Long COVID leaves thousands of L.A. County residents sick, broke and ignored

“You’re not just becoming disabled,” said Elle Seibert, 31, who has dealt with debilitating fatigue and cardiac symptoms since 2020. “You’re realizing how easily society at large and people in your life will abandon you when you cannot offer them things.”

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The official county count for total confirmed COVID infections ended in mid-2023 at 3.5 million. Given the World Health Organization’s estimate that 6% of infections result in long COVID, just the first two years of the pandemic may have yielded up to 175,000 long COVID cases, a number that has only grown as the virus has continued to circulate.

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“We still hear stories about people who are saying, you know, my physician dismissed it or misdiagnosed it, or told me to just go home and wait,” Ferrer said.

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The outlook at the federal level is grim. Last year, the Trump administration closed the Office for Long COVID Research and Practice and canceled grants for long COVID research.
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“The COVID-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a nonexistent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago,” a Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson told the magazine Science.