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I'm curious what qualifies as a "permanent disability". I was shocked to find out that ADHD qualified as a disability that would let you get Paxlovid. To verif
by btilly 3y ago
I'm curious what qualifies as a "permanent disability".
I was shocked to find out that ADHD qualified as a disability that would let you get Paxlovid. To verify, go to https://www.paxlovid.com/who-can-take https://www.paxlovid.com/who-can-take and click on "Disabilities". But having seen that, I'm tempted to tell my son that he might be able to get a free lifetime pass.
But that opens up a question. Have we as a society come to define disabilities so broadly that the term has basically become meaningless?
- JambalayaJim 3y agoI would definitely consider ADHD as a debilitating disability.
- burkaman 3y agoNo we haven't, and ADHD is disabling for many people in a meaningful way. The criteria here is that a doctor says it is permanent and it "limits one or more aspects of their daily life". It is also supposed to be a "severe" limitation, but I doubt someone with ADHD would be interrogated about this, everyone involved just wants more people to visit the parks.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoI think the implication of the parent poster is that it's difficult to imagine why ADHD could put you at increased COVID risk to the point of needing Paxlovid. That makes no sense to me but I'm all ears as to the logic here.
- munk-a 3y agoADHD makes it more difficult to support yourself independently, live a "normal life" and keep a steady income - so for pretty much the same reasons as most of the other disabilities.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoAgain, I see 0 relation between this and Paxlovid. There are about a million things that make it difficult to support yourself: being newly divorced is a huge hardship, as is being newly laid off, as is not having health insurance in the US (see today's stories about Mary Lou Retton needing to crowdfund for her medical care on GoFundMe). Point being, if that's the bar, they should get rid of the nonsense requirement of needing a "disability" to get Paxlovid. Otherwise they should restrict it to disabilities that actually have a medically demonstrated increased risk of severe illness or death from COVID.
- WendyTheWillow 3y agoStubbing your toe makes it harder to walk up stairs, but we still build ramps and elevators for people in wheelchairs.
- munk-a 3y agoThis is just an American with ADHD who emigrated to Canada speaking but... yea, why don't we lower the bar and remove that nonsense requirement. It'd be great if everyone who needed help could get it in a reasonable manner. Maybe you have severe mobility issues and need physical assistance showering and doing daily hygiene tasks - maybe you're a neurotypical person who just lost a family member, went through a rough divorce and was diagnosed with cancer all in the same week. It'd be great if there was social assistance to help you out - especially if you weren't shamed for using them. But, specifically on the topic of Paxlovid, ADHD people tend to have less stable, shorter and poorer lives - there is a strong correlation between the illness and the need for financial assistance. ADHD people tend to also be less proactive about health issues and delay treatment more than normal people (because going to the doctor is hard and there are so many considerations) so perhaps the Paxlovid allowance is because people with ADHD are more likely to have more advanced COVID cases - I can't tell you why they made that decision but those are two pretty solid reasons to consider it.
- user_7832 3y ago> There are about a million things that make it difficult to support yourself: being newly divorced is a huge hardship, as is being newly laid off, as is not having health insurance in the US (see today's stories about Mary Lou Retton needing to crowdfund for her medical care on GoFundMe). Don't disagree with any of these also being very significant, personally I wouldn't mind if these folks also got the pax. But a. these aren't considered "permanent" in the general sense (you can get rehired/remarried), and b. permanent disabilities are much "easier" for a govt to classify than to spend resources everytime someone needed assistance And > Otherwise they should restrict it to disabilities that actually have a medically demonstrated increased risk of severe illness or death from COVID. ADHD does have a medically increased risk of severe illness or death from COVID. Perhaps not "directly" like someone on immunosuppressants, but as someone w/ adhd and another chronic health condition (T1 diabetes), adhd makes it several times more difficult to handle my health (and T1D has life threatening complications within arm's reach of poor management).
- burkaman 3y agoWithout looking it up, I can imagine the cognitive effects of Covid might be more severe for someone with ADHD. After looking it up, it seems there is some association between ADHD and worse outcomes: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/10870547211003659 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/10870547211003.... It's also possible that ADHD makes it more difficult to scrupulously comply with self-quarantine measures, in which case it's a good public health decision to make Paxlovid available and reduce community spread. I'm not actually sure if Paxlovid reduces transmission though.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoThanks very much, that's the kind of medically appropriate implication I was looking for: "Conclusion: ADHD is associated with poorer outcomes in COVID-19 infection."
