The Tyee: Why So Quiet about Long COVID?

[SNT Gatchaman]

Why So Quiet about Long COVID?
A top US epidemiologist pierces the silence about the pandemic’s deeply destructive long tail.

Ziyad Al-Aly, one of North America’s top COVID researchers, recently shared a critical message with the U.S. Senate.

“If we learn one thing from this pandemic, we must recognize that ‘pandemics disable people’ — that is acute infections can lead to chronic disabling disease.”

Canada shares this great burden. According to a recent Statistics Canada survey, more than two million Canadians reported suffering from the symptoms of long COVID as of June. That’s seven per cent of the adult population. More than half report no improvement in their condition over time. More than one in five Canadians battling long COVID on average took 24 days off from work or school.

Al-Aly then told the senators that COVID is not unique in causing chronic illness.

Pandemics have long tails because their viral and bacterial authors often have long-term crippling effects.

The virus responsible for the Spanish flu set the stage for a wave of Parkinson’s disease decades later. People born during that pandemic had a threefold increased risk of later developing Parkinson’s.

“The idea that a virus that produces acute infections can also cause chronic disease is not new. We just ignored it for 100 years,” said Al-Aly.

He then explained that the current research effort on long COVID did not match the scale and the urgency of a growing problem as the pandemic continues. “Research effort must be commensurate with the burden of disease caused by these infections. And it should be executed with a sense of urgency.”

He recommended the establishment of an institute for infection-associated chronic illnesses with a budget of at least $1 billion per year.