COVID Still Sucks

Note: According to ithe CDC as of Jan. 15, only 21.4 percent of the adult US population report receipt of the updated 2023-24 COVID-19 vaccine. Among adults age 65+ that number is 41.5 percent. Y'all might want to think about that.  

Ten days ago, I woke up early feeling weird. I rolled over and went back to sleep, but drifted into an unsettling dream that jolted me awake. I got up and noticed that my lungs felt restricted and I felt ... strange. I walked into the kitchen and told my wife that I was going to get a COVID test kit, which surprised her. This was a first.

An hour later, sitting on a stool in the kitchen, I went into a little bit of shock when I saw the pipe mark under the T that told me I was in fact infected.

A significant number of COVID-19 patients reported an increase in the frequency of nightmares.

Four years ago, when the pandemic was erupting and the first of the million-plus victims started dying, I—like a lot of people—lived for several months with a degree of fear. I am relatively fit, but I’m 68 years old and I’ve smoked cigarettes (in moderation) for most of my life. Every day I was reminded that I was at risk. The COVID-19 pandemic made me feel death over my shoulder in a way I had never felt it before. This fear passed a while ago, but last Thursday I felt it again.

The symptoms came on rapidly. I felt wheezy, dizzy, weak and a bit panicky. At the urging of some friends I got a prescription for Paxlovid, but my doc advised against taking it unless my symptoms became severe. I developed a mild fever that had me bundled up on and off for more than a week. My stomach was off in a way I’ve never quite experienced and would rather not describe. I’ve always been a little scatterbrained but this definitely got worse—I’m crossing my fingers that the notorious COVID brain fog is temporary.

Ultimately, I suppose, COVID-19’s insult to my system has been relatively mild. But I hate it. I seem to be getting better, although I’m still testing positive, and my left eye has been stinging all day.

The two weirdest symptoms overlap. As others have reported, the illness can throw your sense of time out of whack. And the bad dreams that heralded the onset of the disease have persisted. Yesterday I seemed to suddenly recall something profoundly hurtful that a close friend said a long time ago, and then realized it actually happened in a dream the night before, and not in real life. If you’ve had COVID maybe you recognize that symptom. In 2022, the National Institutes of Health reported that in addition to anxiety, depression and insomnia, a significant number of COVID-19 patients reported an increase in the frequency of nightmares.

‘If everybody had accepted the vaccine … if the lies hadn’t been told ... we really would’ve ended up with only about 600,000 dead instead of 1.1 million dead.’

Last Friday in the middle of the night I once again woke up from a stressful dream, and turned on a podcast to distract myself. By coincidence, Kara Swisher was interviewing Donald G. McNeil Jr., the former New York Times science writer and author of a new book, The Wisdom of Plagues. Like many people, I had followed McNeil’s exhaustive coverage of the pandemic, mostly through his regular appearances on the Times’ podcast The Daily. Listening to him last week rekindled a pre-existing condition: anger. 

I’m one of those people who believes that if we as a nation had all decided to take care of each other and get vaccinated, we might have stopped this disease from spreading. In my infirmity, I found myself blaming Donald Trump for the fact that I am now dealing with these nightmares, and this stinging eyeball.

The Doomsayer Was Correct

In The Wisdom of Plagues, McNeil takes us back to the days and weeks beginning on Dec. 31, 2019, when he first heard the news about the new coronavirus. Having begun his career reporting on the AIDS epidemic (the book’s subtitle is Lessons From 25 Years of Covering Pandemics), he was knowledgeable about viruses, and he was immediately concerned. He describes lying in bed, unable to sleep, listening to the BBC with increasing dread.

As you may recall, local Chinese officials at first attempted to cover up the news of the outbreak, but it leaked as the disease exploded. On Jan. 20 there were 500 confirmed cases and 17 deaths. On Jan. 30, there were nearly 10,000 cases with 200 deaths.

McNeil did some calculations and determined that the fatality rate of 2 percent was similar to that of the 1918 Spanish flu, which killed more than 50 million people. “This is the big one,“ he told his editor. She instructed him to “talk to a lot of scientists” before going to press with his warning.

‘If we’d known how rare the virus was elsewhere, we might have let much of the country stay open and closed it hotspot by hotspot.’

On Feb. 2, the Times published McNeil’s piece reporting that many experts felt a pandemic was inevitable. In retrospect we would say that his editor “buried the story” on page 12. “By then there were 17,000 cases and 360 deaths, and the virus was in 23 countries’” McNeil writes. “Even so I faced a mountain of disbelief.”

Fueled, as you will recall, by President Trump’s refusal to take the threat seriously, the United States lagged in its response as the disease quickly spread.

“The first wave of the pandemic was a disaster because we had spent all January and February in the headless-chicken phase,” McNeil writes. “We had plenty of warning. But we reacted slowly because of disbelief, especially at the very top.”

Looking back, McNeil says the COVID-19 pandemic did lasting damage to our country. “I thought we would unite against a common enemy,” he writes. “Instead, once it was within our walls, we disintegrated into a fratricidal brawl.” 

Speaking to Kara Swisher, McNeil says half the people who died of COVID-19 would not have lost their lives if we’d responded differently, and he lays blame directly at the feet of the then-president, pointing out that “when the rumors and the denialism comes from the very top,” people are inclined to believe them. 

“If everybody had accepted the vaccine … if the lies hadn’t been told, if it hadn’t become so polarized, we really would’ve ended up with only about 600,000 dead instead of 1.1 million dead. I am convinced of that.”

McNeil believes a science-based response to the pandemic would also have avoided much of the societal damage caused by the pandemic.

“If we’d known how rare the virus was elsewhere, we might have let much of the country stay open and closed it hotspot by hotspot, not all at once. We might have closed some school districts but not others; moved medical personnel and goods to where they were most needed, and so on. Everything might have been different. Common sense might’ve prevailed, instead of frustration and anger.”

I realize that for most people, we are in the post-COVID era. I am aware that there are other, newer nightmares that demand our attention. Still, I am inspired to keep in mind the deeply unpleasant disruption that we all lived through recently—some of us more recently than others.