In this blog, I am going to be talking about how the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) pandemic has had an impact on people who identify as being LGBTQ+. This blog is written from the experience and view of myself as a care experienced person who identifies as being gay and who has seen the impact first-hand that the pandemic has had on some of the LGBTQ+ community.
During the pandemic, a lot of us have been impacted in many different ways. From being impacted financially due to either being dismissed from job positions, being left redundant, entering furlow or even working from home, the biggest impact that the pandemic has had is on people’s physical and mental wellbeing (mental health and physical health), but most importantly, the fear that we all had about catching the virus and how it was going to affect us. However, when it comes down to the reality of the pandemic affecting the LGBTQ+ community, there have been many different factors that have been considered and even shown throughout the last three years since the virus was around.
In my experience of being LGBTQ+ and in general of being a typical person who is always on edge and always overthinking everything, the reality of the time during the pandemic was that I was always overthinking the worst case scenario of whether I was going to catch the virus or if I was going to get ill in general. In a publication, it stated that “LGBT+ people have been at risk of COVID-19 because of the reality that our community has higher rates of HIV and cancer than the general population, which means a greater number of us may have compromised immune systems, making us more vulnerable to COVID-19 infections.” (Damshenas & Clark, n.d.)
However, from my opinion, there is more of an issue with the health of people who are LGBTQ+ that is underlined due to massive other factors. For instance, from my experience of having friends both in the LGBTQ+ community and some that do not identify as being LGBTQ+, the majority of those who use substances like alcohol and tobacco are those who are in the LGBTQ+ community, which backs up some information that I found in an online website publication where they stated that “the LGBTQ+ population uses tobacco at rates that are 50% higher than the general population” (Damshenas & Clark, n.d.).
From my own experience of being in the national pandemic and being LGBTQ+, the fear of my health getting worse and deteriorating was dramatically overwhelmed and stressful, as i never knew what i could in fact do or if what i was doing was going to affect my health in ways that i couldn’t imagine, especially the fact of when I was smoking cigarettes and drinking, as for me and a lot of young people, smoking is something that helps us relax and even de-stress when we are stressed out with either work, education or even life in general.
The fear of my health getting worse, was a dramatic impact on my own mental health, but the decision that i made was to cancel all the smoking and drinking till after the pandemic, so I can have a stronger chance to fight this virus that was going around. However, this is not to say that I did not catch it because I did.
The reality of the pandemic was and still is, that we do not know completely why some of us are contracting the virus when following the government rules, and some are not, because this is the unknown… however what we can do is to try and keep our selves safe as much as possible.
To read the article about how LGBTQ+ people are more vulnerable to COVID-19 please visit https://www.gaytimes.co.uk/life/lgbtq-people-are-more-vulnerable-to-coronavirus-for-three-reasons/
By Anonymous Care Experienced Blogger.
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