The “OMG, #COVID19 can cause long-term illness, possibly long-term disability, who knew such a horrible thing was possible?” articles stir in me so many mixed emotions.

I feel sorry for the people who are suffering from this and the uncertainty they face, especially those being gaslit by doctors or family members (apparently if you don’t snap back after two weeks, it’s “stress” or “anxiety”), or who are forced to go back to work too early.

I feel a sort of detached bemusement over how hard it is—for all of us—to pay attention to that which does not personally affect us, until it does. I have come to accept this as part of the human condition.

Like, if we were truly behind the veil of ignorance, we would have invested billions more into researching #MECFS (80% post-infectious) and a whole host of conditions we mostly ignore, but we’re not, so we don’t, because bodies, fragility, disability, mortality LA LA LA

I do feel a small hope that the pandemic will force a shift in both how we research and, as a society, treat people living with post-viral conditions and the disabilities they cause.

What I will never understand is why from day one, most medical doctors, public health officials, scientists were completely silent on morbidity, long-term illness, and disability. Did they really think the ONLY two options were death or recovery? A light cough or the ICU?

That if you didn’t die or almost die, then the only other way to experience #COVID19 was as an asymptomatic or barely symptomatic carrier?

Is post-infectious disability really new or rare?

Is #COVID19 really “the polio of our generation?”

No. Of course not. And no, no one should be surprised. https://twitter.com/jenbrea/status/1238988538844033024?s=21n

To paraphrase @SFdirewolf, disabled people may well be “oracles” but what is the point when no one really wants to see the future, let alone take responsibility for it?

Not that I am any different or better...

It’s also important to note that #COVID19 is not going to lead to a single chronic illness. Some people will have lung damage, others myocarditis or Guillain-Barre. Some will develop dysautonomia and possibly #mecfs. Others, #MCAS or an autoimmune disorder.

Basically, our bodies will break in the common ways they break when we mount an intense, protracted inflammatory response to a virus. And they will probably break in novel and unfamiliar ways, too.

If we‘re to get our arms around the long-run consequences of the pandemic AND make advances in the many *different* long-term conditions it may trigger, we need to both lump and split. #SARSCoV2 is a unique virus. Many of the pathologies/syndromes it causes will be old familiars.

The difference here—and this should be obvious—is that these next two years, something like 80% of our population may be subject to the “treatment” of #SARSCoV2 and the experiment of what your immune system’s response to it may do to you.

Frankly, this worries me as much as the ER/ICU surge we have been trying to mitigate. What happens to the people who can’t work? Who have no health insurance? Who need home care? Who need specialists that may or may not exist? We weren’t prepared before. We‘re definitely not now.