October 9th 2020
Went with Mum and Dad on a drive out to Crosby beach. Plenty of open space and we were able able to keep away from other people. But on the way, as we drove along the M57, I saw it coming, the white blotches on the dark horizon. I grabbed my camera: someone’s painted “Plandemic” in white across the railway bridge over the motorway. I’d seen it when we came a few weeks earlier. I thought it might have been painted over by now. The sheer size of it jolted me. I wondered how many people going to and from hospital to visit relatives with Covid had seen it, been upset by it? I took the picture as we sped past. This is the new Covid landscape writ large.
Later on, as we ate our sandwiches in the steamed-up car at the beach, I thought more about it. Was it a denial of the existence of the virus? Or the need for restrictions because of it? Even though I’m still poorly, I tried not to take the graffiti to heart. Maybe it’s because many people with disabilities, perhaps more with hidden disabilities like severe asthma, are used to a denial of our experiences: “You don’t look ill. You must putting it on.”
Most people are kind. But I’ve also met people who preach “inclusion” yet have treated me like an expensive nuisance, someone - or rather something - to be got rid of, to become someone’s else’s problem. I thought about the time when I’d been off work with an asthma attack (this was at a university I once worked at) and I was summoned to Occupational Health. The nurse told me straight: “the thing is Mark, people with long-term health conditions play on them to get what they want, and if you repeat that outside of here I’ll just deny it.” Another time she told me Human Resources wanted to sack me as I was too expensive to keep on.
Ignorance about disability I can just about forgive. Usually it's due to a lack of understanding, rather than any intention to hurt. But when it’s displayed by people who should know better, to frighten people, then it becomes cruel. That’s harder to forgive.