Long-Haulers -- January 1, 2021

First we had "remote learners"; now we have "long-haulers."

"Long-Haul": until today I had only associated this phrase and/or the hyphenated word with "trucking."

But today I saw the first reference using this hyphenated word to describe those suffering from the sequelae following the acute phase of the Covid-19. 

I first saw the hyphenated word and its etymology in The WSJ this morning and then, moments ago, saw a caption for a video using the same word.

According to the linked article:

On the morning of April 11, 2020, Amy Watson, a preschool teacher in Portland, Oregon, went to get tested for Covid-19 at a drive-up site after suffering a chronic fever. She hadn’t washed her hair, so she threw on a trucker hat with a picture of a squirrel on it, snapping a selfie to share on social media.

Two days later, her test came back positive. Later that month, after connecting with others who had contracted Covid and were still experiencing a range of chronic symptoms, she decided to set up a support group on Facebook. “I was sitting in my living room, and that hat I wore in the picture was on the coffee table,” Ms. Watson told me. The trucker hat got her thinking of long-haul trucking, inspiring her to name the Facebook group “Long Haul Covid Fighters.”

As the group kept growing, members began calling each other “long-haulers.” People gravitated toward the term, Ms. Watson recalls, because “it was validating as a group of patients to have a name given to what we were experiencing.”

Early on in the pandemic, medical professionals didn’t know what to make of the symptomatology of these Covid survivors and had no name for it. But by early June, the expression “long-haulers” started getting picked up in the media, beginning with an article by Ed Yong for The Atlantic, and the medical community soon took notice.”

In a congressional hearing in September, Dr. Anthony Fauci reported on patients who, weeks and months after recovering from Covid-19, were suffering from such debilitating symptoms as fatigue, myalgia, fever and an inability to concentrate. “They’re referred to as ‘long-haulers,’” Dr. Fauci said, giving his imprimatur to the term.

At the linked video, this caption: 

New research could help explain why thousands of Covid-19 survivors are facing debilitating neurological symptoms months after initially getting sick. WSJ breaks down the science behind how the coronavirus affects the brain, and what this could mean for long-haul patients.

Before ever seeing any of this, I had already predicted that Covid-19 sequelae would be the 2020's version of fibromyalgia.

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So Many Songs To Choose From;
I Went With This One

Crazy, Gnarls Barkley

By the way, with regard to this song, perhaps this is the best comment:

It took me more than a decade to realize that this song is not so much "about me" as much how a black person might feel in the white world.

It puts another level of meaning to this song.