Why is the business press outreporting the left on COVID?
Newly disabled victims of COVID pile high while the left spreads ableist nonsense
Today, the New Republic chose to publish a story about Long COVID. In this moment, as millions of people continue to be disabled by the illness, the public could use more reporting on the topic. Few people seem aware that Long COVID exists; those that are aware believe it’s rare or nothing to worry about. All of this is scientifically inaccurate, but that didn’t stop the New Republic from publishing a misleading and minimizing piece today suggesting that Long COVID may be psychological. While it pays lip service to the many studies emerging that demonstrate biological changes in patients, it then goes on to undercut its own critique of the historically misogynistic “hysteria” diagnosis by claiming “A chronic illness that appeared to be triggered by viral infection could just as easily have been triggered by the trauma of the pandemic itself.”
This is a dangerous and unsupported claim at a time where the ramifications of mass disability are becoming all too apparent, and one that has been employed in service to this administration and capital for too long.
A few facts to start with: Long COVID is a common outcome of COVID-19 infection, and vaccination reduces risk only somewhat. Studies have found a very wide variation in incidence; some as low as 5%, some as high as 50%; we can attribute this to the vague boundaries around what actually constitutes Long COVID.
The idea, however, that there are no biomarkers or indicators by which doctors can detect Long COVID is both outdated and damaging. We are well past the debate around a “psychological” explanation, and a wave of disabling illness on this scale is and will be like nothing we’ve seen before. The language in the New Republic piece uses both-sidesism to cast doubt on the crisis while appearing even-handed to the willfully ignorant abled community.
Many Long COVID patients have endothelial dysfunction- the lining of the blood vessels is damaged- and are found to have microclots in their blood. Long COVID patients are observed to have capillary rarefication , clots, high risk of vascular events (like heart attack and stroke), circulation issues, fainting, and exercise intolerance.
New studies are showing that Long COVID patients may have viral persistence; meaning COVID was not cleared from the body, but continues to persist in organs where the immune system can’t clear it. Think HIV, HPV, or other viruses that continue to persist in the body and cause health problems years later. Dr. Grace McComsey, who has spent 2 decades studying HIV/AIDS, has flagged concerning similarities between the viruses. It’s worth reading her words in context:
“Now I just look at it, and I’m like gosh, it’s like a déjà vu,” McComsey said.
If the idea that the behavior of the SARS-CoV-2 virus might have any similarities to HIV is news to you, you aren’t alone. But McComsey said that for the HIV researchers who have made the crossover to studying this new coronavirus, the similarities that emerged were unmistakable.
To be clear, McComsey isn’t suggesting that the viruses themselves are similar. Coronaviruses are not retroviruses like HIV, nor are they sexually transmitted like HIV. But it’s the way they make the people they infect sick that caught her attention. It hides in the body and continues to wreak havoc in the various organ system by driving inflammation and disrupting the immune response.
“HIV patients don’t die from the virus itself. They die from immune activation – from the high levels of inflammation that causes cancer, heart disease, liver and kidney disease,” she said.
“The only reason we cannot cure HIV is because the virus hides where the HIV drugs can’t go in. So it continues to fuel this high inflammation. That’s why somebody like me who has been studying HIV for the last 20 years found that COVID is extremely similar to HIV. It’s a virus that produces a lot of inflammation. We see a lot of conditions that are known to stem from inflammation, and now we have some evidence that it persists in different organs.”
While we can’t know for sure what will happen in 5-10 years time, we can exercise the precautionary principle rather than ignoring every concerning study that emerges. We also see damage to the CD8 T-cells and dendritic cells following acute infection; the permanence and prevalance of this damage is still a hot topic of debate.
Does Long COVID lead to death over time? We don’t have an answer yet, but yes, some analyses suggest that it could.
Risk of Long COVID- or any severe outcome- goes up with each COVID reinfection. (I should mention that the possibility remains that “Long COVID” is merely the presentation of COVID viral persistence, and that those who have not manifested any post-COVID symptoms are not necessarily free and clear; we need to look at how widespread viral persistance is in the general public, and this work is ongoing).
Putting together a few pieces of information: that Long COVID is a serious outcome, that it is common, and that risk of LC increases per reinfection, we get a pretty grim picture. It is a picture of everyone moving closer to severe outcome and disability over time.
