By neglecting to report seriously on Long Covid, corporate media often miss a huge part of the stories they tell. For instance, some media outlets (e.g.,
ABC News,
2/3/25) did report on a 2025 CDC study that more than 1 million children in the US have Long Covid, which was data from 2023. A more recent study indicates that Long Covid is now the
No. 1 chronic illness in children in the US, surpassing asthma.
Yet Long Covid isn’t mentioned in media reports on the crisis in chronic student absenteeism (e.g.,
New York Times,
2/2/24;
Washington Post,
5/7/22;
New Yorker, 1/15/24), or the crisis in childhood test scores and cognition (e.g.,
AP,
6/10/26;
New Yorker,
6/12/26). Instead, the media tend to scratch their collective head and blame anxiety, screens and lockdowns.
The media tendency to ignore, deny and/or psychologize Long Covid causes significant harm to both patients and the general public, who are not being warned of the risk. Patients face
disbelief and bigotry from families, workplaces and even doctors, who often get more information
from the media than from journals. The gulf between medical research and practice is estimated to be
17 years on average.
Prejudices against patients are reinforced when a news outlet’s most in-depth, academic-sounding articles on Long Covid attempt to undermine the reality of the disease.
fair.org
