For my 33rd birthday I wish that the public stopped resisting reality and choosing to ignore the growing #longcovid crisis (recognizing it as the pandemic within the pandemic it is), and stopped ignoring the pleas of patients trying to offer the transparency and real-talk that we all desperately needed from our governments at the start, instead of enabling this virus to be riddled with misinformation and denialism.
I wish that they saw the lessened restrictions in certain locales at a time when #covid_19 variants are posing even more risk as the profits-over-people scheme that they are. That state leaders and local shops don’t exactly care if you end up chronically ill with untreatable symptoms from this virus, let alone dead.
That they understand that even those who had mild or asymptomatic cases in the acute phase are returning for urgent medical care and answers months later due to new and oftentimes serious complications arising (see: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.24.20248802v2).
That they understand that us patients have nothing to gain by sharing our daily chronic hells other than the hope that we can knock some sense into someone and save them from catching the virus and being in our shoes.
Our careers, our finances, our relationships and our physical and emotional well-being are all severely impacted and people all around us still spew false narratives about death being the only worst outcome. That they actively choose to turn a blind eye to the living death that many of us feel as a result of this new and so far incurable disease, in bodies that are young and were primarily healthy before contracting #covid.
That they don’t even know a fraction of the consequences and challenges of having and surviving this virus.
That our healthcare system is wholly unprepared to even treat all acute cases let alone any chronic cases of this virus at this point in time.
So for my 33rd birthday I hope that no one else enables themself to be in a position where they contract #covıd and therefore become a #longhauler, also known as a Long Covid patient.
Stop listening to your mother’s brother’s bestie and start listening to patients.