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The Next Phase of COVID Living
In one way or another COVID-19 impacts your life. For some more than others. Besides extending my hibernation mode fortunately the impact for me is minimal thus far. In some ways I feel SMA has given me a leg up in dealing with this situation. Now that the economy is slowly resuming operation the next phase poses new challenges and concerns.
Not only do I work from home, I utilize online resources. It’s nothing new to me. However I see others struggling with the current limitations. I get it, I really do, but I’ve lived with limitations my entire life. It’s time to get creative. Is it always easy? No. But if you focus on what you can do not what you can’t it can open up a whole new world.
My biggest risk from the virus comes from having outside caregivers. With everything shut down their exposure is limited. Therefore I’m not too concerned. I understand the need for the economy to get rolling again. It irritates me though that the proposed solution is to open everything up and let the high risk individuals stay home. It’s not that simple. Although I can stay home, my caregivers exposure will inevitably go up increasing my risk. But I guess it’s a risk I have to take.
Another concerning issue to me is disability representation. Before all this I feel we were really gaining ground on that front. I don’t want to lose momentum. How can we do that while in isolation? I don’t want our voices to fall silent. I’m confident we’ll prevail as long as we are creative. What are your thoughts?
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1 Reply
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Those are 2 important topics you brought up, like you I am getting more nervous now that my caregivers are doing more out and about in the community, and I just know eventually one of them is going to catch it. Not only will I be without care for however long the recovery is for them, but the risk is very real of them bringing it to me. Can’t social distance too well when asking the caregiver to scratch my mustache. For a while I was having everyone wear a mask while here and wash their hands frequently, especially after using their cell phone or handling mail or something, but after 2 months or so of doing this it just seems so hard to keep up the level of preparedness that we all need to keep it from getting to me. I can be on high alert for 1 maybe 2 weeks, but what we were looking at at least early 2021 before a vaccine is even potentially possible? Honestly, 2 weeks ago I told them to stop wearing masks while they are here, especially now that the weather is getting warmer and I don’t use AC most days. Some of them looked like they were starting to overheat and they seemed miserable. I just need to keep my eye on the cases here in central Ohio to see if we are going to get a major spike like I fear we are going to. I may have to re-implement the disaster plan if it looks like we are heading south.
Your other question about disability representation is a real concern. So many state governments are going to be trying to squeeze extra money out of expensive programs to try to balance budgets in the coming year or so, and there is a much bigger program than Medicaid and waivers for home services. Hopefully they will take a look at the whole institutional nursing home costs and the inherent dangers with warehousing people like that, because I know way more money gets spent there than on home services.
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