Despite the world’s progress, coronavirus remains a problem

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Four years ago, a virus brought daily life in the United States to a screeching halt. On March 15, 2020, authorities in New York City, Ohio and other states announced some of the first urban lockdowns and curfews in 100 years, which quickly spread across the United States, much like the coronavirus itself. It spread to

By March 2021, candlelight vigils and virtual memorial services were held across the country as people remembered the approximately 530,000 Americans who have died from COVID-19 and reflected on the collective grief that has emerged since the first year of the pandemic. It provided a place to process trauma. It is hard to believe that today the death toll will rise to more than 1.8 million. Not only are the numbers staggering, but the immense human cost of the virus is quickly being forgotten.

After four years of testing guidelines, travel restrictions, and event cancellations, most Americans are — understandably — already done with it. This includes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which recently eliminated the previously recommended five-day isolation period after a positive COVID-19 test, and has removed the previously recommended five-day isolation period after a positive COVID-19 test. advocated a “pan-respiratory” approach that could also be applied to

This basically means that a person who is experiencing symptoms of a respiratory virus (malaise, fever, chills, cough, etc.) can return to normal symptoms after 24 hours of feeling “generally better” or no longer having a fever. This means you can resume your activities. It’s a peacemaker that ignores the possibility of contagion and doesn’t think about who might be exposed to what a healthy person would perceive as a mild illness, or the potential long-term effects of an infectious disease. It’s a return to the everyday.

For some, the CDC’s announcement effectively signaled the end of the pandemic, a release from the last vestiges of Covid-era restrictions: the obligation to protect others from infecting Covid or other respiratory viral diseases. Felt. But millions of Americans living with Long COVID, including myself, don’t have the luxury of moving forward.

We are trapped in a broken body that, despite living in it for four years, is still hard to recognize as our own. Many of us are immunocompromised. Some people become immunocompromised for the first time, while others have lived with other chronic illnesses for years. It has cost us our careers, sources of income, homes, relationships, and in some cases our identities. And now, as more and more people consider COVID-19 a problem of the past, those of us who have been infected with the long coronavirus worry about an uncertain future.

No matter how you look at it, I should have been hospitalized during my first acute infection with COVID-19. But it was the first week of April 2020, and I wasn’t alone in Queens, spending hours each day choking on shallow breaths to suck in just enough air to survive.

At my local hospital, patients are spilling into hallways and tents, and sympathetic but exhausted clinicians on the other side of the city’s coronavirus hotline are telling us that unless they’ve completely stopped breathing, They told me to stay home and I was considered a “presumptive positive” case, although I was not eligible for a test. When my symptoms didn’t go away, I called back a month later and was fired for the first of many reasons. I was told that I couldn’t have been infected because Covid-19 only lasts two weeks. After all, it’s the new coronavirus.

As a bioethicist, I came into the pandemic well aware of the ethical challenges that can arise during a public health emergency, but I had no idea that the hypothetical case studies I taught in class would play out in real life. I didn’t expect it. I started interviewing him in February 2020, and by June we were working on our first assignments on what would become known as “Long Corona.”

Over the course of several months, I contracted the novel coronavirus in early spring and sought medical care after experiencing new symptoms and symptoms for at least a month, which were simply the result of aging, anxiety, obesity, or all of the above. I spoke with other people who were informed that in our heads. (According to the authors of a review of 30 studies published on March 5 that assessed their experiences, things have not necessarily gotten better for doctors and other health care workers living with long-term COVID-19. “I felt dismissed or not taken seriously by my physician,” in the journal 2024. Pro Swan. )

Surprisingly, four years later, it can still be difficult to find doctors with even a basic understanding, let alone a comprehensive understanding, of the long coronavirus and its myriad effects on the body and brain. Hospitals across the country have clinics that specialize in treating long-term coronavirus patients, but it is not uncommon for it to take several months to get an appointment.

