What Do We Understand About Long COVID?
Consider This from NPR
NPR
4.2 • 6.2K Ratings
🗓️ 14 March 2024
⏱️ 12 minutes
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Summary
Millions of Americans are living with the often debilitating symptoms that can include brain fog, shortness of breath, and low energy. Some struggle with simple daily living tasks like laundry and cooking.
Four years since the pandemic hit, patients with long Covid are still fighting for answers.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | We are so much more careful than other people out there. |
| 0:04.0 | How is this possible? |
| 0:05.0 | This is what was running through Julia Moore Vogel's mind in July 2020, |
| 0:10.0 | just a few months into the pandemic. |
| 0:12.0 | The only time I left the apartment was to take my two-year-old |
| 0:15.2 | outside to play in the driveway basically of the apartment building. So you know I made cloth masks that we wore but it wasn't enough and I must have gotten it in the hallway where it was just enclosed |
| 0:26.5 | Vogel is senior program director at Scripps research and also works with the patient-led research |
| 0:31.6 | collaborative for long COVID. |
| 0:34.0 | Her first symptom of the virus was not being able to taste the peppermint tea she has every |
| 0:38.0 | morning. |
| 0:39.0 | From there, things got worse. |
| 0:41.0 | Vogel had shortness of breath that was triggered whether she was sitting up or just resting. |
| 0:44.8 | I would go to sleep at night thinking, am I going to die today? And you know, I made a will which I had never done. |
| 0:51.2 | It's hard to remember how scary it was, you know, now because it's, we're |
| 0:56.4 | so flipping about it. |
| 0:57.8 | When Vocal went back to work, she said it felt like her brain was moving slower. It took her longer to do work assignments and she got tired easily. |
| 1:05.3 | Vogel knew about long COVID and she didn't want it. |
| 1:09.0 | And so I decided I'm going to be one of those people that recovers. Within six months I'm going to be one of those people that recovers. |
| 1:13.0 | Within six months, I'm going to be healthy, |
| 1:15.0 | and by New Year's Eve, I'm going to be having a glass of Champagne |
| 1:18.0 | toasting the New Year. |
| 1:20.0 | And I made it my goal to recover. |
... |
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