‘We’re losing decades of our life to this illness’: long Covid patients on the fear of being forgotten"

 Yesterday's Observer👇 Five years in. The pandemic's not over.

"Even though we are seeing fewer headlines about long Covid, previously healthy people are still contracting it, with each successive infection increasing the risk. “We sometimes will see someone who’s had Covid one, two or three times without problems, and then on the fourth time, suddenly they’ve got long Covid, and that makes them ill for a long time,” says Heightman. More disturbing still are the risks associated with chronic inflammation for long Covid patients, even if they have outwardly recovered. “It’s likely to age you,” says Sinclair, “so it’s going to shorten your telomeres, and therefore increase your risk of early death. It’s also going to increase your risk of any inflammatory condition: cancer is a high risk; we may get heart disease, diabetes, dementia. There’s a huge knock-on in every body system from long Covid.”

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/mar/02/were-losing-decades-of-our-life-to-this-illness-long-covid-patients-on-the-fear-of-being-forgotten?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Watch: The Covid Cover-up 🔥