"COVID Shouldn't Be The New Normal"

We need more and more articles like this, as well as now-scarce news reports, in order to keep COVID in the public eye so apathetic people are constantly reminded.

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From the Editor’s Desk: COVID Should Not Be the New Normal
By Cassandra Hemenway - August 21, 2024

"This month, ragged from my first bout of COVID, I started to sit up a little straighter at mentions of long COVID. Anyone of any age is susceptible to it if they have had COVID even once, according to the National Institutes of Health.

"It’s not surprising the virus caught up with me: Montpelier’s wastewater tests show high local SARS-CoV-2 virus levels; along with much of the nation, we are in a “surge.”

"On Aug. 15, long COVID commentator Julia Doubleday wrote in her Substack, The Gauntlet, “… infectious disease modeler J.P. Weiland estimates that the US has yet again crossed the million-infections-per-day mark as of Aug. 9, with about one in 33 Americans currently infected with COVID-19.”

"Doubleday laments that few public spaces now require COVID safety measures: “One in 33 means COVID in every restaurant, every supermarket, onboard every airplane, and of course in every hospital — where infection control teams continue to harm and kill vulnerable patients by failing to implement airborne infection control measures.”

“It’s just like a cold!” a young friend told me. Another emailed me to commiserate that I’d finally joined the annual summer COVID bout, for which she sets aside three weeks every year. Is that the new normal?!

"It’s possible my encounter with COVID will begin and end with a few days of flulike symptoms, except I will be masking in public again and watching wastewater data. But for people who are immunocompromised, over 60, or have a variety of other conditions, COVID remains especially dangerous. And, as a woman, I am more susceptible to long COVID: About twice as many women as men get long COVID, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). 

"I live with three immunocompromised people, so when my visiting son and I both got COVID, we took care: we stuck to our isolation chambers, everyone in the house wore masks, we ran air filters 24/7, and we kept windows open despite the humidity and heat.

"It was not the cheerful family visit we had anticipated. But it worked. The other three people in the household did not get infected. Still, with the threat of long COVID looming, I saw this as more than just a cold.

"Little is known about long COVID. The CDC states on its website, it’s “a chronic condition that occurs after SARS-CoV-2 infection and is present for at least three months.” It can manifest with some 200 different symptoms, including severe fatigue, brain fog, and trouble standing up. It can become disabling, in some cases knocking people out of the workforce.

"In June, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine released a 265-page report on long COVID, saying about 7% of U.S. residents have the condition and that most people contract it after a mild — not a severe — bout of COVID. 

"On Aug. 2, Sen. Bernie Sanders introduced a bill to study long COVID, the Long Covid Research Moonshot Act of 2024 (S.4964). Co-sponsored by U.S. Senators Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill), Tim Kaine (D-Va), Ed Markey (D-Miss), Tina Smith (D-Minn), and Peter Welch (D-Vt), it would provide $1 billion in annual funding for 10 years for long COVID research and treatment.

"COVID is not the immediate existential crisis it was back in 2020 and 2021, but the global pandemic is not over. We’ve just stopped paying attention. COVID is still killing Americans routinely; according to the CDC, it was responsible for 1.9% of all deaths during the week ending Aug. 10. And the threat of long COVID is real.

"My game plan was to never get COVID and therefore never have to worry I’d be one of the 7% of people the National Academies estimates end up with longer-term symptoms. That plan ended when I picked up my — unbeknownst to all of us — COVID-infected son from the airport. Asymptomatic people can and do transmit COVID, and within days, he tested positive and I got my first symptoms. Had we masked in the car, which would have been automatic a year or two ago, maybe only one of us would have gotten COVID. We were cavalier because we’ve been lulled into imagining the threat has subsided.

"With millions of Americans currently struggling with long COVID, with the long-term effects so many new disabilities will have on our society, I have to wonder what’s next. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t sign up for that kind of normal."

Jenny Blair contributed to the reporting of this story.