I’m sure many who have not kept up with the ongoing scholarship around post-COVID effects (including Long COVID, high risk of stroke and heart attack, and organ failure) will consider this piece to be fear-mongering. The reality is that we know enough to know that letting this virus continually rip through the population is an insane gamble with plenty to indicate that we’ve already lost our bet.
Anyone reading the many emerging studies pointing to severe long-term consequences of continual COVID reinfection know that the “let it rip” approach quite simply will not hold long term. So why aren’t we seeing any red flags in the press? As it turns out, there is one corner of the media ecosystem that cares about an unprecedented, mass-disabling event: it’s business reporters.
A short sampler below:
WSJ: A Key to Long Covid Is Virus Lingering in the Body, Scientists Say
Bloomberg: UK Says Long Covid May Explain Much of Spike in Inactivity Rate
Financial Times: Long Covid: the invisible public health crisis fuelling labour shortages
FORTUNE: Companies haven’t addressed long COVID in the workplace—and they’re paying the price
CNBC: Long Covid’s financial devastation: $8,000 in credit card debt, ruined retirement plans
Washington Post, Business: Mass Long-Covid Disability Threatens the Economy
Sadly, while human lives are cast aside by right and left-wingers alike, the only part of the political spectrum concerned about disabling the public are employers realizing they’re losing human capital.
And from these headlines, it’s clear exactly why and in what context the business press cares about human beings: in the context of their ability to serve as workers for capitalism. Over and over again, headlines in WSJ and Fortune are warning of the dire economic situation ahead, the widespread labor shortages across every frontline industry, and jobs reporting showing record numbers of workers out with long-term illness. LC is urgent not because of our suffering, but because of our inability to work.
That the business press is leading the way because they value their employees more than we value our neighbors is an embarrassment to the movement. Where are the voices of Long COVID patients in the New Republic? Why aren’t disabled journalists the ones covering this mass disabling event? Why is the left repeating misinformation that exculpates our politicians? Why is it defaulting to a eugenicist worldview that if you’re “not healthy” you should stay in your house or die? Why are we talking about strikes and sick days, but never even daring to mention the obvious cause of ongoing and widespread frontline worker shortages?
I haven’t even mentioned socialist magazines like Jacobin or Current Affairs, because they haven’t even mentioned the uh, ongoing mass death event and normalization of excluding disabled people from public life lately. Jacobin is busy unpacking which superheroes are the most fascist and whether You’ve Got Mail, a movie that came out in the 90s, is neoliberal. No time to follow up on that once-in-a-lifetime disease epidemic killing hundreds of people every day- the majority of them now vaccinated.
There are broader questions to be asked of the movement here that go well beyond Long COVID. The sheer hatred being directed at disabled people right now is evident even in left-wing circles, where people have begun sneering in the manner of MAGA Republicans when masks are mentioned.
Familiar refrains like “masks don’t work,” “masks are bad for you,” “we can’t live like this forever,” and “it’s too hard,” are suddenly rampant among the same groups who called Republicans psychotic murderers for the same rhetoric. For the record, I will wear a mask as long as wearing a mask is necessary; not “until I’m tired.” Solidarity forever, not solidarity for-as-long-as-its-convenient.
Sadly, along our current course, disability awaits many who are so eager to declare that disabled people must simply isolate from society forever.
It is hardly surprising to see Biden-supporting establishment Democrats get behind the “COVID is over” and “Long COVID isn’t real” status-quo-preserving talking points. When it became clear that a vaccine-only approach could not end the pandemic, our COVID strategy should’ve pivoted; instead, the Biden administration continued to double down, and in doing so, began to push misinformation akin to the Trump administration before it. It’s typical that Democratic voters and reporters repeat White House press releases verbatim in service of the party narrative.
But leftists are supposed to be critical of establishment politics and politicians. We are supposed to challenge the narratives sold to us by the Joe Bidens and Donald Trumps, the Fox Newses and CNNs of the world. We are supposed to stand with marginalized groups- disabled people, the elderly, children, the immunocompromised- and demand justice, even in the face of very long odds. And we certainly don’t unblinkingly accept a “new normal” which puts each of us at high risk of long-term disability.
A left that easily swallows half-cocked, unsupported justifications for mass death and disability for our own convenience and comfort is no left at all. We deserve better from our comrades, our leaders, our journalists, and our friends.