While a compensation fund could provide long-haulers with immediate support, it’s unclear how eligibility for such a fund would be determined and who might get left out. The diagnostic criteria for long Covid are still developing, and some patients have already been shut out of care and benefits because they lacked
medical documentation. Some advocates have pushed for a
guaranteed income to support chronically ill and disabled people regardless of their diagnoses. The debate raises a question that long Covid advocates have grappled with from the start of the pandemic: Can the long Covid crisis be a turning point in the fight for better safety nets for all disabled and chronically ill people?
Most of the legislation that’s been proposed so far has failed to address the systemic causes of poverty among disabled populations, focusing instead on research, education, and clinical care that is specific to long Covid. Lisa McCorkell, a founding member of the Patient-Led Research Collaborative, says these bills are important in order to sustain current clinics and make sure that people with long Covid are aware of the benefits and services that do exist. But, she adds, “the point of these bills is not to improve overall disability policy.” They don’t shorten application-processing times for Social Security disability benefits, nor do they recommend updates on
asset limits or increases in benefits. “We need big policy solutions that will address larger systemic issues,” she says, “and we need those solutions to be created with a disability-justice lens in order to…ameliorate the cycle of poverty that is disabled poverty.”
Ultimately, the long Covid advocacy movement’s ability to address these systemic issues will determine its success. Sixty-one million US adults—about
one in four eligible voters—have a disability, and disabled people represent a historically overlooked voting bloc. More than 30 years after the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act, disabled Americans still face food insecurity at three times the rate of nondisabled people, and they make up roughly half of those who turn to homeless shelters every night. The 2020 election cycle was a breakthrough, with nearly every major Democratic candidate releasing a full disability policy platform. Still, though, just
three in 10 disabled voters believe that leaders in Washington care about people with disabilities, according to a recent poll by the Century Foundation and Data for Progress. “The economic crisis facing the US disability community long predates Covid-19,” says Rebecca Vallas, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and codirector of the Disability Economic Justice Collaborative. But “one takeaway at this moment in our nation’s history must be that we can no longer afford to ignore disabled people in our policy-making.”
These rooms have been in buildings that also have clinical staff so that's good for patient safety! Earlier in spring I took a course at another older part of the university and the air quality was terrible (+ no windows). One person showed up sick and another six or so couldn't attend due to illness a few days later. Glad I was wearing a mask.
