The long COVID

The “moderate” anti-COVID-mitigation position that is perhaps most common among Republican elites is to acknowledge that COVID is something you probably don’t want if you’re over 65 or in very bad health (the one good thing DeSantis did was to take controlling spread in nursing homes seriously when the pandemic was hitting, which is a crucial reason why the numbers in New York are still worse overall,) but that otherwise nobody should care if they get it or not and policy should reflect this. It is true that mortality rates are much lower for younger people in good health. But leaving aside that it’s a risk I would personally not want to take, one reason DeSantisism is a deeply pernicious lie is that mortality is far from the only issue here:

Will Grogan stared blankly at his ninth-grade biology classwork. It was material he had mastered the day before, but it looked utterly unfamiliar.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he blurted. His teacher and classmates reminded him how adeptly he’d answered questions about the topic during the previous class. “I’ve never seen this before,” he insisted, becoming so distressed that the teacher excused him to visit the school nurse.

The episode, earlier this year, was one of numerous cognitive mix-ups that plagued Will, 15, after he contracted the coronavirus in October, along with issues like fatigue and severe leg pain.

As young people across the country prepare to return to school, many are struggling to recover from lingering post-Covid neurological, physical or psychiatric symptoms. Often called “long Covid,” the symptoms and their duration vary, as does the severity.

Studies estimate long Covid may affect between 10 percent and 30 percent of adults infected with the coronavirus. Estimates from the handful of studies of children so far range widely. At an April congressional hearing, Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, cited one study suggesting that between 11 percent and 15 percent of infected youths might “end up with this long-term consequence, which can be pretty devastating in terms of things like school performance.”

This is a really, really bad infection and policymakers who care need to be using every lever to get people vaccinated that they can.

Here’s some more of Tucker Carlson’s lucky duckies:

Michael Lejong fully intended to get vaccinated for Covid-19, his wife said, standing in the pavilion that the prominent architect designed for his hometown.

But he was relatively young, very healthy and not overly concerned about the virus. He wanted to get his shots separately from his wife, so he could care for her if she had adverse side effects. She got hers immediately in April and he put his off.

In late June, he began feeling sick and tested positive for Covid-19. A week of mild symptoms turned into extreme fatigue. On July 3, he was admitted to a nearby hospital with low oxygen levels; on the 15th, doctors put him on a ventilator. He died four days later.

The death of the 49-year-old Greenwood native, father of two, community leader, mountain biker and outdoorsman, has rattled this western Arkansas town, where it seems like nearly everyone knew Mr. Lejong. It comes amid a spate of other recent deaths and skyrocketing hospitalizations in a region where many are deeply skeptical of the Covid-19 vaccines, and doctors and political leaders are trying everything to persuade a reluctant populace to take them.

“It’s personal now because he knew so many people,” said his widow, Katie Lejong. “Before, it was happening somewhere else.”