Over 4 Million Americans Can't work due to Long-Covid
It's an untold and suppressed story.
Hey Guys,
There are moments in accountability journalism where I notice major discrepancies in mainstream media (MSM) reporting. I’m not a “real journalist”, it’s not my responsibility right? But let’s at least talk about it. Out in the open, you know, as common knowledge.
We deserve that much, don’t we?
Long COVID can be a severely debilitating condition for those who live with it, but the growing list of symptoms and conflicting estimates on how often it occurs make it incredibly difficult to measure exactly how many people it affects.
Many of those with Long-Covid are not able to work, though estimates vary. Globally is a pretty high number, it’s also impacting the labor participation rate and number of unfilled positions. At scale, this is a major economic problem we are facing in 2022 and will face in 2023 and beyond.
Mild or moderate COVID-19 lasts about two weeks for most people. But in some others, long-term effects of COVID-19 can cause lingering health problems and wreak havoc for months.
An estimated 7.5% of all US adults, around 20 million people, currently have Long Covid symptoms. With B.A. 5 and BA 2.75, this number could easily become higher. We know that monkey pox as well is likely to spread into the College campuses of the U.S. soon. This is inevitable given how inefficient we now know the CDC and American healthcare system is.
Post-COVID-19 condition, as it's called by the World Health Organization (WHO), is also not an inevitability for most people who get infected. To make matters worse there is a mental health and suicide crisis in America, due to inflation and other factors from the stress of the pandemic times.
The impact of Long-covid with long term disability is going to be very costly. How China handled the pandemic in the beginning, well they are legally liable as well as the broken leadership we have witnessed in the United States. This has been a global failure of leadership and the medical community at a scale that’s nearly unimaginable.
Brain fog
Fatigue
Fever
Other mysterious symptoms
Higher chance of death due to the usual causes
Shortness of breath (SOB)
Cognitive problems (e.g. working memory)
Kidney damage
Lingering Neurological issues
Other rarer causes of new ailments
Who is More Vulnerable to Long-Covid?
While it’s clear that people with certain risk factors (including high blood pressure, smoking, diabetes, obesity and other conditions) are more likely to have a serious bout of COVID-19, there isn’t a clear link between these risk factors and long-term problems.
Thus comorbidity means more disability in America. That means more poverty.
The Government hasn’t gotten it figured out. As the number of people with post-COVID symptoms soars, researchers and the government are trying to get a handle on how big an impact long COVID is having on the U.S. workforce. What happens as BA 5 is reaching endemic and pro-longed circulation with multiple re-infections?
How will Covid-19 and monkey pox mutate further in the near-future such as 2023?
Long Haulers & a Future of Disability
One billion people worldwide live with a disability, but they are often overlooked in discussions of pandemic preparedness and response. Perhaps this wave of Long Haulers will give them more visibility in society and healthcare policy and planning.
SARS-CoV-2 can attack the body in a range of ways, causing damage to the lungs, heart, nervous system, kidneys, liver and other organs. Mental health problems can arise from grief and loss, unresolved pain or fatigue, or from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after treatment in the intensive care unit (ICU).
2.5% of the American Labor Force May be Impacted
In the NPR article I was shocked to understand how big of an issue this is becoming.
Now, millions of people may be sidelined from their jobs due to long COVID. Katie Bach, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution, drew on survey data from the Census Bureau, the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and the Lancet to come up with what she says is a conservative estimate: 4 million full-time equivalent workers out of work because of long COVID.
"That is just a shocking number," says Bach. "That's 2.4% of the U.S. working population."
So why hadn’t I heard this in the America mainstream news before? Even the CBC in Canada has not covered this topic well. What’s going on? This has major impacts on the labor force.
Having a healthcare in dire straits with more disabled people on the brink, is like a kind of health related debt for Americans and obviously other countries around the world are facing this too. The cost of healthcare in aging populations is one of the major worries of our times. In the UK data is starting to show that these Long Haulers are more likely to die from all other causes as well, whether that be heart issues or deaths of despair.
The Biden administration has already taken some steps to try to protect workers and keep them on the job, issuing guidance that makes clear that long COVID can be a disability and relevant laws would apply. It has not been impressive, here in Canada the nursing crisis continues to deepen showing significant lack of healthcare policy leadership in the public vs. private system. Churn in nurses is shutting down ER and worsening accessibility in rural Canada.
Based on data from the early in the pandemic, the WHO estimates placed the condition at a rate of between 10 to 20 per cent of COVID-19 patients, while the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) states it can occur in between 30 to 40 per cent of those not hospitalized. The newer data shows its closer to around 8%, but as Covid-19 can now re-infect people four months later with BA 5, that can compounds over time if you are in a high-risk group.
Older data didn’t give us a good picture: One study published in The Lancet in July 2021, cited by PHAC as one of its main sources for its estimate that 30 to 40 per cent of non-hospitalized patients develop long COVID, looked at fewer than 1,000 patients between April 2020 and December 2020.
Long Haulers may have symptoms difficult to diagnose or describe.
What are the symptoms of post-COVID-19 syndrome?
The most commonly reported symptoms of post-COVID-19 syndrome include:
Fatigue
Symptoms that get worse after physical or mental effort
Fever
Lung (respiratory) symptoms, including difficulty breathing or shortness of breath and cough
Other possible symptoms include:
Neurological symptoms or mental health conditions, including difficulty thinking or concentrating, headache, sleep problems, dizziness when you stand, pins-and-needles feeling, loss of smell or taste, and depression or anxiety
Joint or muscle pain
Heart symptoms or conditions, including chest pain and fast or pounding heartbeat
Digestive symptoms, including diarrhea and stomach pain
Blood clots and blood vessel (vascular) issues, including a blood clot that travels to the lungs from deep veins in the legs and blocks blood flow to the lungs (pulmonary embolism)
Other symptoms, such as a rash and changes in the menstrual cycle
That’s a pretty huge range of potential symptoms. Qualifying for disability or even getting the right diagnoses may prove challenging. And we wonder why there is such a labor shortage for many unfilled positions?
Long Haulers Depend on the Person
The problem with coming up with accommodations for long COVID is that there are so many unknowns. The duration and severity of symptoms varies wildly from person to person.
Treating a disability like this at a time when healthcare resources are already cut short, means a lot of folk are slipping through the cracks. A lot of people are slipping out of the Middle Class with inflation and wealth inequality skyrocketing with the Fed’s QE and Biden’s stimulus.
Judging by how fast Monkey pox is spreading in New York, we can project what will occur. The term “long covid” was coined by patients, initially being used on social media to describe symptoms that were impairing quality of life. What happens in a world where our healthcare is getting out of control even as our economy becomes less certain?
The WHO on Saturday declared monkeypox a "public health emergency of international concern" as it continues to spread worldwide with over 21,100 confirmed cases reported globally as of Thursday, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The WHO taking monkeypox seriously faster than it did Covid-19 is a revelation.
We are not okay.
Why does COVID-19 cause ongoing health problems?
According to the Mayo Clinic, organ damage could play a role. People who had severe illness with COVID-19 might experience organ damage affecting the heart, kidneys, skin and brain. Inflammation and problems with the immune system can also happen. It isn't clear how long these effects might last.
So besides organ damage, brain shrinkage and heart damage, how are you guys doing?
I’m still trying to not get Covid-19 and I still wear a mask in most places indoors. Disability at scale during years of high-inflation could be costly, even as Environmental now say that ecological destruction is inevitable. Why don’t we think about the future as a species better?
Thanks for reading!