Still Here, May 19: Links and transcript

Summary

In this episode of Still Here: Betsy Ladyzhets and Heather Hogan recap two April 24 arts events focused on creating space for artists with Long COVID to share their work safely and provide a container for the spectrum of emotions they’re feeling. And freelance writer Anna Wenner talks about the importance of self-advocacy after it took two ER trips for doctors to recognize she had a pulmonary embolism caused by a SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Also in this episode: Two studies looking at the global impact of Long COVID on healthcare workers.

Find our Long COVID news and commentary podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, or listen below and jump to the start of the podcast transcript. Thanks for your patience, everyone! This episode was delayed due to technical issues. As such, we’ve omitted the COVID trends as the ones we recorded are now out of date.

Jump to a specific part of the transcript:

• Intro
• Two Long COVID-focused performances show power of art for reflection, solidarity
• Self-advocacy after pulmonary embolism
• Research
• Outro

Still Here overlaps with The Sick Times’ newsletter, which publishes weekly.

Mentioned in this episode (in order of appearance):

• The Sick Times: Two Long COVID-focused performances show the power of art for reflection and solidarity
• The Sick Times: “Marching from home”: New rock musical embodies the challenges and resistance of people with energy-limiting diseases
• The Sick Times: Missives from the dismissed: Still COVIDing without community
• The Sick Times: Instead of supporting people with Long COVID, our government funds a genocide
• HEPA collective (behind Wake Up and Smell the COVID) Instagram
• Sign up for the mailing list for AIR CHANGE PER HOUR updates
• The Sick Times: COVID-19 triggered a life-threatening pulmonary embolism that led to long-term lung damage. It took two ER trips before doctors believed me.
• The Sick Times: Research updates, April 29

Additional audio in this episode: 

• Rude Mechanical Orchestra: Which Side Are You On? (orig. Florence Reece) 

Transcript

Intro (0:00) 

[Instrumental snippet of theme song, the Rude Mechanical Orchestra’s rendition of “Which Side Are You On?” begins playing.]

James Salanga: Welcome to Still Here, a Long COVID news and commentary podcast from The Sick Times.

[Instrumental ends]

Miles Griffis: Hi, I’m Miles Griffis.

Betsy Ladyzhets: And I’m Betsy Ladyzhets. We’re the co-founders of The Sick Times. 

James: I’m James Salanga, and I’m Still Here’s producer.

Miles: Many institutions are ignoring the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and trying to erase the Long COVID crisis.

Betsy: But here at The Sick Times, we’re not. We’ll continue to bring you the latest Long COVID news and commentary each week.

Miles: Without pandemic denial, minimizing, or gaslighting, on our website, social media platforms, our newsletter and, of course, this podcast.

James: In this episode, Betsy and Heather will talk about two April 24 shows that blend art and Long COVID advocacy to open up a space for reflection and grief.

And freelance writer Anna Wenner will talk about the importance of self-advocacy after she experienced medical gaslighting after COVID-19 triggered a pulmonary embolism.

Miles: Alongside that, we’ll also share some other Long COVID research updates.

Today’s research update: We will look at a recap of two recently published studies showing the global impact of Long COVID on healthcare workers.

James: And next, hopping to a quick disclaimer about our COVID forecast from Betsy.

Betsy: Because of technical difficulties leading to delays with the podcast, we’re skipping the COVID trends this week because we kind of figure there will be more up-to-date data and trends by the time this episode comes out.

So you can go find those on our website.

James: After a quick musical break, Betsy and Heather will be on the podcast talking about two April 24 arts shows that created new space for people with Long COVID, other chronic illnesses and disabilities.

And freelance writer Anna Wenner will talk about her experience with self-advocacy after she experienced medical gaslighting when COVID-19 triggered a pulmonary embolism.

[instrumental segment of theme song plays]

The Sick Times: Two Long COVID-focused performances show the power of art for reflection and solidarity (2:10)

James: Arts and theater spaces have become increasingly inaccessible to people with Long COVID [and] other chronic illnesses and disabilities over the course of the ongoing pandemic.

