It’s not just about dying
For every COVID-related death, remember the many survivors whose lives have been scarred forever
A close relative once told me one of the saddest real-life stories I’ve ever heard.
A few years ago, a young man from India traveled to Cleveland on a business trip. While in town, he contracted a devastating disease that ruined both of his lungs. For the rest of his life, he was forced to stay in a bed in a local long-term nursing home, hooked up to a ventilator.
“He was the nicest man,” my relative recalled, having taken care of him as a nurse. “But he was so sad and lonely. He knew he would never return to the world, thousands of miles away, that had everything and everyone he knew. And no one from that world ever came to visit.”
“What kind of life is that?”
Much has been made of the 197,000-and-growing number of deaths tied to COVID-19 in the United States. Rightfully so.
But there’s been far too little said about the fate of those who have survived.
It’s been less than a year (though it seems more like a decade) since the first COVID cases were identified. So, it’s not surprising that we know little about its long-term effects. But the initial research is scary. Here’s what the Mayo Clinic says:
Heart. Imaging tests taken months after recovery from COVID-19 have shown lasting damage to the heart muscle, even in people who experienced only mild COVID-19 symptoms. This may increase the risk of heart failure or other heart complications in the future.
Lungs. The type of pneumonia often associated with COVID-19 can cause long-standing damage to the tiny air sacs (alveoli) in the lungs. The resulting scar tissue can lead to long-term breathing problems.
Brain. Even in young people, COVID-19 can cause strokes, seizures and Guillain-Barre syndrome — a condition that causes temporary paralysis. COVID-19 may also increase the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease.
Blood clots and blood vessel problems. COVID-19 can make blood cells more likely to clump up and form clots. While large clots can cause heart attacks and strokes, much of the heart damage caused by COVID-19 is believed to stem from very small clots that block tiny blood vessels (capillaries) in the heart muscle.
Other organs affected by blood clots include the lungs, legs, liver and kidneys. COVID-19 can also weaken blood vessels, which contributes to potentially long-lasting problems with the liver and kidneys.
Problems with mood and fatigue People who have severe symptoms of COVID-19 often have to be treated in a hospital’s intensive care unit, with mechanical assistance such as ventilators to breathe. Simply surviving this experience can make a person more likely to later develop post-traumatic stress syndrome, depression and anxiety.
Fortunately, as far as we know now, most people who contract COVID-19 will not suffer these lingering side-effects.
But, let’s say that 50 million Americans get the disease. That’s pretty conservative. If new cases continue at the recent rate, we’ll hit the 50 million mark on Dec. 4.
And let’s say that just 2 percent of victims have those terrible symptoms. That’s 1,000,000 Americans…just this year.
Is our country adequately prepared — psychologically, logistically and financially — for the possibility of a million, or probably more, Americans profoundly scarred by COVID?
Earlier generations prized resilience.
In my grandparents’ era, almost everybody knew someone who had been crippled by polio, lived near a family caring for an invalid uncle, had a relative who came back from a war in less than one piece. They were ready — reluctantly so — for a new wave of suffering.
But the past 70 years’ great advances in public health, medical care and reducing armed conflict have made such tragedies seem like old Victorian tales to most Americans.
The flip side of that progress is that Americans are too willing to believe it’s irreversible. The walking, or bed-ridden, wounded are invisible to most of us. The idea that seemingly small harms today can cause lifelong damage seems too cruel to believe.
And, more disastrously, the hucksters claiming that economic growth will solve all ills, that a few fatalities here and there is a small price to pay for “progress,” have plenty of acolytes in the positions that make life-and-death decisions for all of us.
As Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman has written, “an economy’s success should be judged not by impersonal statistics, but by whether people’s lives are getting better.”
The good news is that a solid majority of Americans tend to agree. They’re telling pollsters they prioritize health over money and that sending children to in-person school right now is a bad idea.
The bad news is that those majorities are dwindling. How to deal with the pandemic has become an issue in the upcoming election and, for many, the prospects of short-term political gain are trumping what they know in their hearts and minds is the right thing to do.
I highly doubt the Indian man on a ventilator in Cleveland — if he’s still alive — could care less about the outcome of a single election. But, as voters and politicians contemplate the future, I suspect he’d ask them to remember his story and to ask “what kind of life?” do they want for themselves and their loved ones.
