https://archive.md/MDXGt
"Five years ago, the World Health Organization first declared the novel
coronavirus a global pandemic. The announcement led to an unprecedented moment
for our society: lockdown. Restaurants were shuttered, millions became
unemployed, and millions more died from this unknown, terrible disease. New
York City, where I live, was the first U.S. epicenter. Headlines blared about
the hospital overflow sites on Navy ships and makeshift morgues on Randall’s
Island. The sirens, all over the city, keened along in a dissonant strain.
Those of us who could work at home sat on our couches, scrolling through the
horrors, watching television, getting cocktails to go, and disinfecting
groceries. These were the placid yet unsettling days that walling yourself off
from the world brings—fear, uncertainty, and isolation. For many, this was the
central trauma of this period. But for myself and hundreds of millions of
others globally, the trauma wasn’t only about these beginnings, it’s about the
horrors we still experience today.
About a week into lockdown, my life changed forever. I started to feel short of
breath. By this point, I’d familiarized myself with Covid symptoms and about
the millions of people getting sick, on ventilators, dying. At the time, only
patients in hospitals could access Covid tests, but my telltale symptoms left
little doubt. I logged into a telemedicine appointment with my doctor, who
agreed with my suspicion and prescribed me a little red albuterol inhaler that
would become my lifeline for the next two weeks.
It was a scary sensation, sometimes more specifically referred to as “air
hunger,” which feels more accurate. Your breaths are shallow and incomplete.
But aside from a few days spent counting down the minutes before I was allowed
another puff of albuterol (every four to six hours), my symptoms were mild. I
never ran a fever. Within two weeks, I thought I was better.
I couldn’t have been more wrong. As I wrote for this magazine, in June 2020:
Then something strange happened: My toes started changing color. Every
night, they’d become red, hot, and ungodly itchy. During the day, they’d be
purple, as if they belonged to a corpse. Scheduling an appointment with a
dermatologist for an unrelated foot problem in the middle of a pandemic felt
ridiculous—hundreds of people were dying every day in New York at that
point. But whatever this was—a rash? Gangrene? Creeping death?—got worse,
causing many sleepless nights in which I would spray my burning feet with
ice-cold water at 3 a.m.
When I wrote that piece, the headline posed the same question I’d spent all my
sleepless nights agonizing over, “Will my Covid Symptoms Ever End?” At the
time, I considered the question to be rhetorical and the answer obvious—it
would end eventually, if not soon. At that point, I never could have imagined
I’d still be experiencing consequences from my first Covid infection. Five
years later, however, that question seemingly has an answer: No. Now I find
myself marveling less about Covid’s insidious initial reach and more about the
degree to which those of us suffering have been shunted to the side."
Via Violet Blue’s
Threat Model - Covid: March 20, 2025
https://www.patreon.com/posts/covid-march-20-124753023
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
