Long Covid and Unemployment

While sitting in the Emergency Room with my son I was privy to many nearby conversations and happenings – whether I wanted to overhear them or not. Some were tragic, some sad, some semi-comical, and then of course there was the obligatory mental case – a screaming woman in one of the special locking rooms with a camera.

It was interesting to discover that people were turning up at the hospital with strange symptoms and conditions that defied normal diagnosis. Exhaustion, a tendency to pass out, heart and respiratory problems, persistent headaches, and so forth were the order of the day and I could hear the frustration in the voices of the doctors as they were at loss to figure out what was ailing these people.

That's when I heard 'Post-Covid Clinic' for the first time. Later while at home I looked it up and found that these clinics have appeared in many cities and these doctors were referring patients to these newly formed treatment centers. In other words, the many people suffering from forms of 'Long Covid' exhibit a range of symptoms that defy traditional diagnoses and treatments and the volume is such that they're creating new treatment centers – it's almost developing into a specialty all its own. We've been hearing about Long Covid in the news and I know some people affected by it, but here I was experiencing the medical side of it by overhearing these conversations on the other side of the curtain and out in the hallway.

Emergency Rooms are packed and overwhelmed and this also has been a source of confusion and mystery. The last I saw of the waiting room, there were people packed in, even lying on the floor. Undoubtedly it's a combination of things coalescing – people leaving things untreated during the Covid era, sometimes the result of optional procedures and routine screenings being delayed. In not a few cases small and manageable problems have turned acute. Then, there are the staffing shortages which are clogging up the system. If there aren't enough available nurses, patients can't be (legally) admitted and as a consequence they're stuck in ER limbo – waiting sometimes for days to get a room. This happened to us last fall with our daughter. She needed to be admitted to a city hospital but it was full and we were stuck in the rural hospital ER for days. We were on the verge of voluntarily discharging her and driving her to the city hospital in order to move things along. The only reason we didn't is that to show up at the city ER, we would have effectively lost our place in line and would have to start the process over. But we believed it was more likely that in triage we'd get some attention and get put on the fast track. We were seriously considering it – discharging against the advice of the doctors in order to drive her up to the city, when at last a room became available and she was transported there and admitted. Thankfully she was treated and released after only a couple of days.

So after delayed treatments and procedures, and shortages leading to a backlog, the other glaring but largely unspoken reason for hospital ER's being overwhelmed is the aftereffects of Covid – or Long Covid. And they are overwhelmed. Again, last year with my daughter the scene was unbelievable. People were piled down the hallways, and stuffed into niches. We were there for days (in shifts) with my daughter and there were people that were being ignored, waiting for hours in their own urine, pleading for help. The hospital was overwhelmed but I also believe the new generation of nurses is cut from a wholly different cloth than their forebears. There are exceptions of course but it was clear to me that many of them were in it for the paycheck and not because they were driven to be nurses. It used to be considered as something of a calling.

This issue of Long Covid is also playing a part in the worker shortage that's affecting the larger economy. There are thousands and maybe even hundreds of thousands of people out of work because they're not well. And Covid isn't done, people are still getting it – many multiple times. The odds are that many of these people will eventually get affected by some form of Long Covid and in some cases will struggle with work. There are fears that in a few years a significant portion of the US workforce will be functionally disabled.

I'm not sure what I'll do if I get it. I can't really afford to miss a lot of work. Thus far I've been spared.

