Illustration by GLOBE AND MAIL/GETTY IMAGES
Flannery Dean is a writer and editor based in Hamilton.
Nearly five years into life with COVID-19, I find myself selfishly wondering how many more times I – by which I mean, all of us – need to get it before we acknowledge that allowing multiple reinfections poses a very large problem? I thought my second bout of it (or was it my third?) in February, 2023, was tough – that one set me back a few months. But this nasty little bug, which is again surging here, there and everywhere, has bitten me once again, and has been a beast to overcome.
My latest infection – which began in June and is mild by medical standards – surprised me. I’m an active, healthy woman in her 40s. In addition to having been infected previously, I’ve gratefully received every single vaccine offered, including the booster shot only about 18 per cent of Canadians got last fall. I’m not sure I blame those who didn’t rush out in droves to get it. There was little public push to do so, and a general sense that infection after vaccination was okay so long as you’re “healthy.” Continued protection against a virus that makes swift and powerful adaptations is a hard sell when you don’t invest in the power of prevention, too.
Even so, after the fever passed, I spent a month largely confined to my bed, unable to do more than shuffle to my doctor’s office and back. I felt weak and nauseated in a way that made pregnancy queasiness seem quaint. My muscles felt tired or tingling or cold, or all three at once. I was regularly overcome by a sensation that I can only describe as a full-body panic attack, marked by a racing heart and rapid breathing. For weeks, I felt like my internal circuitry was on the fritz. Even my vision was blurred.
It remains so.
That blurry-eyed bit has been the hardest postviral symptom to ignore. Nearly two months after my initial infection, I still can’t see clearly. This has proven to be a remarkably distressing and mildly terrifying postviral challenge to navigate.
I’ve written about COVID, so I knew that it was a vascular disease and that infection may have a range of effects on brains, hearts, immune systems and other organs. But it turns out COVID may also be associated with vision changes.
What I can read about this symptom online is far different from the help I can access. No one is quite sure how to deal with this side effect. My doctor recommended I see an optometrist, who was in turn compassionate and understanding but was unsure what to do about this either. I’m waiting for a referral to see an ophthalmologist.
In the meantime, I still need to work – I still want to work – and am figuring out ways to function without anxiety about what may or may not be going on.
I’m not the only one experiencing post-COVID complications in a health care climate that’s struggling to figure out what to do with people like me. About two million Canadians are reportedly experiencing long-term symptoms after an infection. Those numbers can only be expected to increase if we continue to behave as if there are no long-term implications inherent in allowing infections to surge twice yearly. There’s also evidence to suggest that long COVID afflicts more working-age people, i.e. the people who’ve been told it’s okay to work while you’re sick (and, by the way, you don’t have much of a choice).
This growing problem of people who don’t feel well for lengthy periods of time after COVID is also occurring as access to health care has never been more challenging. I feel immensely grateful to even have a family doctor – a privilege around 6.5 million people in Canada can’t claim for themselves.
Even with my compromised vision, it’s clear to me that with governments doing less and less in the face of a complex virus, the multiple knock-on effects of this approach are coming at a high human cost. But who’s counting that cost?
Despite mounting evidence that reinfection is equivalent to rolling the dice, we’ve yet to implement policies known to be effective at helping reduce transmission. I’m not talking about shutting things down. I’m talking about finally and decisively implementing the practical interventions that public-health advocates, epidemiologists, virologists and engineers have been advocating for since 2020: improving indoor air quality, which reduces airborne contaminants; granting workers paid sick leave so that they can rest and not infect others (even during the height of the pandemic, workers only got two paid sick days in Ontario); and instituting meaningful policies during rising periods of transmission.
Mask, stay home when sick, rest – this is the advice we’ve been getting for years. But these are not individual actions to take as much as privileges taken for granted. Kids in schools that operate without such policies or proper ventilation systems are, in Ontario, at the mercy of a Ministry of Education that once saw fit to float the notion that COVID doesn’t transmit in schools at all, and there is a persistent, convenient myth circulating among parents that infection is good for kids – preferable to vaccination, even. (For the record, all my infections came courtesy of my son’s school.)
Seniors in care homes can’t demand care workers be tested regularly for infection or be granted paid sick days or vet the air quality in their care homes. Workers aren’t entitled to paid time off and don’t dictate the terms of safe employment.
Public-health advice means little without policies in place to make it effective.
If the pandemic began with messages of solidarity, it rapidly devolved into reassurances that only the truly vulnerable would experience COVID’s greatest harms. In the shadow of that predatory view of human life, the population of the vulnerable has only expanded. Reinfection raises the risk of finding out how vulnerable you and those around you are, too.
As a new clever variant spreads, it feels wise to ask: How many times is enough to get a virus that – unlike our politicians – understands the power of rapid adaptation?