Vaccinated Isn’t Enough: Omicron Carries the Risk of Long Covid
President Biden told the U.S. that if you’re triple vaxxed, you’re safe for the holidays. That’s not only not true, it’s dismissing almost 10 million Americans affected by a chronic disease.
By Elizabeth Yuko
When President Joe Biden took the podium on the afternoon of Dec. 21 to address the country amid the massive surge in Covid-19 cases from the highly transmissible Omicron variant, he promised to give it to us straight. But despite providing additional details and updates to his Covid-19 action plan, and making a World War II-era plea to unvaccinated individuals (“Honest to God, I believe it’s your patriotic duty [to get vaccinated]”), he didn’t deliver.
Taking great pains to avoid mixed messaging on the effectiveness of the existing vaccines — which, to be clear, are extremely effective in preventing severe illness and death — Biden stressed that “we should all be concerned about Omicron, but not panicked.” He noted that because the variant spreads so easily, some fully vaccinated (and boosted) people will experience breakthrough Covid infections — “potentially in high numbers” — but that they have “much less reason to worry.” It was almost as if he was suggesting a triple-dose could be a substitute for caution.
But in reality, the president’s message didn’t give it to anyone straight, or even accurately. That’s because Long Covid — a dizzyingly lengthy list of new, returning, or ongoing health problems some people experience for months (and in some cases, close to two years) following their initial infection — wasn’t mentioned as one of the potential outcomes of Omicron infection. In fact, Biden didn’t mention Long Covid at any point during his speech. Here’s why that’s a problem.
It’s still unclear how many people infected by the novel coronavirus end up developing Long Covid, but the researchers behind a recent study published in the journal JAMA Network Open estimate that at least 50 percent of those who survive their initial illness go on to experience a number of physical, psychological, and neurological symptoms for a minimum of six months.
Like Covid-19 itself, the symptoms of Long Covid can range from being relatively mild (e.g. becoming out of breath more easily, sleep disruptions, intermittent joint pain) to those that are so severe they leave some people unable to work — like debilitating exhaustion, loss of mobility, cognitive impairment, and drastic personality changes.
More: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-commentary/covid-omicron-long-covid-risk-1274717/
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