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covid-19
The Lessons of Covid-19 and Its Long Haul: We Need Community Care
As Trump further weakens public health infrastructure, let us renew our attention to keeping each other safe, supporting the most vulnerable among us, and preventing more mass disablement.
Apr 10, 2025
The Trump administration’s decision to close the Heath and Human Services Office of Long COVID Research and Practice deals yet another blow to our already embattled public health system. This initiative, like the recently terminated Advisory Committee on Long COVID, had signaled much-needed attention to infection-associated chronic diseases, largely overlooked by the U.S. medical establishment.
An estimated 7.5% of adults in the United States suffer from Long Covid, which can affect multiple organ systems with over 200 symptoms from brain fog and sleep problems to joint pain and bedridden fatigue. A diagnosis of Long Covid describes symptoms that continue at least three months after contracting Covid-19. For some, symptoms eventually go away. But for others, symptoms get worse and, frighteningly, new symptoms appear—with no end in sight. Long Covid is variable and unpredictable. I know this because it happened to me.
Covid-19 laid bare our fragile health systems and the necessity of caring for one another.
After escaping Covid-19 for over three years, I developed a moderate case, with fever, cough, body ache, and fatigue. Four months later, when I had almost complete recovered, I suddenly took a turn for the worse. Over the past 15 months I have steadily improved, yet my life remains significantly changed. Aches and pains, post-exertional malaise, and a weakened immune system circumscribe my daily activities. Alongside the challenges of navigating the health conditions themselves is my limited ability to keep Covid-safe amid waning attention to Covid-19—as our government and institutions have abandoned Covid precautions. This puts us all at higher risk of Covid-19 infection, and for those of us with Long Covid this risk is exacerbated—each additional reinfection with Covid exposes us to further complications with Long Covid.
In such a climate of pandemic abandonment, punctuated as early as 2022 when then-President Joe Biden issued his dangerously delusional statement that we were post-pandemic, we can rely even less than before on our government and institutions to save us from either Covid-19 or Long Covid. We must prioritize cultivating our own spaces of care—focusing on prevention, mutual aid, and accommodations for the sick and disabled.
We Need to Cultivate Spaces of Collective Care
The earliest lessons of the pandemic remain true today—we can lower transmission rates through masking, physical distancing, and meeting online, among other precautions. While workplaces, businesses, and public spaces have varied in their implementation of Covid-19 safety, social justice groups, led by disability justice, have led the way from the start.
When the pandemic hit in 2020, my racial justice collective applied our principles of care and justice to Covid-19 safety. We pivoted meetings and gatherings online to Zoom, made use of its breakout rooms for one-on-one debriefs, the chat box for running insights and snark, and the emoji feature for added interpersonal expressiveness. As we learned new ways to build community, it made us more inclusive: Folks who otherwise had barriers to attending in-person—whether that be due to illness and disability or just being out-of-town—could now attend remotely. When gatherings needed to be in-person, like the summer 2020 protests for George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, we still prioritized Covid-19 precautions. Actions either followed traditional modes of large gatherings but required (and provided) masks, or were smaller so that activists could maintain physical distance. For those who couldn’t participate safely due to Covid-19 or physical disability, remote action was possible, such as handling back-end prep work or coordinating check-ins.
These community care practices remain important even during periods of low community transmission—they make spaces accessible to all.
We Must Hold Ourselves Accountable
Five years into the pandemic, even progressive activist groups have moved away from these lessons. Many no longer require masks at meetings and gatherings, or prioritize online options. This leaves each of us to fend for ourselves individually, abandoning the principles of collective care and disability justice—from access intimacy to “we keep us safe”—that had made such in-roads in our communities. If we cannot collectively learn from this “mass disabling event” of our lifetime, when will we? And if progressive activist groups whose common mission it is to make a world free from oppression—where caring for one another is the dominant ethos—ditch pandemic precautions, what hope is there?
To be sure, we still need to push institutions at the local and federal levels to make available personal protective equipment and resources for frontline workers, better access to healthcare, more research on Long Covid and other underfunded chronic conditions such as myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). These actions would certainly help support the many biomedical doctors who toil tirelessly for treatments despite biomedicine’s limited approaches to chronic illness, as well as the Chinese medicine and other non-biomedicine doctors, not to mention the patient advocacy groups, who have arguably carried the bulk of the care and treatment for Long Covid sufferers.
