Paul Alexander, the last person on Earth living in an iron lung after surviving polio as a child, was just killed by covid. The shame of it. Nothing quite sums up the hegemonic project of covid normalization, and the total disregard for the lives of the vulnerable, like a polio survivor being killed by covid.
Why was someone still living in an iron lung for that long? Was there really no way to build this person a portable assisted breathing contraption so he/she could have a life? Seems unnecessarily cruel in this day and age.
He was able to move about without it via “frog breathing,” but needed the iron lung to sleep.
Read in an article that he chose to keep using it as he was so used to it