The Pandemic After the Pandemic
The world was slow to recognize long COVID as one of the most serious consequences of the coronavirus. Six months into the pathogen’s tear across the globe, SARS-CoV-2 was still considered an acute airway infection that would spark a weeks-long illness at most; anyone who experienced symptoms for longer could be expected to be dismissed by droves of doctors. Now long COVID is written into CDC and WHO documents; it makes a cameo in the newest version of President Joe Biden’s National COVID-19 Preparedness Plan.
But for now , it is still not enough. Researchers still don’t know who’s most at risk, or how long the condition might last; whether certain variants might cause it more frequently, or the extent to which . We do not have a way to fully prevent it. We do not have a way to cure it. We don’t even have a way to really quantify it: There still isn’t consensus on how common long COVID actually is. Its danger feels both amorphous and unavoidable. People already struggle to deal with risks, let alone fuzzy, slippery ones. “You can be too afraid of what you don’t understand or just say, ‘It’s not well defined; I’m not going to think about it,’” says Erin Sanders, a nurse practitioner and clinical scientist at MIT. Concern, when we let it, can act like a