But on April 24, two performances, one in New York City, one online, demonstrated how artists formerly in these spaces are forging new enclaves for themselves.

So Betsy and Heather, who attended the events, are here to talk about them, respectively called AIR CHANGE PER HOUR and Wake Up and Smell the COVID: An Evening without Eric Bogosian. The named actor was not affiliated with the latter performance.

Thanks for coming back on the podcast to talk with us, Heather, and thanks for chatting with us, Betsy.

Heather Hogan: Yeah, I’m excited to be here always.

James: First off, would love to hear you walk us through each event to hear a little bit more about what the atmosphere was like among attendees as well.

Heather: Yeah, I guess I could go first.

I only attended the virtual event, which was Wake Up and Smell the COVID. And it was incredible. It was six monologues delivered by anonymous writers and performers. Some were comedians, some were writing fiction.

There was a stand-up comedian who was talking about how when he got into comedy, his mentor would say, “The audience isn’t there to shoot you. They’re not there to kill you. It’s not like a firing squad.”

But isn’t it now, isn’t it a firing squad? Because you’re standing in front of all of these unmasked people who were facing toward you and breathing their pathogens at you.

And just a lot of different pieces that circled around the idea of what we’ve lost with COVID, the spaces that we’ve lost for performance in theaters and comedy clubs.

It was really active chat on the Zoom with people clapping and snapping and sharing their appreciation.

I felt so both entertained and just really, really moved by all the performances. And I think sometimes when you’re covering something like this that you’re so focused on making notes and thinking it through in real time, I enjoyed it as if I weren’t even there for work. I just loved it so much.

It felt really like a great space of solidarity.

Betsy: Yeah. I mean, the other event, AIR CHANGE PER HOUR, definitely felt similar, like a space of solidarity.

The other event, which I attended that evening in Brooklyn, was at a venue called Issue Project Room.

So it’s an innovative music venue that hosts artists for residencies. And one of their artists in residency right now is named Anna RG.

They’re an artist who has Long COVID.

I should say they use they and she pronouns. So that’s why you notice me using both, that’s why.

And so the piece that she presented was essentially a concert in which the main performers were air purifiers and then recordings sourced by, as the program calls it, “Six/Tired/Disabled Artists.”

So RG had essentially asked a bunch of other artists to record sounds of their breathing and then edited that together, along with sounds from the air purifiers and other sounds of surrounding space and a bit of musical instruments and singingm into this piece that is called “Sounds for Sick Breath/Rest.”

I’m a musician and I still sort of feel like I have a hard time describing exactly what it was like.

But as someone who does not have Long COVID myself or does not have like an energy limiting illness myself, I really felt like, to me, it evoked this feeling of resting and feeling as though you have to spend a lot of your time just intentionally resting and intentionally preparing to expend energy very intentionally.

And I noticed too that the audience seemed to really take advantage of and appreciate opportunities for access that were presented by the performance.

So people were invited to lie down rather than sitting in this firm venue chairs for the whole, like, two hours or so that the show was running. People were invited to take breaks whenever they had to take breaks and there were also several rest breaks throughout the piece. People were invited to make noise if they wanted or get up and stretch and just do whatever they needed to do.

Just inviting people to be comfortable and to experience the performance in whatever way made sense for them.

James: No, yeah, that all makes sense.

So I think — I like the part where you’re talking about what it evoked for you, too, like, about being a musician, just because I feel like maybe some other folks who are also musicians can relate to that.

Betsy: Yeah, I never thought about an air purifier being an instrument, but, like, they totally are.

I play in a band and we have air purifiers in our practice space. Whenever we are in the space and we have them running, we are doing duets with [them]. They are part of the band, you know, but I never thought about it like that before.

Miles: So you both attended another accessible theater event.

The song cycle Dan Fishback is Alive, Unwell, and Living in his Apartment. That was a piece that we published in The Sick Times late last year.

