This article was originally published in High Country News.
Editor’s note: This story is a graphic description of the loss of a child.
Triple-digit heat as Lea Bossler and her U. S. Forest Service engine teamU. S. S. Labor and Fire reached the fire developing in a canyon outside Nogales, Arizona. As he climbed a hill with his shovel-shaped rhino tool, the burning cacti ran downhill, igniting more dry fuel along the way. Despite the heat, a 45-pound bag and little sleep, Bossler felt strong and capable, fluffing the edges of the fire, extinguishing the collapsed cacti that burned without flame like burnt rubber. This is his third season as a forest firefighter and he is on track to achieve his purpose of appointing an incident commander.
Once the chimney was under control, Bossler and his crew returned home to Missoula, Montana, and wrapped up a two-week shoot in the Southwest. In early July 2020, in the midst of an unprecedented chimney season that would burn more than 10 million acres. across the country, and Bossler resting ahead of his next assignment. There was an outbreak of coronavirus in her partner’s workplace, and just days after she returned home, she had a debilitating case of COVID-19. Now, more than two years later, the 32-year-old has still not recovered. The long COVID not only damaged her health, but also forced her to abandon her career in fighting chimneys.
Currently, more than 19 million people in the U. S. In the U. S. , 1 in thirteen adults are living with COVID long-term, though some estimates put that number at 23 million. Prolonged COVID is a complex condition that affects teams of all ages and can involve multiple organ systems. It is diagnosed weeks or months after a COVID-19 infection. Some of the symptoms come with cognitive dysfunction, respiratory and cardiovascular problems, and excessive fatigue, are recognized around two hundred other symptoms and some may persist for years. Many patients also meet diagnostic criteria for other diagnoses. These come with postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, which causes excessive dizziness, headaches, and immediate heart rate; and myalgic encephalomyelitis (MS), infrequently called chronic fatigue syndrome, a debilitating neurological disease that has been underfunded for decades.
A World Health Organization official recently warned that repeated infections may increase the threat of widespread COVID. A recent survey by the U. S. Census BureauFull-term COVID symptoms.
While the number of U. S. wildfirefighters is unknown. Affected U. S. employees, the workforce is believed to be at the greatest threat of contracting COVID-19: in 2021, the leading cause of death in the line of duty among COVID-19 wildfirefighters. Firefighters are already exhausted due to seasons of prolonged and intensified fires caused by climate change. Prolonged COVID is not only affecting firefighters’ fitness and livelihoods, but may also seriously hamper their reaction to the escalating crisis.
Firefighters are an oddly brief workforce, making them more vulnerable to the catch and spread of COVID-19. “There are firefighters and other firefighters traveling from all over the country to get to a place not unusual,” said Matthew Thompson, a forest researcher. with the Forest Service.
Lack of sanitation and privacy in the camps, combined with fatigue, heat, physically harsh conditions and other factors contribute to this vulnerability, according to the National Wildfire Coordination Group (NWCG), which directs wildfire fighting operations between federal, state, local partners, tribal and territorial. One of the largest COVID outbreaks in a fire camp occurred in the 2020 Cameron Peak Fire in northern Colorado, with 79 positive cases and 273 close contacts quarantined. A Forest Service press officer sent an email saying that among the agencies’ approximately 11,000 permanent and transient firefighters, 1,847 cases of COVID-19 were reported in the last 12 months.
In a recent modeling study, Thompson and his co-authors found that social distancing and vaccination reduce outbreaks in chimney camps, although their study did not evaluate prolonged COVID or the highly contagious variant of omicron. (According to a 2022 study in the journal Nature Medicine, vaccination can only slightly reduce the risk of COVID in the long term. )Thompson’s study also found that the chimney fighters ignited even more outside the chimney camp than inside, meaning they are continually in danger. While the U. S. The U. S. Department of Health and Prevention eases preventive measures, allowing for harmful spikes that can occur in the middle of chimney season.
“It’s just the threat of transmitting or contracting COVID. It is also the severity of the results.
The NWCG recommends COVID protection prevention practices for wildfirefighters at the recommendation of the Centers for Disease Control. But a widely referenced CDC document on COVID and wildfirefighters doesn’t particularly mention prolonged COVID.