- btilly 3y agoI'm sure that ADHD is comorbid with a variety of lifestyle and health problems that make COVID somewhat worse. But in general it does not directly affect health. Why not simply provide it to those with the comorbidities? I consider community spread mostly a nonissue. We've known for many decades that if you can't get the replication rate below 1, the correlation between replication rate and how many get it is chaotic. We can't get the replication rate of COVID below 1, so there is little correlation between policies and outcomes. Obviously this does not apply if you are at risk or a caregiver of someone at risk. That's why saner countries than the USA (Germany is my favorite example) do not recommend vaccination against COVID for the general public.
- burkaman 3y ago> Why not simply provide it to those with the comorbidities? I don't know, I would guess because they're harder to define and doctors generally diagnose conditions rather than individual symptoms or behaviors.
- jwiz 3y ago> Require close contact with those who may be infected, such as a caregiver or family member
- swatcoder 3y ago> Have we as a society come to define disabilities so broadly that the term has basically become meaningless? We’re getting close, but it’s okay. Expansion of the term has helped people and we’ll eventually come up with new common language to distinguish more and less catastrophic forms of disability.
- munk-a 3y agoI disagree - I think as a culture we're coming closer to realizing that everyone needs help sometime and that we should have social programs available to help with that. Some people need more access to those programs than other people and some people have specific needs that others don't - we should just help people in their time of need, make things more accessible, and remove the social shaming associated with it
- swatcoder 3y agoSure, except you’re not disagreeing. :) If disability now means needing help, and help is something that everybody needs sometime, then disability really refers to everybody at some time. And inasmuch as everybody should have the help they need, and statute already says that disabled people can get help, it works out well in practice. Everybody can claim that they’re disabled when they’re disabled and get the help they need. Sounds great! But disabled used to mean something much more narrow and uncommon, and there’s still going to be need to find new language for that.
- munk-a 3y agoThat is extremely difficult to provide a blanket term for - we're talking about such a wide spectrum of issues when we use the 90's definition of disabled. That would include people who are perfectly neurotypical but require physical assistance (i.e. someone with arthritis who needs ramps to change elevation at a reasonable speed), people who are neurodivergent but perfectly physically able and everyone inbetween. A lot of those folks just went unserved in the old system and struggled financially to keep themselves alive and fed while walking a much harder road than the rest of us. I think a blanket term for disability isn't useful and it's much more productive to focus on forms of impairment - there's no real similarity in treatment and support between a person who was hit by a car and needs a wheelchair and someone otherwise normal looking who is prone to sudden violent outbursts due to a neurological disorder. And, unfortunately, one of those people is much more likely to be looked on with sympathy and the other shamed and feared - but both of them can live normal lives with proper care.
- chownie 3y agoI believe more that we've grown to understand how debilitating ADHD can be and that is why it's considered a disability. Consider how it affects people's life trajectory through school and work, the opportunities out of reach due to the condition. It's essentially a situational cognitive impairment, when I think about it that way it seems profoundly disabling.
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- system2 3y agoPeople think disability as having no leg or being blind. If you ask any random gen-z, they will tell you they have ADHD. That's why ADHD as a disability lost its weight.
- JauntyHatAngle 3y agoHave they been diagnosed medically? Because plenty of people say they are OCD too, but they don't mean the diagnosed condition. And it's quite different to "being tidy and needing things to be ordered" that the common vernacular makes it out to be. Same as ADHD. Plenty of people who say they are "a bit ADD" mean something else.
- cornstalks 3y agoGiven how common it was (still is?) to abuse Adderall in college, I'm going to go out on a limb and say a lot of people have been "diagnosed" with ADHD, but that doesn't necessarily mean much.