“There are not enough clinics to serve everyone who needs help, especially vulnerable patients,” said Dr. McConlogue, co-director of Stanford University’s Acute Post-COVID-19 Syndrome Clinic. says Linda Genn, MD, clinical assistant professor of medicine and population health. at Stanford University.

Some existing clinics, like those at Stanford University, are partnering with community health initiatives and primary care providers to expand services and support for Long-COVID patients, while other programs across the country are using critical funding. patients and are forced to impose restrictions on new patients. They will either accept the services they offer or close the door completely.

Geng said another major challenge for health care workers trying to care for Long Covid patients is that there is still no single FDA-approved treatment for the range of symptoms and conditions. “We lack good tools to treat patients,” says Geng. rolling stone. “While research is progressing, there is an urgent need to find effective and safe treatments for long coronavirus.”

For example, consider the neurological symptoms of the long coronavirus, such as cognitive dysfunction, fatigue, dizziness, and headaches. This can be most disruptive and destructive to our careers, relationships, and other aspects of life. Researchers currently have a partial understanding of what causes post-COVID-19 “brain fog” and how the virus “leaves an inflammatory footprint in the brain, its cells, blood vessels, and other structures.” Dr. Anna Nordvig, a neurologist at Weill Hospital, says. Cornell Medicine research groups are currently investigating biomarkers that could be used for future diagnosis and treatment.

In the meantime, doctors are trying to help people infected with long coronavirus manage their symptoms with what’s available. “The last four years have been spent repurposing all the drugs and treatments from many medical fields,” Nordvig says. rolling stone.

But providing effective treatments and comprehensive care to people living with Long-Corona is another thing. Whether you can afford them or not is another matter. In addition to high medical costs in the U.S., many people who have contracted the coronavirus develop physical and neurological symptoms that make them unable to work at least as well as they could before contracting the coronavirus. There is.

Technically, Long Covid has been recognized as a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) since July 2021, but as I reported in October, the law and its protections apply to the person. It is up to the person’s employer to decide whether or not to do so. The extent of the impact on the U.S. workforce and economy is not yet known, but at least two studies suggest that the impact of the pandemic has put about 4 million people out of work, resulting in about $200 billion in wage losses each year. It is estimated that However, the economic burden of the long coronavirus remains widely ignored.

“There’s been a lot of talk about supply chains, worker shortages and debt defaults, but no one wants to talk about the fact that a significant portion of the workforce has died or been disabled by coronavirus.” says Froglett Taylor, who was the first to sign. Due to the novel coronavirus infection in March 2020, I lost my home as well as my job.

I first interviewed Taylor for a February 2022 article about the long coronavirus and housing insecurity. And now, more than two years later, they are “still living in miraculously tarpaulin shacks under the same tree” on a dead-end street near the Astrodome in Houston, Texas. Last summer, they changed their first names to Froglets to cope with the coronavirus “forever changing” their lives and identities. “I needed to differentiate between who I was before, a barely recognizable person anymore, and who I was now,” Taylor explains.

Since then, their attempts to access government services have continued to fail. “Most of us are still without help, largely because there is no test or established diagnostic criteria for long coronavirus,” Taylor said. rolling stone. “Without that, it would be impossible to claim disability support unless you happen to have a qualifying secondary diagnosis.”

Lacking that aid, as well as financial support from partners, family and friends, many people affected by COVID-19, including Taylor, are relying on crowdfunding to cover medical costs and necessities like food and housing. relying on ding. This includes Gwen Bishop, who has been living with long coronavirus since January 2022. @LongCovidAidBotan automated account on X (formerly Twitter) to share crowdfunding campaigns and mutual aid requests.

“Long-term COVID-19 is costly and debilitating, especially for gig workers who were underpaid or exploited before becoming disabled,” Bishop said. rolling stone. “With no viable social support in the United States, workers whose health has been sacrificed are left to rot and die. In my community, the last tweet was a crowdfunding request. , it is becoming heartbreakingly common for people to die unfulfilled.”