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letters
To the Editor:
Regarding “What I’ve Learned from Long Covid Reporting,” via Ed Yong (guest essay, December 22):
As a long-haul Covid (it’s been 3 years already!), I found it rewarding and even encouraging to read M’s essay. Yong. Es rewarding to have the popularity of post-exertional discomfort (PEM). So a giant component of my life.
For example, I go with my dog before taking a shorter walk than usual. I have to schedule probable mundane responsibilities of personal and house care: showering, changing clothes, washing dishes, sweeping my apartment, doing laundry, etc. Those responsibilities on my calendar, and even then, the expectation of consequences makes me feel helpless, hopeless, and overwhelmed.
I appreciated Mr. Yong’s astute acknowledgment that symptoms are often dismissed because of sexism (I’m transgender). And I was denied disability because it was determined that I was functional enough to wrap silverware in napkins. Yes indeed, treatment is not only a medical issue, but also a social one.
Mr. Yong made it clear that his journalism has been transformed by doing research in a more integrative manner, especially actually being with current long-haulers. I’m immensely grateful to him for his journalism and to The Times for publishing it.
(I got my PhD in 2012 and it took me two days to write this. )
Jackson-Paton RiverDallas
For the editor:
Ed Yong’s guest essay is very relevant. Long Covid is genuine, and the public wants to be aware of that.
My experience with Covid is that of a former graduate nurse in the midst of this. I have noticed that many patients and colleagues are getting sick, some are dying, some are getting better, and some are still struggling with long Covid.
It’s very hard for me to hear someone, usually anti-vaxxers, say, “They just let everyone get Covid and be done with this at once. “
I hear this from time to time and my reaction is, “Do you know about long Covid?I get one of two responses: “No” or “It’s made up. ” Then I go out to educate.
Donna Hunt Atascadero, California.
For the editor:
I appreciate Ed Yong’s regular reporting on long Covid and his op-ed on the physical care system’s inability to take chronically ill patients seriously. What many don’t realize is that years, even decades, before the pandemic caused long Covid, many patients, adding me, struggled to find doctors and remedies for many of the same fitness issues that Covid patients have long faced.
I cannot give you a single name for our illness because it does not yet exist. I and countless other patients have a slew of diagnoses, including autoimmune diseases, mast cell disorders, connective tissue disorders and dysautonomia. Many of us are disabled and homebound or bedbound.
Doctors for these disorders were already hard to find, and the surge of long Covid patients has made accessing knowledgeable care more difficult. I hope the increased demand will inspire more doctors to study and treat these conditions. Now that even more patients are suffering, we need to stop dismissing this constellation of illnesses.
Rachel Graves Tacoma, Washington.
To the Editor:
Re “Why I Can’t Stop Writing About Oct. 7,” by Bret Stephens (column, Dec. 20):
American democracy promised a country, as Mr. Stephens put it, “where they wouldn’t have to hide. “Mr. Stephens writes depressed about the loss of that promise, and there is no doubt that America’s promise is remote for many. For Jews, the erosion of democracy brings with it a deep sense of trauma and fear.
However, the most appropriate Jewish reaction to this challenge is not depression but determination. If our institutions are collapsing, let’s do it with civic learning forums. If our civic culture is fraying, let’s fix it by offering opportunities for dynamic and respectful conversation. If our democracy is threatened, let’s take action, now and in communities across the country.
For nearly two and a half centuries, even in the midst of painful setbacks, America presented one of the last and most productive places to be Jewish, not because it addressed Jews, but because its democratic pluralism, however ambitious and from the start, gave minorities like ours the opportunity to live freely.
When this democratic pluralism is in trouble, we do not mourn its loss prematurely. Rather, we fixed it. This is not naivety; This is the company our parents and grandparents were looking for here.
Aaron DorfmanNew YorkThe writer is the executive director of A More Perfect Union: The Jewish Partnership for Democracy, a network of synagogues and Jewish groups.
For the editor:
Regarding “Georgia’s Black Voters Say Biden Has Forgotten About Them,” via Mara Gay (review, December 24):
Gay warns that the black electorate in Georgia feels ignored and abandoned and could simply abandon the Democratic Party in the next presidential election. Even if his conclusions are highly questionable, there is no doubt about the alternative.
Donald Trump’s Republican Party has curtailed voting rights, massacred predominantly black districts, eliminated or scaled down social systems for the poor, and sent in federal troops to quell protests against racism.
Should Georgia’s Black voters leave the Democrats for the Republicans, they will quickly learn the real meaning of abandonment.
Tom GoodmanPhiladelphia
For the editor:
It was with some relief that I read Carlos Lozada’s December 21 column, “The Turbulent History of Liz Cheney’s Trump Era. “
Ms. Cheney worries about the prospect of another Donald Trump tenure in the White House, but I worry just as much about Ms. Cheney’s rush to sainthood as she plugs her new book and her ostensibly revised views.
As Lozada reminds us, Cheney, like other Trump men and GOP minions, has long been obedient to Mr. She (and the other people she criticizes) brought us to this horrible, scary time and place, and we shouldn’t get approval now for what is, at best, A transparent case of “too little, too late. “
Beth Z. PalubinskyPhiladelphia
For the editor:
On “Students Can Show Us the Path to Free Speech,” via Sophia Rosenfeld (guest essay, December 18):
Rosenfeld’s essay aptly reminds us that we, as parents, teachers, and older generations, have no better answers to questions about relaxed language than our young people and students. In fact, as Rosenfeld writes, “Actually, the sky doesn’t fall on our heads. “Our young people are more capable than we think of finding moderate solutions.
I recently attended my son’s school graduation. For weeks before I left, I hated what was sure to be a miserable carnival of elite justice. Instead, I experienced something much more reassuring about our future.
I talked to my son’s classmates to get their views on relaxed speech, enlightenment, and education. Unsurprisingly, they are intelligent, insightful, compassionate, and most of all, acutely aware of what’s broken. They are respectful and friendly to others, even when they disagree.
Now is the time for the older, preachy generations to step back and accept the younger generations as truth. They can do it and they do it very well in the treacherous waters of our time.
Nao MatsukataBethesda, Md.
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