In a review published last year, Kathleen Navarro, a researcher at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, noted that particulate matter, adding the harmful addition of tiny debris and droplets discovered in wildfire smoke, may contribute to an increased likelihood of COVID-19 among wildfirefighters. as well as more serious diseases. ” It’s not just the threat of transmission or contracting COVID,” Navarro said. “It’s also the severity of the results. “
But firefighters face a long-standing COVID threat, regardless of the severity of their acute case: A 2022 white paper said only about 76% of other people diagnosed with long-term COVID were not hospitalized.
Bossler returned to painting after her 14-day quarantine, though she doesn’t feel fully recovered. “I came back hoping to get back to normal,” he said. Pass up opportunities as a female firefighter. He felt like he was drowning as he continued to fight fires in Montana for the rest of the summer.
“There is an attitude among firefighters that they don’t prevent anything,” he said. “And there’s just no education, warning, or acknowledgment of a long burning COVID. “
Chronic disease advocates warned about the complex chronic disease option of COVID-19 early in the pandemic, but the federal government’s public fitness apparatus hasn’t amplified those messages and still doesn’t focus on long-term disease risk. Fitness effects after a first case “I can only assume I hurt myself more,” she said. “I gave in to this concept that because I was young and physically fit, I would be fine, when I knew, deep down, that there was something wrong with me. “. “
“I worked on that because you just don’t pass up opportunities as a female firefighter. “
A growing number of doctors warn that resuming activity when they have not yet fully recovered can increase the likelihood that a user will have prolonged COVID. Americans are surviving their disease.
Bossler continued to work on his team through the summer, despite persistent symptoms. But in late August, she found out she was pregnant. He said he probably conceived when he first contracted COVID-19 in early July 2020.
In a joint resolution with his superiors, Bossler transferred from the engine team to a wooden attacking team for the remainder of the season. His due date was May and he planned to settle for a task at the Forest Service office that summer and resume his work as a firefighter. work the following season, assuming he had recovered from a long COVID. But those plans were put on hold in January when she gave birth to her daughter, Maesyn, prematurely, at just 25 weeks. Her bathroom suffered from fetal inflammatory reaction syndrome due to maternal history of COVID, and Bossler’s placenta filled with blood clots, contributing to placental failure and abruption. “A placenta affected by COVID looks like a dead deer on the road, its liver was removed and a shotgun was fired repeatedly,” Bossler said. I.
When she was first admitted to the hospital at 23 weeks with contractions from preterm labor, Bossler learned that there was only a 30 percent chance that her baby would survive. Her daughter weighed just 1 pound, 6 ounces at birth when she arrived two weeks later and gained just five pounds plus her 11 five days in the neonatal intensive care unit. She passed away on May 14, 2021, close to her original due date. In Maesyn’s last moments, Bossler was able to pull her daughter out of the NICU to see the sky for the first time. Maesyn died outdoors in the spring sun, in the arms of Bossler and his partner, Marcus Cahoon.
Now, more than two years after first contracting COVID, Bossler continues to enjoy prolonged and debilitating COVID symptoms. She can’t walk more than half a kilometer without feeling tired and also suffers from headaches and memory loss, and has trouble staying focused. He has chest pains that he says have gotten especially worse since he was reinfected in June. Bossler believes her pregnancy headaches have made her more aware of her illness, which she might otherwise have been too cursed to acknowledge. “I know other people who have COVID for a long time and who are still looking to be firefighters,” he said, “but I don’t think they have the same understanding or popularity as I do.
“I think all wildstack employers would be doing their workers a huge disservice by failing to detect prolonged COVID and the intellectual fitness issues that accompany it,” Bossler said. When I reached out to the Forest Service in August about the agency’s COVID Education and Prevention Term Technique, I was told to touch the U. S. Office of Personnel Management. The U. S. Task Force (OPM), which oversees all federal workers, on recommendations from the CDC and the Task Force on a Safer Federal Workforce, which is led by the White House COVID-19 Response Team, the General Services Administration, and OPM. none of which publicly offer guidance on prolonged COVID. The Office of Personnel Management sent a brief in response to our request for comment, but did not specify its policies similar to those for prolonged COVID.