The numbers of non-working people have especially struck me as of late. I'm working in a neighbourhood and it seems like I'm surrounded by large numbers of people who don't work – and many of them are still well within traditional working ages. They're on some form of disability and what's especially ironic I have a feeling that most or all of them voted Republican and most likely for Trump. It's ironic as these people are not just on Social Security or Disability (SSDI), but most are also receiving some form of welfare in the form of food stamps and/or cash assistance, and housing subsidies. And yet they continue to vote for the people that would (if given the chance) eliminate all these programmes and leave them destitute. Not to grant anything to the GOP and their agenda, this growing reality of people not working is a social problem. And I don't just refer to those who don't want to work, or those on some kind of disability – sometimes legitimate and sometimes not. There's a lot of fraud out there. I also refer to growing numbers of people who just don't work. They have investments, inherited money, have scored big in lawsuits, have pensions, or (it seems to me at times) have some kind of secret money tree they rely upon. In many cases there's some combination at work. Anyway, I get about quite a bit with my work and this continues to amaze me. There are just a lot of people who don't work and I'm not talking about elderly people or the few remaining housewives (who do of course work, just not for a paycheck).

And then in addition to Long Covid, there are all the people that have quit or retired due to Covid concerns. There's a desperate need for school buses drivers and yet they were hit hard by the pandemic and many of them were and are retired folk who are most susceptible to serious symptoms. Many have simply quit and are willing to live on a smaller income. Teachers who make more money and have more invested in their careers have been more reticent to do so and yet many are simply giving up. If eligible for any kind of pension, they're more likely to retire as they too are at risk. Multiple Covid cases raises the risk for Long Covid and many have vulnerable family members and the large numbers of immunocompromised people have simply been written off by society. And yet if you're one of those people in a high risk job or have someone at home that is immunocompromised, you have some tough decisions to make.

I've never been a fan of the teacher's unions and yet the Anti-Covid Right is taking their traditional anti-teacher's union rhetoric and combining it with Anti-Covid narratives. I don't wonder that many educators have simply thrown their hands up into the air and have given up as any measures (even if minimal) have now been thoroughly politicised and given the increasingly volatile nature of the culture and the tendency toward radicalisation – the stress just isn't worth it. It doesn't take much to receive death threats these days and more than ever they have to be taken seriously.

The relaxing of restrictions and measures taken in case of exposure and infection and have nothing to do with medicine. It's about profits and the economy. Kids must return to school or the economy will suffer – it's that simple. Many will die, but in the grand scheme of things the financial forces behind the political thrones of American power don't care. The risk is more than worth it to them and in the end they're calling the shots. One need only to look into the sordid history of the drug companies and the opioid crisis. As the DEA and other advocates pleaded for legislation, key members of Congress (including Evangelical Marsha Blackburn) moved to block it – clearly to the benefit of the pharmaceutical industry.

Of course the Anti-Vax crowd will blame Long Covid and every other aspect of suffering associated with the virus on the vaccines themselves. But I know of people suffering from Long Covid that were never vaccinated so that narrative falls flat and given the degree of disinformation and outright deceit flowing from those circles – I'm disinclined to take much of anything they say seriously. One can read their articles, or the statements of the doctors they promote and usually after just a few minutes of poking around online, one can discover where the misinformation is coming from and how it's being spun. Clearly many of these doctors and so-called experts are just charlatans and criminals. And not a few have woven their deceit in with some kind of pseudo-Christian narrative.

This doesn't mean I take everything government proclamation at face value either. You can't. They too are corrupted and inconsistent, but (I'm sorry to say) there's more truth flowing from mainstream medical circles than from those associated with Right-wing politics. And I think some of the Christian-Right affiliated websites are the worst of all. This too is judgment.

As I've repeatedly stated, there's a story about Covid that is yet to be written but it can't be because of the politics of the hour. There's the medical story itself and then another story with regard to how the government reacted and how the media covered it. And yet perhaps the biggest story is the sociological one and the interaction of politics, social media, economic forces, and the like with the actual genesis and outworking of the virus in society. One need not be a fan of Xi Jinping and the CCP to take note of Western media's derisive coverage of China's Zero Covid policy. And yet what has the West done? Millions are dead and millions more are facing long term and perhaps chronic disability in some form. No, this story isn't over. And this brings us to another aspect of the unwritten tale – the layers of cover-up and suppression and the economic factors connected to them.

For many Covid is a thing in the past. Sitting for hours in a Level 1 Trauma Center ER with my son revealed a very different reality.