A new study, published on 13 June and using data from the ONS, has shown that people with self-reported disabilities were much more likely to die from coronavirus than non-disabled people. This is even after taking into account factors such as underlying health conditions, poverty and whether they lived in a care home. Working-age disabled women with higher support needs were found to have been about 90% more likely to die from coronavirus than non-disabled women of the same age. Between 24 January 2020 and 28 February 2021, 58% of those who died from Covid-19 in England were disabled (about 61,000 of the 105,213 deaths registered). During the first wave in Wales almost 70% of Covid deaths were of disabled people and the National Records for Scotland reported that almost six in 10 Covid-19 deaths (58%) between March 2020 and January 2021 were of disabled people. Disability campaigners say that even these figures underestimate the actual number. EMILY McMILLAN reports.
The idea that disabled people are ‘burdens on society’ comes directly from disabled people’s perceived or actual ability to labour versus non-disabled people. As part of this oppression, state violence against disabled people is often pushed to the side of mainstream news. However, there is enough evidence that the capitalist class and its political servants at least sympathise with or at worst execute the culling of disabled and elderly people.
The ruling class response to the Covid pandemic has highlighted this. NHS discrimination was one of the biggest factors in the death of disabled people, as reported by the Disability News Service.
People with intellectual disabilities and autistic people had six times the rate of death from Covid as the general population. In part this was due to people with learning disabilities and autism who catch Covid having ‘do not resuscitate’ orders placed on their medical records without their or their family’s consent.
An investigation by England’s Care Quality Commission concluded in December 2020 that this practice had caused potentially avoidable deaths and the charity Mencap reported that this practice was still continuing in January 2021. Furthermore, care homes were forced to accept patients that tested positive with Covid. 26% of all care home places are for disabled people who cannot be self-sufficient or who are thrown into them due to social care cuts.
As reported in the Guardian, during the first wave of the pandemic disabled workers and those with caring responsibilities for disabled relatives were being threatened with the sack if they refused to return to work after failing to qualify for the British Government’s shielding list, which excluded a number of high-risk disabilities (18 May 2020). With the capitalists determined to get back to business as usual and an end to shielding we will once again see disabled workers, shielding because of their health, threatened with having all support cut off or being sacked if they don’t return to unsafe work places.
In April 2020 protections were introduced for disabled people, such as provisions for food parcels and priority lists for food delivery. In June, all protections for disabled people were stopped formally in England. Many are now shielding without support and up to four million people have been in self-imposed segregation in their homes for 18 months. As we enter deeper into 2021 the horrors visited upon us by the state will increase.
As many know there is a fight to keep the £20 uplift to Universal Credit. What is not often mentioned is that disabled campaigners from Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) and others won a court case challenging the decision that people on disability benefits such as Employment Support Allowance should not get a £20 uplift at all. This was discrimination through benefit status. The Trussell Trust’s report State of Hunger 2021 revealed that 62% of working-age people referred to food banks in early 2020 were disabled – more than three times the rate in the working age population. Since 2013 650,000 disabled people had their Personal Independence Payments reduced or cut completely, and spending on disability welfare this year will be £5bn less than in 2010.
Other than the brief mention on the news of ‘disability benefit cuts’ or those still shielding, disabled people have been abandoned. There has been no serious opposition from the Labour Party, SNP or the trade unions, who have either ignored the plight of disabled people or led the polices which have seen thousands of preventable deaths. When one in five people in the UK are legally classed as disabled, we cannot be ‘for the people’ if we don’t know or understand their plight. In the words of Martin Luther King Jr. ‘there comes a time when silence is betrayal.’ It is time for us all to break that silence.
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! No 283, August/September 2021