- btilly 3y agoMy very strong belief is that a large fraction of those who are "medically diagnosed" do not actually have ADHD. ADHD was originally a diagnosis of exclusion - lack of executive control not explainable by any other known condition. But you can lack executive control for a wide variety of reasons including depression, sleep deprivation, electrolyte imbalances, and so on. Often doctors don't look - they just shove you out the door with Adderall. The side effects of which include loss of appetite and insomnia - both of which can make symptoms worse in the long run! If we're going to treat ADHD as the serious disorder that it can be, we should treat diagnosis and treatment as more than an opportunity to prescribe profitable drugs. But instead we have a combination of on the one hand not taking it seriously, and on the other treating it like something serious at the oddest of moments.
- Fleusal 3y agoBeing American should be considered a disability.
- Eumenes 3y agoHuh so i can get an ADHD diagnosis in 30 mins for cost of an office visit, and get a free lifetime pass to national parks? Pretty based
- ajross 3y agoSorta, in exactly the same way you can get an oxycodone prescription in 30 minutes for the cost of an office visit and flip it on the street for cash. What you're positing is just medical fraud. And, sure, it happens. But not for park passes.
- Eumenes 3y agoGetting diagnosed with ADHD because you "can't focus" is comically easy. Millions of college kids, software engineers, investment bankers, and kitchen staff do it every year.
- ajross 3y agoPer a quick google, only $9M adults in the US are even estimated to have ADHD, in total. Much less diagnosed, and certainly not per year. You're parroting something you imagined someone to have said. In practice genuine clinical diagnoses aren't at all common. It's certainly not a "rare" disorder, but it's not remotely abused or abusable in the way you imagine.
- Eumenes 3y ago> Data from the analytics and research company IQVIA shows that the demand for Adderall has risen nearly 27% in recent years, with prescriptions jumping from 35.5 million in 2019 to 45 million last year. Probably even higher now. That's nearly 15% of the population. Are stimulants like Adderall prescribed for conditions that aren't ADHD? Do ADHD diagnosis not include medication? My point was stimulants are being abused and are easily acquired (in the name of ADHD).
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- WesternWind 3y agoThe Paxlovid.com website is from the for profit company Pfizer, which makes Paxlovid, so yes, they'll list every kind of disability that could conceivably be a reason to take paxlovid and make them money. But yeah ADHD can count as a disability, in some people. That's based not what you have, but if what you have substantially limits at least one major life activity.
- btilly 3y agoWhile they publish that list, they did not come up with it. That list is from the emergency use authorization granted by the FDA. You're free to guess whether the FDA is basing that on science, politics, or corruption. I've seen sufficient evidence that they do all three that I don't have a strong opinion. (In this case, I don't think that the science is there.)
- vikingerik 3y agoAt the very least, we should be aware of potentially perverse incentives. The more we reward disability, the more incentive there is to get yourself declared as disabled.
- interactivecode 3y agoHopefully it will be an equal amount of incentive for people with undiagnosed disabilities to get diagnosed and receive treatment or support. Even if just to be productive members of society for longer!
- olalonde 3y ago> Have we as a society come to define disabilities so broadly that the term has basically become meaningless? I would say so. There ought to be a distinction between losing your legs and having ADHD. Most people with ADHD don't even know they have it. And it's also incredibly easy to fake.
- interactivecode 3y agoThere is a difference one is only physical and the other is cognitive. As long as we have qualified doctors diagnose disabilities, I‘m quite sure the actual amount of faking or fraud will be negligible.
- olalonde 3y agoTo take another example, schizophrenia is in a whole different league than ADHD and arguably worse, or on par with, losing one's legs. > As long as we have qualified doctors diagnose disabilities, I‘m quite sure the actual amount of faking or fraud will be negligible. There is a ton of people who get prescribed Adderall for its cognitive enhancement properties. It's incredibly easy to get diagnosed[0]. [0] https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/mouse-man/201007/new-study-claims-it-is-easy-fake-adhd https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/mouse-man/201007/n...
- chownie 3y ago"there were a ton of people who did" you mean, this source is over a decade old and the diagnostic criteria have been updated since
- olalonde 3y agoStill an issue today. > 55% were classified by the SAMS as likely to be malingering or exaggerating their symptoms. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10550887.2020.1732762 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10550887.2020.17... (2020)
- JauntyHatAngle 3y agoADHD can be debilitating when severe. It's a truly awful condition that is not the "can't concentrate need to play games all day!" Condition the 00's characterised it as.
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