USA - Marketplace (radio): Protecting yourself from COVID-19 these days is hard. And it comes at a cost.

ahimsa · Mar 23, 2024

Protecting yourself from COVID-19 these days is hard. And it comes at a cost.

https://www.marketplace.org/2024/03...19-these-days-is-hard-and-it-comes-at-a-cost/

Marketplace said:

Four years after that surreal, world-altering spring of 2020, almost everything has gone back to normal. On the surface, anyway. Restaurants and subways are packed, schools and offices are open, few people are masking, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has dropped its isolation guidelines.

But there is still a pandemic, and nearly 1,000 people are still dying from COVID-19 weekly in the United States, according to data from the World Health Organization via KFF.

At least 17.5 million adults are currently living with long COVID, according to the most recent Household Census Pulse Survey.

And there are new studies coming out all the time about the long-term damage even a mild infection can do to the body.

For those still trying to actively avoid getting COVID-19, like Forest McDonald, a musician and teacher in Brooklyn, New York, it’s getting increasingly difficult, and expensive.

At 34, McDonald is already living with long COVID, from their first and only known infection, two years ago.

“It started with really intense fatigue, where I couldn’t walk a block without needing to lie down,” they said. “Then it turned into chest pain and heart palpitations, and then it settled with kind of a constant shortness of breath.”
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People who are actively trying to avoid COVID-19 are on their own, and many don’t have the resources, or the option, to protect themselves.

In New Jersey, David Kronig, 40, has avoided COVID-19 so far “by basically giving up going anywhere,” he said.

He has a primary immunodeficiency, which makes him high-risk, and his partner and his mom are both immunocompromised and disabled. So Kronig still operates like most people did in 2020 …
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USA - Marketplace (radio): Protecting yourself from COVID-19 these days is hard. And it comes at a cost.

ahimsa Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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USA - Marketplace (radio): Protecting yourself from COVID-19 these days is hard. And it comes at a cost.

ahimsa Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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