How did the events you attended — what dialogues did you notice between Dan Fishback’s piece and these two?

Heather: That’s a great question.

I think the two things that really jumped out to me were every event talks about how one of the great losses for all of the people, these performers and writers, is the ability to create in the way that they created before they got sick, and for some people, the inability to create at all or having such an energy-limiting disease that even if you were to create, you couldn’t perform it.

And the loss that goes with that is something that I think people who either are not creative or who don’t have Long COVID or ME, I don’t think they could really understand.

You know, when I first was grappling with Long COVID, I couldn’t write. And I just would lie in bed at night and I was like, “What am I going to do if this never comes back?”

Not just for a career, like not just to make money to live, but my life is reading and writing, and it has been for so long, that I could not even imagine who I would be if I couldn’t write. In all of these performances, that comes through so strongly in different ways, because people are creating in different ways.

And I think that’s one thing that stands out to me.

And the other thing is seeing the photos that Betsy took from her event of people lying down, like she said, making use of the accessible space.

When I interviewed Dan Fishback, I asked him — because they brought in a bed for him when he was directing his performance, his play — and I asked him, “Did you take advantage of it?”

And he said, “Yes.”

And I said, “Did you feel vulnerable?”

And he said it was one of the most vulnerable things he had ever experienced in his life, was lying down in front of other people.

And I think that there is such a truth to that. I don’t know if I could be courageous enough to lie down in front of strangers. I don’t even know if I would lie down in front of most of my friends.

So I think that having that, normalizing that and having the courage to do it, I think, is really inspiring.

And I loved those photos. And I loved that they had that in common with Dan’s piece as well.

Betsy: This is also more of a literal commonality, but Dan was also at that event [AIR CHANGE PER HOUR].

I said hi to him.

James: Yeah. I think you both kind of talked about this already, but I’d love to hear a little bit about what you heard from other attendees, from the artists themselves, just about what it means to make these spaces.

I think the quotes that you share from the monologues in the piece, Heather, are just so powerful.

One that I remember is somebody who said, “I miss creating, but I miss having a functional brain more.”

And [I] would just love to hear what the reception was from the folks who were there listening to all of these things.

Betsy: Yeah, I had a nice conversation with Dave Ruder.

They and Anna RG were speaking in conversation for part of the AIR CHANGE PER HOURperformance, and they were also contributing background vocals and stuff like that at different points.

We talked a bit about what it’s like to be people who are in these performance kind of spaces and trying to not get reinfected and shared an observation that it seems to be getting easier. And so they were saying they found it easier to make those requests for collaborators.

And I think creating these spaces where masks are required by default and where everybody is going to come in in their best color-matched KN95 and a mask chain is not an argument for anyone, I think kind of helps people to go back with confidence to whatever other spaces they’re in and say, “Hey, I need this. This is not a request. This is not nice. This is not accommodating some weird quirk, but this is just a requirement if you want me to be here.”

Heather: I think that’s really interesting because it’s also something I noticed in the event that we had at The Nonbinarian bookstore, which is that when people were not having to focus on whether or not they were going to have to fight to keep on their mask or fight other people to put on masks, then the conversation becomes, “Where did you get that mask?”

Betsy: “How do you feel about this mask shape? Do you find that it works well for you? Where did you get that one?”

Heather: Yeah, it’s just so normal in the space, and it’s just what you said, Betsy. When you can stop fighting for your life for just a second, then it can just become a part of fashion or sort of a signal in the community.

I think there’s something so incredible about that, and it’s, I don’t know, it just feels really safe and just like you could just be.

Betsy: And I also think there’s a value in hybrid events too.

I know Nadica’s essay that we published recently kind of talks about this.

Many people are too geographically far from these kinds of places where masks are required, but perhaps seeing it captured on video or participating virtually, I think, also has kind of a similar weight to it.

