“I almost live here in the living room,” Bedell said of her house near Pittsburgh. “I feel like I lost the life I had.”
She needs a walker to walk around the house and a wheelchair for medical appointments.
“I literally can’t even leave my house alone,” she said.
Prior to Covid, Laurie was the nursing director of a home health agency, but she had not worked since January. After exhausting her paid leisure time, she was fired. She says there was no way she could work in her current state.
“I barely work a few days,” she said. “I can barely get out of bed or get up from the couch. The pain and fatigue are so severe that I literally can’t move.”
Bedell’s case is stern but not unique.
Dr. Greg Vanichkachorn and his team at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, treat and study post-Covid syndrome.
“Work problems were one of the most significant problems we encountered in our patient population,” Vanichkachorn said. “Up to about 40% of our patients do not return to work several months after their infection.”
Looking at data from their clinic and several other studies, they noticed an annoying trend.
“We estimate that approximately 1.3 million individuals are out of work now due to symptoms of‘ long-distance ’Covid,” he said.
Although it is only an estimate, Vanichkachorn says that could mean more than a million Americans are out of the workforce as the country deals with labor shortages and more than 10 million open jobs in August.
“A lot of those jobs aren’t filled because people are struggling with Covid,” Zandi told CNN. “Long Covid is an increasingly significant setback to the job market for businesses to start operating and, ultimately, for the wider economy to start working.”
Dr. Tae Chung runs a long-term Covid clinic for Johns Hopkins Medicine, treating long-term carriers with a range of conditions and symptoms.
“I’m not surprised if 1.3 million or more people are out there workforce because of long Covid, “he said.” Because if you really understand the symptoms, you know, that affects their daily life at work. “
Vanichkachorn says most of the patients they study have well-paid jobs and good health insurance, and he cares about demographics that are missing from their data.
“My fear is that there are individuals who are severely suffering from this condition, but they just can’t take time off work to go take care of it,” he said. “They have to work to keep the lights on, keep food on the table.”
Jennifer Hobbs is a preschool teacher in Medford, Oregon. She suffered long Covid symptoms for a year, from severe fatigue to hair loss.
“I have a headache every day for a year,” she said.
But after a month off, she returned to her classroom, needing the income and health insurance.
“It was almost impossible for me to think about leaving,” she said. “I don’t know how I do it. I’m just getting through the day.”
Bedell applied for a disability in September and is still awaiting a response.
“I really loved being a nurse, and losing that job and losing that part of me was really hard,” she said. “I became one of the patients I cared for.”
She and her husband spent their savings and retirement funds to pay the bills.
“It was a disaster for us,” she said. “That’s my biggest concern, honestly. I’m afraid I’ll never be able to go back to work.”
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