Velvet Silmeria!Mánibranðr @FreyaManibrandr@awoo.space

Planning and attending events, workplaces and or controlling public spaces knowing that the immunocompromised and disabled cannot at least match the level of access available to them in the past means that we're knowingly making decisions enabling the extension of their pain and isolation in an incredibly profound way.

These decisions take a direct path from "we're facing painful lifestyle limitations, but we can draw strength from each other" to "in order to feel less isolated and limited myself, I am willing to transfer additional pain and isolation to those who had been suffering it before my first taste. I ask them to take on more, because I do not have the strength to take my own share."

And it doesn't feel like that to folks demanding hybrid work or reserving event spaces or dismantling the accommodations we had made available so folks could remain safe while having their needs met. But that's not because it's not the case...but because an overwhelming tide now moves in this direction.

But overwhelming tides have always been how the greatest cruelties go unchallenged.

I spent several years with severe agoraphobia and was housebound. When I started to do a little better, started to experience the world a bit more like I once had, I thought over and over again that I would never in a million years wish that on another human being. That I would never let someone else feel like their world was that small, if I could help it. Not having access to emergency medical care. Not seeing new things, seeing my friends? The fucking worst.

The whole world got a taste of that, all at once. I felt like I'd said "I just wish folks really understood" one too many times and the monkey paw curled. Suddenly my world got very, very big and for many of you, it shrank to smaller than it had ever been before. But we had help! We had concerts, and video calls, and events and services accessible to everyone for the first time! For some people, quality of social life was higher than it had been in years.

And this "return to normalcy" has ripped that away and left them worse off? Fuck. Why are we like this?

There's an entire add-on factor here, which still no one really wants to think about...

The people now abandoned by abled folks and their desires to have cocktails and lick lampposts or whatever experienced losses among their peers at heartbreaking rates. Odds are their experience of the early stages of covid was more intense than the average person imagines. Their support networks may have done a great job watching out for them...or they might have gone threadbare or shredded entirely, as folks drifted away to manage their own health or changing circumstances and losses. Their health is likely now considerably worse than it started, whether they had an infection or not.

And many live in continued isolation, without folks taking the time to include them, to create intentionally safe places for them to socialize, to continue using things that worked-but-not- perfectly like the spatial chat and virtual hangouts and not just leaving the folks hurting most behind.

Many are quite likely suffering much grief, still. Maybe it's even still fresh, after all this time, with no chance for hugs, no quiet moments with a friend over a meal to talk it through, or a chance to go and toast memories or take comfort in a group silently remembering someone together. These are the folks getting left out. We need to fix this.

We don't get to make decisions without considering how things affect our whole communities, not and pretend we care just because we still wear masks and don't take risks. Folks need to be included and they need the same release and comfort as everyone else. We could actually learn from this and give them more access than they had before, and do this right, and let everyone heal.