TW: This applies to everyone that contracts #covid, as this precedent talks to all studied SARS and MERS survivors regardless of acute infection severity.
(In addition to public and personal advocacy with uninformed doctors, this can help to shape blood/imaging markers for Long Covid, as none exist, like with many chronic illnesses. This helps us to be proactive in the short-term knowing what may come in the long-term, per these studies having years on the current virus.)
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I’m on hiatus to support my #longcovid relapse in addition to some very difficult family health situations, but I’m briefly breaking hiatus to share a #coronavirus precedent graphic that I created.
Long Covid (LC) is a perfect storm of physical pain and complications due to organ damage and inflammation, followed by psychological complications due to the gaslighting patients are met with, and the trauma of surviving a novel, serious virus without treatments or a prognosis for expectation setting.
You might be inclined to call it “anxiety” or attribute muscle weakness to being bed-bound, but the reality is that such thinking is lazy, uninformed, dangerous, and a product of biases.
Which is why I made this: to show loved ones, medical practitioners and the public that the biases they’ve built up around chronic illness are opinions and not facts, and such opinions hurt millions when the facts are begging to be acknowledged.
And truthfully? It was difficult trying to find these studies - because #ableism made studying long-term effects of #sars and #mers a not-so-popular subject - and while there are more we can look to amongst other viral infections (like #ebv, #cmv, etc.), I tried to only include coronavirus examples. Looking at the studies on #mecfs I could’ve made this a larger list, but we need to shift the tactic with a closely-related viral example.
My hope is that you’ll read this and the studies (in comments) and share, to help to set the narrative right for #chronicillness. Because LC needs to be where ableism stops, once and for all.
That LC is serious, multi-system damage that our healthcare system, economy, employers and disability laws are not prepared for.