Landes Talks to The Atlantic About People With Disability, COVID

February 11, 2022

The Atlantic

Scott Landes

Sociology Department

Aging Studies Institute

Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion and Population Health

COVID-19

Disability

United States

The Atlantic

Scott Landes

Balancing the need for care and the stress of dependence on people who might infect you with COVID-19 is just one more way the pandemic is concentrating risk among the most vulnerable. The pandemic’s earliest months offered a bittersweet hope that COVID might open more people’s eyes to the challenges people living with disabilities face, through firsthand experience. “I shared, along with many other people with disability, the hope that this time may increase awareness,” Scott Landes, associate professor of sociology, says. “It seemed like for a while we were in this together.” But that moment has passed. “It has underscored the fact that the system is broken,” says Landes, who, along with his colleagues, has studied how the risks, sacrifices and tolls of the pandemic have been concentrated among some of the groups most likely to need in-home help. Read more in The Atlantic article, "Vaccine Hesitancy Has Seeped Into Home Health Care."