
Months before #longcovid was the agreed upon term (and #longtailcovid and #longhaulcovid were the patient-used terms), first wave patients have been imploring the public to listen. To set aside emotions, politics, and misinformation from sources completely unfamiliar with this diagnosis and to simply just...listen. I’m personally on 7 months of this broken record. Unfortunately, the noise that’s clouded the world from listening to us patients is the same noise that’s causing us to remain in harm’s way, deaf to the warnings of those most experienced with #covid: patients. This isn’t a scare tactic. This isn’t some bullshit publicity tactic. This is reality and a quickly magnifying one at that. This is a rapidly-growing, millions-strong global community of chronically ill patients begging you and imploring you - with what little energy we have - to help quiet the noise that surrounds you to truly help yourself, your families, your communities, and your nations. The monotonous, deafening noise? It’s coming from the top, from our governments. Us patients *hope* that we can make enough of the right noise - to cancel out the damaging static - that you’ll truly begin listening to the ones that care to help. That you’ll hear us. That these warnings turn into proactive responses instead of reactive responses. That you’ll hear the beautiful music of what it’s like to be INFORMED and logical in your actions, instead of misinformed and societally damaging in your actions (#wearamask and practice #socialdistancing). If you want this virus to go away, if you want economies and schools to reopen, if you want employers and healthcare systems to work with the public instead of against the public, then you need to listen to the warnings of patients. Hear us now, share our pleas, and drown out the noise thwarting positive support and change for the millions currently battling long #covid_19 and the millions upon millions more to come if our voices aren’t heard.