“โWe are in possibly the second-biggest surge of the pandemic if you look at wastewater levels,โ said Dr. Monica Verduzco-Gutierrez, who runs a long-Covid clinic at the University of Texas, San Antonio, and has had ongoing Covid symptoms since August 2022. โThere is no urgency to this. No news. No discussion in Congress. There is no education.โ
Democrats Canโt Keep Ignoring Covid in 2024
Just a short post today.
Despite being vaccinated four times, I still managed to get COVID-19 during the Alpha Wave, then during the Omicron Wave, and this past Summer with the JN-1 variant.
The good news is that, each time I’ve got COVID, it’s been less and less shitty.
The bad news is, I’m still struggling with long COVID, and like millions of Americans, there are no answers as to what to do about it.
In fact, we’re just pretending that the pandemic is over.
I have a lot of the other Long COVID symptoms you hear about (exercise intolerance, shortness of breath), and ones you don’t.
The most frequent of which is that, every time I get sick with anything, my hips feel like they’re on fire.
For whatever reason, all three times I got COVID it went right to my hips. And that pain seems to return whenever I’m ill with anything, COVID or not.
I’m dealing with that right now. I’m battling food poisoning from a bad burrito, which would otherwise be hilarious. But the thing is, any kind of illness triggers the Long COVID hip pain, and that makes it real hard to do much of anything until it dies down.
I’ll be back to writing more soon.
But it’s a reminder that I was lucky in a lot of respects during the first part of the pandemic. I was employed, for one thing, so insurance wasn’t a problem. And the Alpha Wave I caught was the Seattle Variant, and not the more deadly New York Variant that killed a lot of people in my part of the country.
But that luck has since run out. I’m thankful to have had it when I needed it most.
Over a million people, that we know of, can’t say the same.
Now, the reason why I’m writing this is simple: It is absolutely bonkers to me that all of these people died, millions more are still suffering from the virus, and we’re just not talking about it.
I know I shouldn’t be surprised. But I am. And you should be too.
Because there are millions more people out there still pretending that any discussion of COVID is a political discussion, instead of a public health emergency.
And those people need to be stopped dead in their tracks.
Because if you think the cruel indifference stops with the ill, you’re dead wrong.