Atlantic is the coronapanic gift that keeps on giving. The laptop class migrates from chronic Lyme to Long COVID highlights our summer gift from this magazine. “Medium COVID Could Be the Most Dangerous COVID” (October 11, by Dr. Karen) is our fall gift.
I am still afraid of catching COVID. As a young, healthy, bivalently boosted physician, I no longer worry that I’ll end up strapped to a ventilator, but it does seem plausible that even a mild case of the disease could shorten my life, or leave me with chronic fatigue, breathing trouble, and brain fog.
Rather, [the ravages of COVID] emerge during the middle phase of post-infection, a stretch that lasts for about 12 weeks after you get sick. This period of time is so menacing, in fact, that it really ought to have its own, familiar name: medium COVID.
Dr. Karen has plenty of company in the halls of medicine:
Yet many have inferred that COVID’s dangers have no end. “What’s particularly alarming is that these are really life-long conditions,” Ziyad Al-Aly, the lead researcher on the veterans studies, told the Financial Times in August. A Cleveland Clinic cardiologist has suggested that catching SARS-CoV-2 might even become a greater contributor to cardiovascular disease than being a chronic smoker or having obesity.
The last point shows how great Science is. Consider a 300 lb. human who has spent the last 2.5 years Following the Science by staying home and snacking, thus avoiding catching SARS-CoV-2. Compare to Novak Djokovic, who has been infected with the deadly virus at least once. A layperson might imagine that Djokovic is healthier than the couch whale, but Science tells us that the 300 lb. Playstation hero is the better insurance bet. (The Biden Administration agrees, which is why the plague-ridden unvaccinated Djokovic is still banned from entering the United States.)
COVID is so deadly that people are dying before they can be dragged to the hospital:
By the end of the Omicron surge last winter, one in four Americans—about 84 million people—had been newly infected with the coronavirus. This was on top of 103 million pre-Omicron infections. Yet six months after the surge ended, the number of adult emergency-room visits, outpatient appointments, and hospital admissions across the country were all slightly lower than they were at the same time in 2021, according to an industry report released last month. In fact, emergency-room visits and hospital admissions in 2021 and 2022 were lower than they’d been before the pandemic.
Keep wearing your cloth mask inside the world’s most packed art museums:
The pervasiveness of medium COVID does nothing to negate the reality of long COVID—a calamitous condition that can shatter people’s lives. Many long-haulers experience unremitting symptoms, and their cases can evolve into complex chronic syndromes like ME/CFS or dysautonomia. As a result, they may require specialized medical care, permanent work accommodations, and ongoing financial support. Recognizing the small chance of such tragic outcomes could well be enough to make some people try to avoid infection or reinfection with SARS-CoV-2 at all costs.
Long COVID is real and we should expect an expansion of deficit spending to feed the author’s industry, plus tons of money shoveled out to those who spend years at home with Netflix and Xbox. “At all costs” means go to the theme park, get into a packed airliner for a vacation rather than drive, go to the grocery store in person rather than having a Latinx essential worker deliver, etc., while wearing the simple cloth or surgical masks that Dr. Fauci suggested in the spring of 2020. Here’s someone avoiding COVID on October 10, 2022 at the Louvre (fortunately, the ventilation system got a big upgrade during the reign of Emperor Napoleon III):
And here’s a simple mask blocking SARS-CoV-2 in what turned out to be the least crowded room within the Versailles chateau:
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