James: Both of these events included calls to redistribute funds — to Mask Bloc New York City, to artists with Long COVID, to mutual aid asks from people in Gaza, and just thinking about what you said, Betsy, about how hybrid events, too, can also offer accessibility to folks who are farther out. How can arts events like these invite greater solidarity?

Heather: Yeah, I think first of all the hybrid situation is incredible, not only because it provides the performance to people who aren’t in LA or New York City, but also because on any given day, if you have an energy-limiting disease you don’t know, you could buy a ticket, you can hope for the best, you can do everything you can, but you might not be able to make it.

Part of the pain of Long COVID is that, is not knowing until the very time it’s time to leave your house whether or not you are actually going to be able to attend.

So just having the peace of mind to know that even if you can’t leave, you’ll still be able to participate and people want you to be there.

So I think you know having a virtual option is really good, requiring masks, just like no question about it, and if you are not a person with Long COVID, Betsy’s so great at this, being an advocate for those who are with Long COVID, and you can speak up and it’s not going to really cost you the energy, you know, I think that’s really important.

Betsy: I think the other thing that’s special about performances like these specifically is it’s inviting people to experience a little bit of an experience that’s different from theirs.

Both AIR CHANGE PER HOUR and the Wake Up and Smell the COVID event had such evocative descriptions and depictions of what it’s like to live with these diseases.

I think, you know, Heather and I were both taking notes and we pulled out so many great descriptions of different kinds of symptoms and what it feels like to have cognitive dysfunction withLlong COVID, what it feels like to have POTS and all this stuff, and I think that’s really powerful in demonstrating why these folks need support and need our attention and care.

Similarly, a central piece of AIR CHANGE PER HOUR was [a] reading from Jenna Bitar, of a piece adapted from their essay in The Sick Times a few months ago, talking about their experience as a Palestinian with Long COVID and it included the passage that I think is one of the most meaningful things that I think we’ve published yet on The Sick Times, the passage where they talk about imagining people in Gaza with Long COVID and imagining — how do you even begin to exist when your healthcare infrastructure and your support structures are being bombed?

Having people sit together and listen to that, obviously you’re going to go home and donate to some mutual aid funds if that’s something you can do.

It’s just a very literal way of demonstrating commonalities and helping us find solidarity.

Heather: I’m jumping off what you said, Betsy.

When people describe their symptoms and you are around other people and there’s this sort of collective, “Yes, oh.” Sometimes it can feel so isolating to have these symptoms, not only because of medical gaslighting, but just because we spent so much time alone in our beds and just having someone describe it.

Two of the descriptions that jumped out at me, one of the descriptions was “it’s like walking backwards through a fog made of needles” and then describing tachycardia as a heartbeat that feels like a feral metronome.

And I was like, Yes.

And I just think having someone explain your symptoms and having other people get it at the same time, the camaraderie in that is something that I would have never understood before I got sick. And it’s a really cool feeling.

Miles: So those who weren’t able to make it to these shows, will [they] either be available or viewable online? And how can interested listeners stay up to date with other similar events?

Betsy: So Wake Up and Smell the COVID, I believe they tried to record it, but weren’t able to because of the security settings on the Zoom meeting.

But I think the group is planning to do more, so folks can follow Wake Up and Smell the COVID on Instagram and get more updates there.

And then AIR CHANGE PER HOUR was recorded.

And I asked Anna RG about this and she said that they’re planning to work on an edit compilation of the recording of the event itself, plus other pieces, to make an asynchronous version of what it would have been like to attend.

And they’re also going to have more projects in their residency at Issue Project Room in Brooklyn.

There’s a portfolio page that they have that people can sign up to for updates. We can link to in the description.

Heather: And overall, you should sign up for The Sick Times’ newsletter where you can get all of your Long COVID information.

Betsy: Yes, we try to include upcoming events and other stuff like this too.

Or if you are an artist and you have some kind of Long COVID-related performance or show coming up, let us know.

James: Thanks so much for both of you.

And you can read the full story at thesicktimes dot org and find it in our transcript.

