This summer, all prospective beach days and lunch dates were cancelled once I tested positive for COVID-19. With my family overseas for their holiday, I was left to fend for myself in the toughest three weeks of my life. I spent every minute in immense discomfort, wishing I could sleep for more than twenty minutes at a time without waking up with violent coughs and a growing headache. Countless nurofen, tissue boxes, and cups of microwaved soup later, it was clear that this was not “just like the cold”. The impact of COVID on my body was palpable, and the lingering symptoms of Long COVID have not allowed any respite.
Two months on, I have tremendous fatigue, migraines, shortness of breath, body aches, and brain fog. I forget people’s names, I can’t stand for more than ten minutes at a time, and I am constantly aware of a dull pain throughout my body. On ‘good’ weeks, I can manage every second day out at uni for a few hours of class — that is, before inevitably crashing and taking a long nap to get me through the rest of the day. On ‘bad’ weeks, I spend all my time alternating only between my bed and different couches throughout the house, trying to ignore the discomfort in my body whilst also feeling overwhelmed with guilt and frustration at all the things I am unable to do that day. My life has literally been put on pause as the rest of the world goes on: I am now graduating a year later than planned, I have not been at work for three months, I have had to involuntarily pull out of many projects, and I no longer have the energy to spend time with friends. My life has been completely uprooted.
Long COVID is a chronic condition in which people experience symptoms, sometimes for up to years, after the acute infection. Common symptoms include fatigue, chest pain, and brain fog, but you are also at risk of pulmonary and neurological complications. Furthermore, your immune system becomes permanently damaged by infection — not built up with immunity — meaning reinfection is extremely dangerous. 2022 research by the Australian National University found that 1 in 5 people who get COVID experience Long COVID. Being such a new condition with many ‘invisible’ symptoms, it is extremely under researched. Although much is unknown about Long COVID, we do know that anyone who gets COVID can develop Long COVID. It is a condition only diagnosed by a process of elimination, with no definitively known cure.
Five years on from the first lockdown, things have gone ‘back to normal’. Normal, meaning excess disability and death as everyone goes back to work. But is it really ‘normal’ for a preventable disease to rampantly disable and kill so much of the population? Such violence is taking place precisely because all measures that once responded to the urgency and seriousness of COVID have been axed: isolation is no longer legally required nor encouraged. Infrastructure like free, accessible PCR testing and Long COVID clinics have been shut down. Contact tracing is non-existent. Many workplaces — who do not offer sufficient paid sick leave — are demanding we come back into the office, and universities are bringing back stringent and compulsory in-person class attendance requirements for certain courses.
The state’s disregard of the risks and spread of COVID should not be surprising — the cost of previous safety measures on the economy was far greater than the cost of people’s lives. This is neoliberalism manifest, which we see elsewhere in healthcare: bulk-billing services have practically disappeared, hospitals have dangerous staff to patient ratios, there have been immense cuts to NDIS funding, trans healthcare is being denied to Queensland youth and in amerikkka/Turtle Island, and abortion access is increasingly fraught.
Disease is political. A state-sanctioned pandemic is eugenics.
We must refuse to normalise mass disablement. We must refuse to be complicit in mass death. We cannot exist in the world acting as if disabled lives are disposable. The pandemic is not over. We ought to care for each other to prevent the spread of COVID, especially when the state refuses to intervene.
The best way to protect yourself (and others) from COVID and its complications is to not get COVID at all. Handwashing alone will not save you — it is time to start masking up again. You should reintroduce masking practices in healthcare facilities, on public transport, at the supermarket, at concerts, and at protests. Consider even your lectures — how many times a week are you sitting in a packed room with hundreds of others for two hours? I can assure you that the slight inconvenience (or even embarrassment) of wearing a mask is much better than the inconvenience of becoming disabled with Long COVID. It’s not just about yourself: with each precaution you choose not to take, you are telling disabled people that our livelihoods are not worth protecting.
Invest in N95s and KF94s. To save money in the long run, buy them in bulk through your households, workplaces, and organisations. The Disabilities Collective is launching a mask bloc which distributes masks to any individual or group at the University of Sydney who requests them — scan the QR code below.
You are not guaranteed good health, especially when you do nothing to prevent infection during a pandemic. Your carelessness about COVID will come at my (and your) peril.
