Denying the Seriousness of Long COVID Is Dangerous for Me – and You
What is Long COVID? Are there treatments? A guide to the illness that affects millions, but is hardly talked about.
Imagine a disease impacting an estimated 400 million individuals worldwide. A disease that experts calculate has an annual economic impact of $1 trillion dollars, or 1% of the entire global economy. Imagine that this disease comes from a common virus – one so common you might catch it at the supermarket, at school, or on the bus. Imagine that recent studies have shown that this virus – the one that’s everywhere you go – can linger in your body for more than a year after infection.
Now imagine having to raise awareness for this disease because so few people believe it is serious, much less understand the ongoing impacts.
That’s exactly the situation for Long COVID patients like me and advocacy groups, who first designated Long COVID Awareness Day on March 15, 2023. In the two years since, progress has been slow.
Despite the tireless efforts of researchers and patients, major media outlets and powerful political leaders have continually downplayed the risks of COVID-19 while pushing people “back to normal.” With zero approved treatments for the condition, little public knowledge, almost no effort to prevent new COVID infections, and the Trump administration now moving rapidly to shut down medical research, the situation remains dire.
What Is Long COVID?
The definition of Long COVID is broad; it’s an umbrella term that encompasses an array of health problems following COVID-19. Experts at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) worked together on a consensus definition:
“Long COVID (LC) is an infection-associated chronic condition (IACC) that occurs after SARS-CoV-2 infection and is present for at least 3 months as a continuous, relapsing and remitting, or progressive disease state that affects one or more organ systems.”
In Nature Medicine, the authors of a paper titled ‘Long COVID science research and policy’ elaborate:
“Long COVID is a complex, multisystem disorder that affects nearly every organ system, including the cardiovascular system, the nervous system, the endocrine system, the immune system, the reproductive system, and the gastrointestinal system.”
What Does the Research Say So Far?
Mentions of the condition in popular press often default to listing symptoms rather than discussing what is actually going wrong in patients’ bodies, and seem to purposely obscure how much we’ve already learned about Long COVID. While the disease is labelled “mysterious” and “puzzling,” ongoing scientific progress has identified a wealth of biological abnormalities in patients' bodies.
As of today, Long COVID researchers have a few leading hypotheses for the underlying problems that lead to the development of the disease.