'Rosemary Kayess broke her neck when she was 20, causing her to become a quadriplegic, able to move her head but unable to eat and drink unassisted. Now, at 57, she is associate director of the Disability Innovation Institute, chairperson of the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and lectures in international law at the University of New South Wales. With other panellists she appeared on a recent edition of Q&A on ABC TV discussing loneliness. The chair, Hamish MacDonald, asked her how she felt when she heard discussions through this pandemic about critical care triaging systems. She replied that those discussions ‘hit her in the face’, that she realised she had become ‘collateral damage’, that she was no longer ‘real’ in the eyes of people who didn’t think themselves mortally vulnerable to COVID-19, and that she was ‘dispensable’. MacDonald was moved, as were other panellists and members of the audience.' (Introduction)