<
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/long-covid-kids-school-absenteeism-1235447552/>
"In January 2020, just weeks before the NBA shut down and Costco shelves
emptied and Tom Hanks got sick, Joy Corbitt’s only brother died in his
mid-forties with symptoms of Covid. Which meant, from the pandemic’s earliest
days, Joy was taking no chances.
She’d heard that Black and brown people like her seemed to be getting sick and
dying at higher rates than other Americans. And that kids were either not
getting sick, or getting less sick, or getting sick in ways we didn’t really
understand. So, when it came to protecting her then-14-year-old daughter, Lia,
the North Carolina mother was vigilant.
“I was consumed with the news — consumed with the numbers,” Joy says.
As one week of lockdown slogged into the next, Lia, a straight-A student,
struggled through that chaotic, ever-unmuted, camera-off Zoom version of
school. Which is to say, she didn’t learn much.
With Joy’s husband James, a long-haul trucker, frequently on the road, the
mother and daughter did their best to fill the time. They got a crazy Shih Tzu
puppy named Zane. They spent long hours playing foosball and air hockey. They
watched Netflix and cooking shows and
Bridgerton together (yes, even the sex
scenes).
By the time fall 2020 poked its head onto the horizon, Lia’s high school was
set to resume in-person classes. Joy kept her daughter home. She was anxious;
it was too soon for students to return. But Lia, a budding theater kid, was
eager to get back to her friends, to her life, to try her luck onstage.
A couple of months into the school year, after Lia scored a role in a
production of
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Joy relented. Lia “just
lit up” about theater, her mom recalls. Joy figured, we had to let kids be
kids. She took some consolation in the rules mandating universal masking.
The masking, of course, didn’t last long. Kids.
On an otherwise unremarkable day in January 2021, Lia came home with what she
described as a “very minor sore throat.” She isolated, per school policy,
counting down the 10 days until she could return. On Lia’s first day back,
though, her throat was sore all morning. She threw up at lunch. Joy took her
home early.
“I was very confused,” Lia says. “I thought, ‘Am I still sick?’”
“I thought it would go away,” she adds, “quickly.”
It didn’t."
Via Violet Blue’s
Threat Model - Covid: October 23, 2025
https://www.patreon.com/posts/covid-october-23-141840402
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
