Declining infections signal a new phase, but not the end of pandemic’s impact.
Larry Farber couldn’t walk a mile last month without stopping three times to catch his breath, the aftereffect of a COVID-19 illness so severe that the 64-year-old was hospitalized twice and received powerful steroids and oxygen support to breathe.
Amy Crnecki wasn’t hospitalized for COVID-19, but the 38-year-old still can’t dance with her daughter without fear of crushing fatigue.
“I just want to be able to play outside with my kids,” she said, “and play a game of basketball and not feel winded and feel like, ‘I shouldn’t have done that.’ ”
The two Minnesotans, diagnosed with COVID-19 during the same week in November, are part of a poorly understood group of people whose health has suffered long after infection and who could continue to struggle after the pandemic recedes. The number of COVID “long haulers” remains a mystery in a pandemic that otherwise has been one of the most measured, modeled and mapped events in human history. Continue reading.