A new investigation led by researchers from the University College London and Dartmouth College suggests 14% of Americans had long COVID by the end of 2022. The details of the investigation are published in PLOS One.
Moreover, Americans who report having experienced long COVID said they also experienced more anxiety, low mood, and difficulty with memory.
All data was based on 461,550 respondents to the US Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey, conducted from June 2022 to December 2022. Researchers compared survey answers among those who said they have had long COVID, those who said they have had COVID-19 but no lingering symptoms, and those who had never had COVID-19.
Things are going great!
Rates of disability are not decreasing or levelling off, so I doubt the new variants are less dangerous in this regard, but I guess we’ll see.
2020 as a year sucked, but I was extremely proud of how people in my life, including me, stepped up and handled Covid. I also really enjoyed moving home and spending time with my sister and family for the first substantial period of time in years.
2021 was tough since that’s when the vaccines came out, which should’ve been a good thing, but since our response to Covid this whole time has been just wait for the vaccines, immediately everyone throws caution to the wind. My family was still pretty cautious which was good.
2022 I started noticing no one around me was taking precautions. My family, without telling me, dropped a ton of precautions. They were still doing more than most, but it was literally the barest of minimums. I start to notice like mid 2022 that I don’t feel safe around my family with the level of precaution they’re taking.
2023 has been my bleakest year on record. My family is still taking bare minimum precautions, but it’s clearly just because they know I’m worried. Not that it matters since I mostly stay in my room anyway to minimize my time around them, or mask in the house if they just came back from a trip. My dad’s disdain for me is just barely concealed. Another fun part of the pandemic is watching him just go full fash because he couldn’t get a haircut from March-sept 2020. I don’t know what to do or where to go, there are no precautions anywhere. Everyone who is still active and going out just seem sad, like they’re telling themselves they should be having fun, and they’re acting like they’re having fun, but it’s all just a sad imitation of the way they all remember life pre-2020, they haven’t yet figured out that time has moved on and they’re clinging to that which no longer exists. Then there’s me and all the people in my Covid cautious groups, stressed and depressed to the point we’re not sure what’s the long Covid and what’s the effects of living through collapse, telling ourselves well at least we know what’s going on as if that matters as we slowly waste away. I dread what 2024 will bring, and I can’t believe it but if we must have a pandemic, I miss 2020.