Alice Wong (profile alt link) is a disabled activist, writer, editor, and community organizer. Alice is the founder and director of the Disability Visibility Project, an online community dedicated to creating, sharing, and amplifying disability media and culture.” Wong has created many conversation spaces for people to share their disabled experiences and tell their stories proudly.
In January 2024, Wong turned to her audience to seek justice for the lack of COVID precautions and other poor treatment as an immunocompromised patient in the intensive care unit at UCSF Health. In a blog post (alt link), she says, “I call upon you all to help me push for an N95 mask mandate at UCSF Health.” Wong says she delayed going to the hospital to seek treatment for her cracked J-Tube out of worry about potential exposure to the rising J-1 COVID-19 variant. Wong argues that “No one should have to delay care or risk infection from COVID when receiving necessary medical care.”
Her blog post includes the full letter of patient complaint she sent to the Office of Patient Relations at UCSF Health asking for a reinstatement of masking mandates in the hospital. She asks her audience to send a similar email and “demand UCSF Health require that all staff, visitors, and patients wear an N95 mask in all of their locations. ”
She signs her letter: “Alice Wong, a disabled patient that wants UCSF Health to do better.”
-Stephanie Farmer
Backup Media:
Format: Instagram Post
Creator: Alice Wong
Handle: @disability_visibility
Link to Post: https://www.instagram.com/p/C2iRdEIPz7L/
Creation Date: 25 January 2024
Caption Content:
Help me urge @ucsfhealth to require all staff, patients, and visitors to wear N95 masks
#N95s4UCSF
#KeepMasksInHealthcare
Link in bio
My recent column in Teen Vogue about the surge and its impact on me as a high risk disabled person became a terrifying reality when I had a medical emergency that required a visit to the ER and brief hospitalization in the ICU.
Disabled, immunocompromised, and chronically ill people know fully well that the world is not designed for us and how we are often dehumanized and considered burdens by the medical industrial complex. It is an exhausting struggle to be seen and heard while fighting to survive in the face of systemic oppression.
While I was in the hospital I tweeted some of my experiences because I needed to document what was happening and do something while filled with fear.
Writing and organizing is a way to channel my rage and process my medical trauma.
I call upon you all to help me push for a N95 mask mandate at UCSF Health.
No one should have to delay care or risk infection from COVID when receiving necessary medical care.
Image description: A picture of me, an Asian American disabled woman. There is a tracheostomy at my throat connected to a ventilator tube. A white gauze dressing is tucked around the tracheostomy. I am wearing a camouflage jacket. My eyes are swollen after crying uncontrollably for hours and barely able to open. I look miserable.
Captured: 1-July-2024
