On March 11, 2020, I happened to be in New York City planning to see two plays and attend a fund-raising concert for God’s Love We Deliver at the Beacon Theater on the 12th. All of them were canceled. Fortunately, I got to see the concert live-streamed from my bedroom in New York. Not so. Fortunately, one of the headliners, Jackson Brown (my all-time favorite singer/songwriter), got Covid along with 13 of the other performers and band members. The next day I came back to St. Thomas ahead of schedule.
I don’t even remember at this point if I was able to find and wear a mask on the plane, but I got home safe and sound. A month later, when the governor opted to shut the beaches on Easter weekend, I was livid. However, as “luck” would have it before I sent off my scathing editorial, I happened to check at the New York Times, which had posted a video of what Covid 19 does to your lungs. I withdrew my criticism and woke up to Covid reality.
My initial reaction to the pandemic up to that point had been rather cavalier. I have a rock-solid immune system that I have worked very hard to develop over the years. After seeing that video and reading as much as I could get my hands on about the virus, I realized that my immune system wasn’t going to protect me. I quickly researched and was able to find some cool N-95 masks. I bought them – many of them. All shapes, sizes, and colors.
Reading the science and the doctors is key to understanding what we are facing. The day after Gov. Bryan did away with mask mandates inside businesses and offices in the Virgin Islands, a little four-year-old came up to me in a store where I was duly wearing a mask and continue to and said, “Hey lady, you know you don’t have to wear a mask anymore.” My response as I saw her maskless mother running toward her rescue, “Yes, dear, but I take my advice from the scientists, not the politicians.” Smile.
I still do.
Early on, the remark that would drive me away from a former service provider, store owner, or even friend, was, “Oh, it’s just the flu.”
The remark that drives me away from people now is: “Everybody’s going to get it.”
I sure hope not.
In my many travels over the last two years which, along with several Broadway shows, museum visits, and even included a trip to East Africa, as I watched maskless people blithely getting on airplanes, eating inside restaurants, and even, most recently, attending a Jackson Browne concert I have repeatedly wondered: “Do these people READ????”
It is heartbreaking to me to realize the people that I love and care about have never heard of long Covid. Granted, you’d have to have a retiree’s amount of time to read as much as I do. However, you would think that people at least know about it and seriously consider the potential ramifications of this phenomenon that we know so little about in their decision-making process. In January, a memorial service was held on St. John for a man who died with Covid psychosis, so it’s not like long Covid has not touched our community.
It’s not the flu.
I offer this lead from a Washington Post story this week penned by Wes Ely who is the co-director of the Critical Illness, Brain Dysfunction and Survivorship (CIBS) Center at Vanderbilt University and the Nashville Veteran’s Administration Hospital and author of “Every Deep-Drawn Breath:”
“The young man pulled something from behind both ears. “I can’t hear anything without my new hearing aids,” said the 32-year-old husband and father. “My body is broken, Doc.” Once a fireman and emergency medical technician, he’d had Covid more than 18 months before and was nearly deaf. He was also newly suffering from incapacitating anxiety, cognitive impairment, and depression. Likewise, a 51-year-old woman told me through tears: “It’s almost two years. My old self is gone. I can’t even think clearly enough to keep my finances straight.” These are real people immersed in the global public health catastrophe of long Covid, which the medical world is struggling to grasp and society is failing to confront.
As such, stories clearly indicate, Covid is biologically dangerous long after the initial viral infection.”
A similar piece written for the New York Times also this week, by one of my favorite science writers and social media experts, Zynep Tufecki, goes like this:
“It wasn’t until the end of the first year of the pandemic that Congress provided $1.2 billion for the National Institutes of Health, which led to a long Covid research initiative called Recover, in February 2021. A year and a half later, there are few treatments and lengthy delays to get into the small number of long Covid clinics. Frontline medical workers don’t have the clinical guidelines they need, and some are still dismissive about the condition.
Long Covid sufferers who caught the virus early have entered their third year with the condition. Many told me they have lost not just their health but also their jobs and health insurance. They’re running out of savings, treatment options, and hope.
To add to their misery — despite centuries of evidence that viral infections can lead later to terrible debilitating conditions — their travails are often dismissed as fantasy or as unworthy of serious concern.
Making matters worse is the general confusion that surrounds what exactly long Covid is. Current definitions are so broad and imprecise that they impede understanding.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines long Covid as having “a wide range of symptoms that can last more than four weeks or even months after infection.” The World Health Organization sets the line at three months and says symptoms must last “for at least two months and cannot be explained by an alternative diagnosis.” Both highlight “fatigue, shortness of breath, cognitive dysfunction, brain fog, pain, digestive symptoms, depression, anxiety, cough, headache, and sleep disturbances.”
I have also read several articles recently about studies that are being done on people who have escaped infection. It will be fascinating years from now, if we survive and aren’t suffering with permanent brain fog, to learn if they were genetically different or if they simply wore a mask.
So, though I have great genes and live on anti-inflammatory food, and have never had seasonal flu, at least not since 1969, for today and probably the rest of my life, I’m going to count on wearing a mask instead of ending my life in misery.
Of the several people who I would’ve considered cautious, literate, and mature and who have had the courage to admit to me that they “got it,” accompanied by the self-justifying phrase “everybody’s going to get it,” two of them admitted openly that they let their guard down.
One said, “I am not going to wear a mask for the rest of my life.”
My reply, “I assume that’s how you got it.”
“Probably.”
I needed to share a very small part of what I have learned for the people who don’t have the leisure time to do all the reading that I have. I hope you read at least this. I hope you’ll think twice about wearing a mask until you find out if you’re genetically superior, and somehow the scientists have determined who is going to get long Covid and who isn’t. The number that I hear most frequently used is 20 percent. Yes, 20 percent of people who get Covid scientists and doctors, what little they know so far, say have been left with the long version.
All the things that come with that seem far more devastating than the idea of wearing a mask in public and social distancing for the rest of your life. Think seat belts. Or quitting smoking, which was much harder (and still is) than wearing a mask.
Oh, one more thing. As my hero Jackson Browne took to the stage at the Beacon Theater in New York City July 27, he looked out at the 2700 people in the audience, maybe 10 percent of whom were wearing masks, and said, “I want to thank those of you out there with masks on for protecting us.”
