Dismissed and Disbelieved, Some Long COVID Patients Are Pushed Into Psychiatric Wards
https://time.com/7206080/long-covid-psychiatric-wards/
In late 2022, Erin, a 43-year-old from Pennsylvania, agreed to spend six weeks in a psychiatric ward, getting intensive treatment for an illness she knew she didn’t have.
That decision was a last resort for Erin, who asked to be identified only by her first name for privacy. Her health had deteriorated after she caught COVID-19 nearly a year earlier; the virus left her with pain, fatigue, rapid weight loss, digestive problems, and vertigo. After another bout with a virus months later, Erin only got sicker, developing heart palpitations, muscle spasms, hoarseness, and pain in her neck, throat, and chest.
Erin was no stranger to chronic illness, having coped with a connective-tissue disorder her whole life. This was different. She became unable to work and rarely left her home. Her usual doctors were stumped; others said her litany of symptoms could be manifestations of anxiety.
When it became too painful to eat and swallow, Erin grew severely malnourished and was hospitalized at a large academic medical center. “I felt at the time like this was my last hope,” says Erin, who has since been diagnosed with Long COVID. “If I didn’t get any answers there, I didn’t know where to go afterward.”
She was admitted for a six-week stay and given diagnoses she knew were wrong: an eating disorder and anxiety.
The vast majority of Long COVID patients will not land in psychiatric wards, but Erin is far from the only one who has. “Emergency rooms are dangerous places for people with Long COVID,” says David Putrino, who studies and treats the condition as director of rehabilitation innovation for the Mount Sinai Health System in New York.
• Remember: covid is not over, 50% of infections are asymptomatic, minimum 10% of infections end up in long COVID, re-infections wreck us, COVID spreads and moves like cigarette smoke, think of the people around you and you as people who are all day smoking, it becomes more visual to understand how COVID moves.
• There is no way to “train” the immune system because it is not a muscle. there is a common misconception that exposure to harmful germs strengthens the immune system. viral diseases like COVID, flu, measles weaken the immune system, leaving the possibility of lasting damage. The reality is that you don't build your immunity with repeated infections, vaccines strengthen the immune system by teaching it to recognize pathogens without all the risks. Focusing on infection prevention is key.
• Rapid antigen tests give many false negatives.
• Solving the pandemic was never in the cards for the capitalist world.
• Instead, the explicit goal of the ruling class has been to make the pandemic simply disappear from public perception. Any reminder of the existence of a highly-transmissible, highly-dangerous, mass-disabling disease could trigger panic, or worse: organized, militant labor action. Averting this crisis required a careful campaign of culture-crafting; the people themselves needed to become convinced that there was no reason to fight. Consent for protracted mass infection needed to be manufactured.
“The cold truth of the matter is that the motive behind COVID minimization is greed and social control. (…) Solving the pandemic was never in the cards for the capitalist world. Instead, the explicit goal of the ruling class has been to make the pandemic simply disappear from public perception.” Let Them Eat Plague! http://clarion.unity-struggle-unity.org/
#MaskUp #WearAMask #CovidRealist #CovidIsAirbone #LongCovid #YallMasking #DisabledLiberation #DisabilityJustice
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