This month marks four years since the beginning of the COVID pandemic.

So where do we stand now?

The pandemic is not over until there is meaningful treatments and a cure for long COVID.

It's Wednesday, March 20th, and you're listening to Science Friday.

I'm sci-fi producer Rasha Auretti.

Four years ago this month, the world, as we know it, changed.

Schools shut down, offices shuddered, and we hunkered down at home,

armed with our Purell and canned foods, trying to stay safe from a novel deadly

virus, COVID-19. Back then, most of us couldn't fathom just how long the pandemic would

stretch on. Here's Ira Flato. And now four years later, some 1.2 million people have died in the U.S.

Nearly 7 million have been hospitalized here as a result of COVID.

There are plenty of people with long COVID, the COVID that keeps on giving.

So what have we learned about how COVID attacks the body?

What can be done for long COVID sufferers? And what can

we expect in the future? Joining me to talk about all of this is Hannah Davis, co-founder of the

patient-led research collaborative in New York, and Dr. Akiko Iwasaki, immunologist at Yale Medical

School in New Haven, Connecticut. Welcome back to Science Friday.

Thank you so much. Thank you for having back.

Nice to have you. Well, at this point, hospital emergency rooms are not overflowing. Vaccinations are

there. Deaths are way down. The CDC says COVID quote is no longer the emergency it once was.

But Hannah, long COVID is still very real.

And as a long haul, you're not very happy about the situation, are you?

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