. Furthermore, without financial support, most of us, including people with underlying conditions, need to leave our homes to work and live, even as it becomes increasingly difficult to get any Covid test, let alone one without out-of-pocket costs. Again, our politicians have let us down.

More than 18 months after my previous article, I was asked as a woman with disability about how I am feeling about Covid and the end of lockdowns. But my lockdown has not ended; it will continue until there is a coherent plan from our leaders that doesn’t leave people with disability behind. I feel undervalued and forgotten. I feel that my life is seen as less important that those without disability. Ironically, we may well be creating a new generation of people with disability and illness – a new generation with underlying health conditions – through the impacts of long Covid. I hope we treat these people better in the future than we are treating people with disability today.

Anthea Williams is a theatre and film director

Most viewed

Most viewed