Disability historian and activist Jaipreet Virdi tweeted in January 2022 about the postponement of her surgery to remove a cancerous ovarian tumor as a result of a new wave of Covid-19 hospitalizations. Elective surgeries, and sometimes critical surgeries, have routinely been postponed in hospitals across the U.S. during the pandemic. Reasons include large numbers of unvaccinated patients requiring intensive care during coronavirus waves; staffing shortages as doctors and nurses are reassigned to Covid units or test positive for Covid themselves; and protecting surgical patients from infection. —Mara Mills
