Tanya contrasts the intense public messaging around acute COVID with the relative silence around long COVID.
Transcript
All of these news briefs that they have given throughout the course of the pandemic, it was not acknowledged that even a mild COVID infection, or, in some cases, even asymptomatic COVID infection, could result in long-term, very debilitating, and very serious illness for many, many people. We repeatedly heard about, you know, “protect the vulnerable and protect the immunocompromised” and … that we needed to protect the intensive care units in the hospitals, and make sure that they didn’t get over capacity with people suffering from acute COVID. And, sure, that is definitely one aspect of the whole COVID-19 pandemic, but they completely ignored the other aspect, which is the long COVID. And it’s a shame that it has taken them up until, basically, this point to even acknowledge that it’s a problem … and with the way that it has been handled so far, and the information that people have been receiving, there’s a lot of people out there that don’t believe in long-COVID at all, like they scoff at it. And they don’t take it seriously, whatsoever, because our policymakers have not made mention of it at all throughout this whole time. They were busy scaring everybody about the acute COVID that could land you in the ICU, but because they made no mention of the fact that it could result in lifelong debilitation, now people are like, “Oh, yeah, sure, whatever.” You know, “I haven’t heard of this before. I’ve never heard of this.”
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- Advice to Policy Makers – TanyaTanya contrasts the intense public messaging around acute COVID with the relative silence around long COVID.
- Support From Employers, Colleagues, and Worker’s Compensation Boards – TanyaTanya can't understand why her coworkers are able to set their own schedules but her illness can't be accommodated.
- Advice to Healthcare Providers – TanyaTanya urges doctors to actively listen to patients.
- Impacts on Children and Parenting – TanyaTanya worries about the burden long COVID puts on her children.
- Impacts on Partners and Households – TanyaTanya's husband is now the one who has to do it all.
- Psychosocial Impacts – TanyaTanya grieves the healthy, mobile person she used to be.