The Sick Times: COVID-19 triggered a life-threatening pulmonary embolism that led to long-term lung damage. It took two ER trips before doctors believed me. (17:16)

James: And next, for Anna Wenner, a SARS-CoV-2 infection triggered a life-threatening pulmonary embolism that led to long-term lung damage.

But it took two ER trips before doctors believed her.

Anna joins us today to share more about her experience, which she wrote about in an essay for The Sick Times.

Thanks for joining us, Anna.

Anna Wenner: Thanks for having me.

James: So I wanted to first open up the floor to you to read the initial part of your essay for folks who maybe haven’t read it yet.

The floor is yours.

Anna: Perfect. Thanks.

It started with chest pain. 

I woke up in the middle of the night and realized I couldn’t take a deep breath. I immediately pulled up the internet to search my symptoms. It turns out, anything with the search terms “chest pain” and “trouble breathing” leads to the same advice: go straight to the emergency room (ER). Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.

Despite the internet’s alarm bells, the ER didn’t seem to share that same sense of urgency. I was a 29-year-old who had never been to the ER or hospital before and had a flawless medical history. 

When my roommate and I arrived, they ran my vitals, determined I probably wasn’t going to drop dead in the next few minutes, and moved me to the bottom of the list. In a mostly empty waiting room, it took hours to talk to anyone about my symptoms. The longer I sat there, the easier it was to convince myself that I’d overreacted. 

However, as I would later discover, the reason I couldn’t breathe properly was that I had a blood clot in my lung that could have killed me. 

When I first got the diagnosis, I didn’t realize just how big of a deal a pulmonary embolism (PE) actually was. To put it bluntly, it’s really freaking serious. For nearly a quarter of people who had a PE, the first indication that something is wrong is suddenly dying. In fact, of the 900,000 people each year who experience blood clots in the veins, 100,000 of them die and three out of ten will experience another episode within ten years.

Though scientists have known about the connections between COVID-19 and blood clots since the earliest days of the pandemic, early studies only associated clots with those still actively infected with COVID-19. However, over time, scientists have found that clots remain a high risk — 33 times higher than average — for more than a week after being infected with SARS-CoV-2 and still carry an elevated risk — 1.8 times higher than average — a full year after infection.

James: That was just the first ER experience that you had.

You talk about a registered nurse who you say saved your life during a telehealth appointment before the second ER visit that you had.

What advice did she give you and how did that help you advocate for yourself during that second ER visit?

Anna: She just took my symptoms really seriously from the get-go.

Originally, it was just a follow-up. Once you go to the ER, they pretty much always tell you follow-up with your doctor.

When I sent the note to her saying, “I was having chest pain and that I was having trouble breathing,” she was like, “We should schedule that sooner rather than later.”

She was just the person who had availability. She did a telehealth visit with me and asked what was going on and was very reassuring without dismissing anything.

She definitely was in the camp of like, “Hey, this is not a thing you want to mess around with, so we’re going to do a blood test just to make sure.”

She was like, “Hey, you can go get a D-dimer test.”

She warned me it might be a little bit high because COVID can make it high even if you don’t have a blood clot.

When it came back, it was so high that she called me when I was driving back from the blood test place and was like, “You need to go right now back to the ER and tell them that they have to check you with a CT scan for a blood clot.”

James: I remember in the essay, you also mentioned that the way that she walked you through those symptoms, the tests that she suggested you get, that all helped you advocate for yourself and to get the folks at the ER to take you seriously.

Anna: Yeah, no, absolutely.

I actually sent her the article after this and she seemed delighted.vShe’s awesome.

After the blood test came back so high, she walked me through what it could mean, the fact that it wasn’t necessarily a blood clot, but the fact that it was so, so high that it probably was or it was at least something was going on with my blood.

Even when I got there, they have all of my charts, but the ER doctor initially still was not convinced even from the number on the blood test that I had a pulmonary embolism.

