Rebecca Vallas (’09), Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and host of the Off-Kilter podcast, was quoted in an LA Times column regarding the barriers to benefits and backlog created by pandemic closures and how disability rights advocates are urging Social Security to develop guidelines for recognizing long-haul COVID (“We’re Facing a Tidal Wave of COVID-Related Disability Cases, and We’re Not Ready,” Mar. 8). “People with disabilities that are harder to substantiate with medical evidence on paper are the people who systematically get left out, no matter how disabled they really are.” Rebecca also noted the heightened vulnerability of low-income and gig workers who don’t have enough of an employment history to qualify for Social Security disability.