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Over the coming weeks and months, first-wavers around the world will observe five years with Long COVID. Many already have. Others with related diseases like myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) — who warned us about the long-term effects of pathogens early in the pandemic —  have been sick for decades.

Despite the overwhelming science finding that COVID-19 impacts nearly every organ system and documenting the risk of reinfection, our federal government and health agency leaders deny and minimize the disease. Abelism and late-stage capitalism propel them as the Trump administration rolls back potential progress and disability protections in what one federal worker recently called “fascist and Orwellian” policies. This moment rings with the chilling reminder of the rise of fascismfollowing the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic.

Today, the name continues to address widespread denialism and minimization. Often media outlets state that Long COVID lasts for only “weeks or months,” or that most cases “resolve.” Unfortunately, neither is the case. 

Many studies have shown that a large majority of people with Long COVID have not recovered. Millions of us are proof that Long COVID can last half a decade, and that it (and related diseases triggered by COVID-19) are lifelong. This mirrors chronic illness from earlier pathogens: a 2021 study about SARS-CoV-1 found that people infected with this virus were still disabled nearly two decades later.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/22857746

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/22813191

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https://archive.ph/23ivb

The gravity of the approaching long Covid pandemic was accurately forecast as early as 2021. Recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reveals that more than 3 million U.S. adults have long Covid with significant limitations in daily activities, and more than 16 million have had the condition. A Brookings study found that long Covid has kept between 2 and 4 million full-time equivalent workers out of the workforce. The mainstream media has regularly featured disheartening stories of the biomedical establishment and society-at-large turning its back to the plight of sufferers and the widespread disillusionment this has caused.

In December 2020, the U.S. government’s involvement in addressing the pandemic of long Covid officially began when Congress allocated $1.15 billion to the National Institutes of Health for research into the lasting health consequences of Covid-19. For people suffering from long Covid, the move offered hope.

Just over four years later, on Feb. 19, President Trump disbanded the Health and Human Services Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Long COVID, as part of an executive order titled “Commencing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy.” After the Biden administration’s tepid involvement and fitful progress in long Covid policy and practice, this decision may signal the end of meaningful federal involvement in mitigating the plight of millions of long Covid sufferers.