He was pretty reluctant to even give me a CT [scan].

James: Thinking about the difference between your first and second ER visits, how would you describe the difference that it made to have more medical context about how you could help advocate for yourself?

Anna: Yeah, I think the wild part to me is that in some ways, I feel like the first ER visit, the doctor actually took me more seriously.

It just didn’t occur to her to check for a blood clot, but the second one, the doctor took me less seriously, but I could advocate for myself better because I knew exactly what my RN had asked me to check into.

I could say, “Hey, I need to get a CT scan.”

I am not convinced that that’s what he would have suggested, so I think that it helps to know what you’re looking for, which shouldn’t be a thing you have to know going in because the whole point is they’re supposed to diagnose you, but I think it does matter.Because it’s not that somebody is likely to dismiss you no matter what, but it is more likely to happen if they have an easy answer in their head already.

Because he knows that COVID raises the D-dimer levels, he already was like, “Okay, I’m just going to dismiss this out of hand because that’s a thing we see all the time.”

I feel like every doctor I’ve talked to has been surprised, not a single nurse has.

I don’t know why that is, but it’s definitely very interesting.

James: For others who maybe are experiencing similar symptoms with regard to blood clots or who might face an ER visit after a COVID infection, what advice might you give that comes from this experience?

Anna: I both love and hate the advice that I feel like everyone gives, which is the whole listen to your body thing, because it’s how I keep ending up back at the ER without anything actually wrong because my lungs are scarred, and so sometimes my body just decides that it’s more upset about that than other times.

But at the same time, it’s still been worth it for the peace of mind.

I think that the biggest thing with self-advocacy is having somebody there with you helps a lot.

I was actually a caregiver for my mother while she died from cancer, so I had experience advocating for somebody else, and I was very good at that role, and then did not realize that those skills didn’t translate as much as I expected to myself.

I think especially as a woman, it’s very easy to fold when somebody acts like you’re not being polite or that you’re not being reasonable about something.

I’m really good at pushing past that for other people, and I’m not quite as good about it for myself, so I think it’s sort of what I’ve been trying to work on in general, which is treating myself as well as I treat other people and taking my own symptoms as seriously as if my roommate walked by and was like, “I’m having chest pain.”

I would make her go to the ER immediately.

Not feeling like there’s any stupid questions is probably the other thing.

Always know what’s happening with you and always know why they’re checking for things or treating for things, because it’s important and it can also help you be like, “Oh, no, I’ve tried that. That didn’t work.”

James: Yeah, for sure.

And I know you mentioned the specific test that the nurse recommended you get.

Would you mind just sharing a little bit more about that just for folks who haven’t read yet and are curious?

Anna: So I knew nothing about this before it happened to me, but the D-Dimer test, it’s a blood test, and I’ve looked at this multiple times.

Hopefully I’m explaining this correctly off the cuff.

Basically, it’s checking for the parts of your blood that clot. You should always have some clotting going on.

Like your blood clots naturally as a way to stop you from bleeding out, but if that number gets to be too high, if it’s clotting too much, then that’s how you get a blood clot.

COVID, weirdly, which most illnesses don’t do this from my understanding, COVID raises that number regardless.

In a lot of people, that number has been higher whether there’s a blood clot or not.

And that’s one reason that I think very early on, it was tied to things like strokes and heart attacks and blood clots.

It should not be 2,700 instead of 500, it should be a reasonable rise in that number.

And it’s not that — even with that rise, my understanding is I still might not have had a blood clot. It could still have been caused by COVID.

It’s worth checking out. Like if you have other symptoms with it, especially, like, if you are getting that test, it’s probably because you had a different symptom.

It’s not like you just went out and were like, I feel like a D-dimer test today. And a nurse also had to order the D-dimer test, which sometimes works really well — or sorry, the doctor does specifically [have to order it].

Sometimes you cannot get them to order it. You have to go to the ER. It just depends.

James: Is there anything else that you’d like to add or, I guess, share again?

