Joanna Lewis: The impacts of long Covid

It relates to catching covid again. Initially, I wasn’t bothered. ‘It’s just a cold these days,’ people said. ‘The virus has lost its power’…

Not this strain. Nights turned into days and vice versa. High temperature, sweats, and shivers quickly set in. Then Olympic coughing, headaches, sickness, and the ‘two bob bits’. You return to solids but there’s little to celebrate. You now have brain fog, tinnitus, chronic fatigue and bouts of the ‘black dog’.

During this time, I became far too familiar with my bedside table for my liking. I now know its exact measurements: how many glasses of water, medicine bottles and honey jars it can host, alongside all the other illness paraphernalia. I learnt the point at which the drawer will overload and fall out stuffed with cough sweets, biscuits and lavender sprays.

Capable only of watching obscure Free View TV channels, it’s a miracle, in my menthol haze, I didn’t order a stair lift or become addicted to online bingo. I have also spent more time with Angus off the Yorkshire Auction House than is healthy for a middle-aged woman!

But seriously, I lost days off work at a crucial time. Meetings were cancelled. Deadlines missed. I’ve let people down. How many others are still unnecessarily being inconvenienced by the virus? We know now pretty much for certain, where it originated from. It’s the Trillion Dollar virus in terms of what it cost but no government seeks compensation.

People are still paying the price for covid but why should we just accept this. There are those still living with grief from losing loved ones. Those with long covid. The unfortunate minority managing side effects from vaccines. Domestic violence increased during covid and addictions to online porn. What has been the long-term effects and the relationship between the two? Interpersonal skills and basic manners have decreased. Young people seem often to resent the elderly.

Then there’s the economic impact. The high levels of public spending during covid are estimated at up to £410 billion, that’s £4,600 per person. Lock downs resulted in a recession. Economic activity and productivity have continued to decrease. The Institute for Fiscal Studies estimated that the cost of educational disruption could be up to £350 billion over the long term, across the lifetime of those affected.

Living with monumental national debt but continuing the habit of borrowing to expand the state sector is a deadly legacy for how we are governed. A bloated, expanded state – The Blob as some call it - is being taken to new extremes in sinister, spiteful and desperate ways. Instead of tackling deep set problems, one part of the state is mobilised to repress issues, created by the state in another area… and so on.

Civil liberties, as under covid, are whittled away; the truth ever more deviously buried. Meanwhile working people and those who have paid tax already on their incomes will be made to foot the bill.
A worrying lack of spending reviews goes back to 2021. However, according to Full Fact, an independent fact checker organisation, the current Government’s claim there was a hidden £22 million black hole in the country’s finances is misleading. £9.5 billion of that figure comes from the public pay sector awards Labour made when it came into power. The third largest amount- £6.4 billion comes from additional asylum and illegal migration costs. At the bottom of the list comes additional health costs excluding pay (£1.5billion). What a convenient argument to justify raising taxes, and a war on everyone over 65 or who owns a black Labrador.

Not just for the covid virus itself but for the model of Maoist governance it has spawned, I’m suing Beijing for compensation. Anyone got an address for the Chinese Communist Party? I could really do with a new conservatory.