Amanda Finley got interested in archeology when her third grade teacher spent the school year on it. “I just loved it,” she said. Finley decided then that she wanted to become an archeologist, and she did.
I mention smell because I am still recovering my sense of taste post-COVID. It’s been four months. I know of at least one other family member that is still experiencing lingering symptoms. He doesn’t say specifically what is happening, but he is suffering from continued fatigue after two years. The fatigue was better than the alternative- he was in the ICU with his body slowly shutting down. He pulled through , but his recovery has been slow.
It is interesting that the impacts of covid and long covid (about a fifth of cases in the US) are reflected in the developed world largely on the quality of the health system response. Younger kids rarely have long covid anywhere it is tracked. It is partly an age thing, possibly associated with ACE-2 receptor degradation. Japan, which has a large elderly population, notes that no clear definition of long covid yet exists. In Finland, a wider definition would make it the country’s leading chronic disease. One of the problems is that a person can still work and remain in the working life, but just perform more slowly. I have a friend, 70, failed to vaccinate himself, who realized after 3 months that the covid brain fog never really cleared. This makes it extremely hard for him to learn new guitar solos for the band he plays in, but he can still do his daily job as an electrician. He sees himself as working impaired, but still working. Stuff just got harder. From this perspective, given the aging populations of developed economies and certainly the biggest emerging economy – China – long covid is a worry if the country was counting on keeping people longer in the workforce. In any case, China’s zero-covid policies, when seen as a ploy to buy time until this long covid thing is figured out, suddenly looks a lot more sensible. China already accepts huge respiratory damage from coal, knocking an average of 5 years off the average lifespan of a Chinese city-dweller. With the median Chinese age already about four months older than the US, this is a real worry for the planet’s manufacturing hub and most populous country.
I would love to know the percentage of people who suffer from long covid were also obese at the onset of their disease but since those investigators would be accused of “fat shaming” I doubt we will ever know.
Wife had to go to long-distance teaching in her college job due to her Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS) which she developed following her bout with Covid.
No telling how many people have some Long Covid-related issue but doesn’t realize it since they might not associate their problems with the virus.
I know that “Long Covid” has become a name, but I wonder if we should just think about this as “post-Covid disability” and go with the symptoms rather than the cause. Someone with COPD or heart failure subsequent to decades of cigarette consumption doesn’t have “Long Smoking”, they just get treated for the ailments they do have. In cases where the source of the disease is important for treatment, then yes, focus on the source. But otherwise focus on what’s wrong currently. We’ve suddenly got a lot more people disabled, and in coming years/decades we’re going to have even more as lung and kidney and neurological damage lead to fewer reserves against regular aging.
Yeah, dunno how to do that. Maybe start with improving social security disability coverage (on the one hand, there are good reasons to make the process difficult, on the other we really need navigators to help people through it so they don’t get dinged for exactly the things that keep them from working). Ultimately, some kind of assistance so that people can do the jobs they can do (for decent pay) rather than choosing between top fitness and nothing.
(I also think that even those without physical damage are being ground down by the continuing epidemic, and that’s being reflected in work force numbers and in productivity.)
Paid sick leave (and paid vacation too) should be the law. It’s appalling that they’re not.
The Americans with Disabilities Act requires employers to offer disabled workers reasonable accommodations.
I’m not sure how much that would help: one still has to be able to do the actual job. Outdated example, but if you’re a typist and you go blind but can still touch-type, then with the aid of a text-to-voice reader you can ascertain whether you made any mistakes, correct them, and thus be able to do your actual job. The ADA might well require such a reader as a reasonable accommodation.
But if the requirement is that you be able to type 70 WPM and due to brain fog you can only manage 40 WPM, the ADA doesn’t help you: you can’t do the job itself.
Yes, millions of deaths due to COVID were a factor. But, I can’t help but think that four years of anti-immigrant clamp downs under right wing christian racists policies implemented by Skanky were a major factor. Conservative white nationalists and most Republican leaders have stated that immigrants are criminals, terrorists and rapists, not the best people.
Good post. Another thought is, as with polio, is there going to be some post Covid syndrome that reappears years later? The disease is so new that there are no good answers to many of the most basic questions.
It depends – and obviously this is where a lot of new work would be needed. Over the decades, a fair amount of work has been put in determining what job requirements are real, and which are just attempts at gatekeeping. We will need more of that.
I’d also like to see (don’t know how it would be administered safely) something where companies would be compensated for the costs in accomodation or reduced productivity, while the person hired still got the wage they needed.
A lot of the thinking about this depends on whether the US considers itself an impoverished country, where everyone has to justify their place in the lifeboat, or a rich country, where we all have enough to pitch in for those whom life has injured.
Certainly the decline in immigration has affected restaurants and hospitality, food processing, construction particularly home construction and agricultural work. I think this is an underreported part of both job market tightness and inflation. (funny how that went down once the election was over.)
(Well, thank G-d there’s an economic safety net in place for people who lose their ability to earn a living from COVID, because…What’s that? Oh. Never mind.)
Long Covid is the name for post covid disability. The problem is that it is not only one thing. It is many and the symptoms come and go and shift over time. All 4 members of my family got covid in March of 2020 and we have all had some form of long COVID. For my spouse it was lung and cardiac with some neurologic symptoms. For my 18 yr old, nerve, joint and muscle pain. For my 15 yr old, brain fog, joint pain, inflammation, post exertional malaise (PEM) and anxiety/depression, and for me, nerve pain, PEM, chest pain, and brain fog.
It has come in waves. My partner, a C-suite exec was napping in the middle of the day and took out extra life insurance and disability insurance out of fear. I spent 4 out of every 7 days in bed for over a year. My youngest has missed 15 days of school so far this year and is being seen at a long COVID clinic.
No one takes joint pain or brain fog seriously on their own. But they don’t see a 15 yr old struggling to get up the stairs like an 80 yr old or watch a (former) professor in their 40s be unable to find basic words or speak so slowly that other people try to help by finishing sentences b/c it’s so painfully slow.
I have actually heard that some Chinese talk about long COVID providing a competitive advantage for them b/c the west will be debilitated by LC and China’s lockdowns have meant fewer infections.
This is going to affect our economy for decades to come.
Well, that may be aspirational on China’s part as covid infections are at their highest ever despite zero-covid policies. Despite the clumsiness and heavy-handed response in China, there is a longer demographic perspective, perhaps because demography as destiny is at the front of the CPC leadership’s minds these days. The CPC could be seen as the world’s largest corporation or business. It maintains its market dominance through direct intervention and regulation of the economy. Retirement in China, which has very poor public daycare, is allowed as early as 50 for women and 60 for men. Grandparents get the job of daycare for the one or two grandkids. Long covid poses a systemic risk, and there is little to do. Given the carrying capacity of China and massive environmental damage, China would do better with a smaller population. Unfortunately, if you shrink the current population you just get the same high-dependency-ratio mess. Moreover, high covid death rates have been tried. The US death per million population is about 3,300 per million. Finland, which has a functioning public health system, has experienced a death rate of about 1,300 per million. The US could argue that these potential long-term costs have been weeded out by merciful killing by medical incompetence or lack of access, but that’s a pretty ugly argument and not at all cost-effective if the people getting weeded include people still at their prime in terms of social and economic contribution.
The Chinese communist party’s ongoing authoritarian enforcement of zero-COVID is very odd. Makes me very suspicious that they may have known about all the dangers of the virus all along even before it became a deadly global pandemic unleashed on the rest of the unsuspecting world.