photo courtesy of Pixabay user RachelBostwick
(SEATTLE) As COVID-19 numbers rise elsewhere in the country, they have remained fairly level here in Washington. The angst and worry of contracting the virus have been replaced with an eagerness to move forward, and return to “life as it was” before the pandemic.
For the majority of us who test COVID positive, we have symptoms, we heal, and we move forward.
For 20% of us, the story is very different. 24-MILLION Americans still deal with long COVID, a condition the weakens the body physically and mentally for months, and sometimes years.
Doctor Helen Chu at UW Medicine is a local lead for a national study called RECOVER, designed to examine the effects of long COVID, as well as treat it. Chu tells the Times the attention and response to long COVID has not been proportional to the urgency of the problem.
“It feels like this massive disabling event that’s happening and people are not acknowledging it,” Chu tells the Times.
For long COVID sufferer Robin Jackson of Duvall, seeing test sites close, dashboards go dark, and people acting like COVID’s no big deal anymore is concerning.
After all, she’s been dealing with it since March of 2020.