Anna: I think just emphasizing for women, for anybody who is from a marginalized background of any sort, for those who already have chronic illnesses or disabilities, I think it becomes especially difficult to advocate for yourself because you have to do it so often in so many places, in so many ways.

And you can’t let yourself get so exhausted by doing that that you stop doing it.

And I think that that, especially after I had COVID and after I had the PE [pulmonary embolism], that was the hardest part for me, was accepting the rate of recovery, accepting that I was going to have to go back to the ER to get things checked.

If I had more chest pain, still accepting that 2 years later, 3 years later, I’ve lost track of time.

So I think just making sure that it’s a marathon not a sprint applies here. It’s still important, even if it’s a couple of years later. And you shouldn’t just let the exhaustion get to you and ignore it because it can genuinely kill you.

James: Yeah, that makes sense.

And thanks again, Anna, for sharing your experience and coming on the podcast to talk a little bit about it. I really appreciate it.

Anna: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.

James: You can read Anna’s story on our website and it is, of course, linked in our transcript. And next, we’ll go to a research update.

Research (26:07)

[Miles’ voice echoes the word “Research” accompanied with a sound excerpted from the theme song]

Miles: Today’s research update looks at two separate studies that taken together emphasize the impact of Long COVID on healthcare workers.

The first study is a systemic review of 28 studies in BMJ Public Health.

And the review’s authors found that 40% of healthcare workers who were infected with SARS-CoV-2 experienced Long COVID.

To do this, they pooled the prevalence from these 28 studies to come up with this number, which is very high.

They state that the burden of Long COVID on healthcare workers was substantial.

We have seen other pooled prevalence studies in the past that we’ve talked about on this podcast, looking more at larger populations and larger data sets.

And they have shown similar numbers from 40 to 50% in different countries, different continents.

So this definitely lines up with some other research we’ve seen.

I think one reason the authors highlighted healthcare workers here was that they are at a more increased risk of infection by being in a place where COVID-19 may more likely be to show up in hospitals, healthcare settings.

But also they highlighted that they work in positions that are really fast-paced and don’t usually have a lot of rest.

And that can lead to complications with post-viral illnesses like Long COVID.

Betsy: The other new study that we also included about healthcare workers looked specifically at dental professionals.

So this was a survey of dental workers in Germany, [it] included 267 participants, and found that overall about 23% of the survey respondents reported Long COVID symptoms.

And hygienists and assistants had higher rates than dentists.

So this is a different type of study than the other one Miles was talking about.

It’s more of a specific survey looking at a smaller group of people, but still showing findings along the same lines, kind of emphasizing that people who work in these medical settings, even if they’re not necessarily like in the hospital or dealing with infectious diseases is not necessarily their job description.

Just by nature of the work, they’re kind of getting more COVID exposure.

Miles: They’re very good arguments for continuing masking in healthcare, having mandates in hospitals, clinics, especially if there’s no up-to-date air filtration to limit the spread of airborne viruses.

And this systemic review really highlighted that there needs to be more done in research and in support for healthcare workers.

Outro (28:41)

James: Yeah, absolutely. That’s all we have for you this week. You can stay up to date with our newsletter and our coverage at thesicktimes dot org.

[Instrumental theme song excerpt plays underneath the rest of the podcast]

Miles: We’ll continue reporting the information you need to better practice care.

Betsy: Solidarity with everyone still here. 

James: This podcast and The Sick Times are supported by you. You can help us keep this work going by donating on our website.

Still Here is a production of The Sick Times, a nonprofit newsroom chronicling the ongoing Long COVID crisis. 

Our theme song for this episode is the Rude Mechanical Orchestra’s rendition of Which Side Are You On?, originally by Florence Reece. I’m James Salanga and I produced this episode. Our engagement editor is Heather Hogan. Sophie Dimitriou designed our podcast cover art. And Miles Griffis and Betsy Ladyzhets are your co-hosts and The Sick Times’ co-founders.

Thanks for listening.