Long COVID is an enduring symptom of an initial infection that can endure for many months. There are a wide range of symptoms, including unshakeable tiredness and fatigue that does not rest with sleep. New Zealand Herald warns completely relaxing public health measures could generate a large number of these cases. Could Long COVID be a mass disability event it wondered?
A Pulitzer Prize Winner Warns Mass Disability Is Underway
Science writer Ed Yong has been covering symptoms of post COVID infections since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020. That was when tens of thousands of ‘long haulers’ across the world began reporting debilitating symptoms. Some of their troubles surfaced after they recovered from their initial illness.
‘Since then, I’ve received hundreds of messages from people who have been suffering for months,’ he explains. ‘They are alone, unheard and pommeled by unrelenting and unpredictable symptoms.’ The 19-member Pulitzer Prize Board awarded him the 2021 Prize for explanatory reporting.
Those must have been difficult days for him, reporting a news story the world preferred did not exist. Ed Yong is still trying to convince us Long COVID could become a mass disability event. Or rather should we say is becoming one, for those who are willing to listen to the evidence?
The Evidence Long COVID Is Becoming a Mass Disability Event
Wikipedia suggests a conservative 20% of COVID sufferers experience one or more symptoms between three and six months after diagnosis. Therefore, it seems impossible to disagree with Ed Long’s assessment that Omicron Long COVID will affect tens of millions of people worldwide.
‘The scale of such a mass disability event is truly hard to imagine,’ he says. ‘And it is appalling that we are forced to imagine it, because two years on Long COVID still isn’t being counted. Many long-haulers are still being ignored. There are not many scientists who study these conditions.’ We wonder why. Is it because we can’t see the pain.
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