The more research emerges on Long Covid, the more worrisome it appears. Post-covid health impacts can affect nearly all body systems, including the brain and nervous system, the lungs, the heart, and the immune system. Many post-covid patients experience fatigue that significantly limits their daily activities, with some qualifying for the serious diagnosis of ME/CFS, or myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome. Additionally, the commonly-reported post-covid "brain fog" reflects cellular damage and myelin loss in the brain. And post-covid patients -- even those with mild initial infections and no clinically noticeable post-covid symptoms -- are at sharply increased risk for strokes and blood clots for at least a year after their covid infection.

If you read through the links in our answer above, you will see that post-covid health impacts affect many people in subclinical ways -- that is, you may not notice them, but they are still there. Taking into account the likelihood of repeated covid infections and the below-the-radar nature of many post-covid sequelae, a huge number of people who truly believe that they have fully recovered from covid are likely to experience future health problems related to their covid infection(s) -- even if that connection isn't obvious.

The strain of covid on our country's already-overburdened healthcare system has led to huge amounts of healthcare providers --especially nurses -- leaving their profession, an ongoing trend already impacting patient care and likely to lead to a severe nursing shortage by 2025. Meanwhile, the burden of covid is also leading to very long wait times in emergency rooms and for ICU beds across the country. This may seem like a somewhat abstract issue right now, but -- as with climate crisis -- the impact will become increasingly personal for more and more people as tipping points are reached.

Furthermore, the Brookings Institution recently estimated conservatively that the economy was missing as many as 1.6 million full-time-equivalent workers as a result of Long Covid -- a number likely to grow as repeated infections lead to more Long Covid. Increased demand for healthcare and disability support, combined with fewer and fewer people physically able to work in those fields, is a looming economic and social catastrophe for our country. As with nursing shortages, the best time to respond to this crisis is before it reaches a tipping point.

Finally, the skills that we need as a society to respond to covid -- adapting to new realities and engaging in community care -- are the same ones that we need to respond to climate crisis. Learning and practicing these skills now can brighten our future on multiple fronts.

Despite many parents' understandable concern, research shows that masking in schools does not have a significant effect on children's learning or social development.

Meanwhile, Long Covid is more common in kids than most of us have been led to believe, with one recent analysis of a large group of studies, published in the prominent scientific journal Nature, citing a frequency of as much as 25%. Common long-term health impacts of covid in kids include trouble breathing, fatigue, trouble sleeping, and psychiatric symptoms. Additionally, covid is known to cause neurodegenerative symptoms (LINK) in adults; therefore, the impact of covid on kids' developing brains -- while still unknown -- is concerning.

Finally, over 200,000 children in the US had lost a primary caregiver to covid as of March 2022, a number that continues to climb.