“I think all wildfire employers would be doing their workers a huge disservice if they didn’t recognize the prolonged COVID and the intellectual fitness issues that accompany it. “
“(Lifeguard) careers depend on our fitness and our ability to respond to a fire or emergency at any time, regardless of how we feel,” said Karyn Bishof, founder of the nonprofit COVID-19 Longhauler Advocacy Project. which advocates for patient education, study, and well-being. He said many first responders, adding that wildfirefighters, are reluctant to talk about fitness issues for fear of wasting their livelihood. They threaten not only their own lives, but perhaps the lives of their crews. “
Bishof became inflamed with COVID after an outbreak while studying as a paramedic firefighter in the South Florida city of Palm Beach Gardens. She told me that in the past she was fired from her task in the rescue team without explanation. ‘ after a doctor diagnosed their symptoms as psychosomatic, a common experience for many patients with complex chronic illnesses. She has since filed a discrimination complaint against the city of Palm Beach Gardens. The city did not respond to my request for comment.
Like other infectious diseases, adding Lyme, mononucleosis, and SARS-1, COVID-19 can progress to complex chronic diseases. Researchers have consistently discovered a diversity of abnormalities in COVID patients for a long time, adding microclots, persistent viral reservoirs, reactivated viruses, and autoimmune responses. The U. S. Department of Health and Human ServicesThe U. S. Department of Health and Security stated that the condition may be a disability, but in the fall of 2021, Bishof, like many longtime COVID patients, denied Social Security disability benefits. He applied again, but was denied for a moment and is now awaiting an appeal hearing.
Because there is no cure for prolonged COVID, Bishof said preventing COVID-19 and raising public awareness about its long-term consequences is paramount, especially to protect first responders. She fears that if COVID continues to affect one in five people inflamed, public safety will inevitably occur. “If we lose that percentage of that workforce, what does that mean for emergency reaction times?” he asked. “What does this mean for the reaction to wildfires?”
During her testimony before a Senate subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis in July, Katie Bach, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said policymakers will have to step up on physical health care, poor physical health leave, disability and office hotels for workers. Four million long-term COVID patients are unable to work, Bach estimates a charge of up to $230 billion in lost earnings alone, without adding other charges, such as fitnesscare or decreased productivity.
The Forest Service and Department of the Interior will offer health leave for painters exposed to communicable diseases, such as COVID-19, as well as hotels for other people with disabilities who may come with telecommuting and more flexible work schedules. Federal firefighters who can’t paint at all because of a long COVID contracted in the paintings could be eligible for compensation from painters, according to an Interior spokesman. But painters inflamed outside the paintings are not eligible for any benefits, according to the rules of the Office of Personnel Management.
Looking back on his experience over the past two years, Bossler says the Forest Service wants to expand policies that help protect firefighters from the long COVID, as well as provide supplies to those affected by it. She was forced to quit her job with the Forest Service when she went into preterm labor. “It was a medically forced resignation,” he said. After her daughter was born, she thought about returning to the agency, but at that time she was still grieving and couldn’t work completely. -time due to your long COVID symptoms.
In the fall of 2021, she began working part-time as a fitness unit coordinator in the same neonatal intensive care unit that treated Maesyn. Several nurses there, like other first responders, also suffer from prolonged COVID. to the paintings in a position that perceives me,” Bossler told me.
“I learned to deal with all those traumatic conditions based on fire classes,” Bossler said. Maesyn’s brief life and death had such a profound effect that Bossler feels compelled to continue telling her daughter’s story while educating others about it. chronic disease. ” I think of the other firefighters who have lost their ability to do their jobs.
“It’s just your job. It’s your identity. The pain that comes with it is discussed enough.
This story is funded through the nonprofit journalism organization The Economic Hardship Reporting Project.
Miles W. Griffis is a freelance journalist in Los Angeles, California. We welcome letters from readers. Email High Country News at editor@hcn. org or send a letter to the editor. See our letters to publisher policy.
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