Filmmaker and popular YouTuber Jesse Ridgway, 32, recently shared his year-long experience with Long COVID on social media.
Well known as “McJuggerNuggets” on YouTube, Ridgway has accumulated over two billion views on his videos and gathered more than four million subscribers on his channel. He is also an award-winning filmmaker, currently working as an executive producer on Getting LOST, the official documentary about the popular 2000s television show.
Ridgeway shared a thread on X/Twitter and a series of stories on his Instagram and TikToks accounts on Friday, October 11 detailing his acute SARS-CoV-2 infection and experience with Long COVID. The filmmaker has been sharing a series of health updates about Long COVID on his channel throughout the past year.
Long COVID is a common multisystemic disease following COVID-19 that may be lifelong. It affects all age groups and can be fatal. Over 400 million people around the world are affected by the disease, according to a recent review paper in Nature.
“It has officially been one year since I contracted COVID-19 while on set for my movie that I’ve been working on,” he said. “I was once a very healthy 31-year-old man, but now every day is a struggle for me.”
During his acute COVID-19 illness, the filmmaker stated that he blacked out and hit his head on tile flooring. And while he seemed to gradually improve after his acute SARS-CoV-2 infection, he said he went to the emergency room two months later.
Over the past year, Ridgway said he experienced gaslighting from medical providers, as well as family and friends. Gaslighting is a common experience for many people with Long COVID due to the stigma around the illness. Much of the stigma around the disease occurs because of poor to nonexistent public health messaging on Long COVID, as well as the failed global public health response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
“Nobody fully understood how badly I was suffering,” he said.
Ridgway also highlighted the over 1.2 million Americans who have died of COVID-19 in his message and shared personal accounts of people he had lost to the disease, including family members, a neighbor, and a close friend’s mom. “COVID is still a threat. Point blank,” he warned.
The popular YouTuber also shared that he knows “droves” of fans with Long COVID, endless fatigue, and heart issues. He also has friends “who barely have enough strength to stand or speak for very long,” he told his followers.
Fellow popular YouTuber Diana Cowern, known as the Physics Girl, has also publicly shared her experience with severe Long COVID and myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME).
Ridgway’s update builds on a prior video from September 2024, titled “My experience with Long Covid (Health Update).”
“Hopefully this may encourage someone to take precautionary measures or make some changes,” he wrote. “I thought I was young, healthy and the exception too…until I got tremendously humbled by a virus.”
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