Kathleen Stock thinks young women's use of walking sticks might be due to "social contagion", according to her recent Times column.
My first thought was: _if_ it's true there are more young people using sticks nowadays, maybe they
a) have Long Covid
b) are less ableist on average than previous generations, so they don't mind using mobility aids if one would be helpful.
Then I looked up the actual article,
(https://archive.ph/uNwyn if you must)
and sure enough, she says
"When you dig into their explanations, a few officially medical-sounding words tend to recur: postural tachycardia, joint hypermobility, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue."
Postural tachycardia and chronic fatigue are classic Long Covid symptoms, so nothing _there_ to contradict my theory.
She goes on,
"What these syndromes all share is a set of non-specific symptoms, versions of which are familiar to all of us: dizziness, a racing heart, exhaustion, brain fog, muscle pain."
Yes, but if you know anything about it, you know that the everyday versions are significantly different from the disability versions. That's why we give the disability versions different names.
It's also very odd to refer to postural tachycardia as having "non-specific" symptoms, when it's literally measurable in numbers.
Anyone who feels worse when they stand up or sit up, here's a test you can do at home, if you're well enough to stand for 10 minutes:
https://batemanhornecenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/NASA-Lean-Test-Instructions-1.pdf
(Edited to add: if you _can't_ stand for 10 mins, or if it's risky because you might faint, look into "tilt table test".)
Also, the fact is, among people with Long Covid, women are significantly more likely than men to have postural tachycardia syndrome in the mix:
"We prospectively analyzed 467 nonhospitalized, highly symptomatic (sick leave ≥50%) patients with long COVID, and studied differences in demographics and clinical assessment outcomes between those diagnosed with POTS and the remaining long COVID patients. Patients with POTS were younger (mean age, 40.0 versus 44.0 versus 47.0 years, respectively; P≤0.001) and predominantly female (91%)."
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCEP.124.013629
#ableism #KathleenStock #disability #LongCovid