I believe we have the most control over our small communities of care. Covid-19 laid bare our fragile health systems and the necessity of caring for one another—and for a time many of us heeded that call. Let us renew our attention to keeping each other safe, supporting the most vulnerable among us, and preventing more mass disablement. And for us activists who say we want to create better worlds, let’s model for everyone else how it’s done.
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Trump Administration Slammed for Slashing $12 Billion in Funding for State Health Services
"These are not people who want to make America healthy," said one advocate for people with disabilities. "They want to make the sick disappear."
Mar 26, 2025
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services canceled more than $12 billion in federal funding for state health departments across the nation, money that is used to track infectious diseases and provide mental health services, addiction treatment, and other critical care.
NBC Newsreported Wednesday that $11.4 billion of the canceled grants were earmarked by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for state and community health departments, nongovernmental organizations, and international recipients following the Covid-19 pandemic. Around $1 billion worth of grants are being pulled from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
"The Covid-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a nonexistent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago," Andrew Nixon, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement. "HHS is prioritizing funding projects that will deliver on President [Donald] Trump's mandate to address our chronic disease epidemic and Make America Healthy Again."
This is just stunning. HHS has abruptly canceled more than $12 billion in federal grants to states that were being used for tracking infectious diseases, mental health services, addiction treatment and other urgent health issues.
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— Charles Ornstein ( @charlesornstein.bsky.social) March 26, 2025 at 1:36 PM
However, experts point to the certainty of future pandemics—like an avian flu strain that mutates to pass between humans—in urging public health policy planners to maintain or even increase preparedness and response funding.
NBC News reported that the 13 agencies overseen by HHS were sent notices starting Monday, which informed them that they have 30 days to reconcile their expenditures.
For some state and community healthcare providers, the effects of the cuts were immediate.
There was an abrupt $11B cut to local/state public health (PH) infrastructure yesterday. I don't think people realize what this means: -Want an updated system to check your immunizations instead of digging through docs? PH no longer able to carry out upgrades to immunization information systems
— Katelyn Jetelina ( @kkjetelina.bsky.social) March 26, 2025 at 11:34 AM
As The New York Timesreported:
In Lubbock, Texas, public health officials have received orders to stop work supported by three grants that helped fund the response to the widening measles outbreak there, according to Katherine Wells, the city's director of public health.
On Tuesday, some state health departments were preparing to lay off dozens of epidemiologists and data scientists. Others, including Texas, Maine, and Rhode Island, were still scrambling to understand the impact of the cuts before taking any action.
In interviews, state health officials predicted that thousands of health department employees and contract workers could lose their jobs nationwide. Some predicted the loss of as much as 90% of staff from some infectious disease teams.
"We learned yesterday that the federal government has unilaterally terminated approximately $226 million in grants to Minnesota Department of Health related to the Covid-19 pandemic," Minnesota Commissioner of Health Dr. Brooke Cunningham said in a statement. "This termination is effective immediately and impacts ongoing work and contracts. This action was sudden and unexpected."
Lori Freeman, CEO of the National Association of County and City Health Officials, toldCBS News that much of the funding would have expired soon anyway.
"It's ending in the next six months," she said. "There's no reason—why rescind it now? It's just cruel and unusual behavior."
Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment communications director Kristina Iodice toldNBC News, "We are concerned that this sudden loss of federal funding threatens Colorado's ability to track Covid-19 trends and other emerging diseases, modernize disease data systems, respond to outbreaks, and provide critical immunization access, outreach, and education—leaving communities more vulnerable to future public health crises."
The first Trump administration was widely criticized for shortcomings in these fields. A congressional panel issued a 2022 report accusing top administration officials of "failed stewardship" and a "persistent pattern of political interference" that undermined the nation's response to Covid-19, which to date has killed more than 1.2 million people in the United States and is still claiming hundreds of lives each week, according to CDC figures.
Wednesday's reportingd came as HHS, CDC, and other critical agencies braced for more cuts and layoffs ordered by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his aides are also "nearing their final decisions on a sweeping restructuring of the department," CBS Newsreported last week.
Last month, Senate Democrats demanded answers from Kennedy regarding the purge of more than 5,000 HHS workers after the agency "blindly followed" a "baseless directive" by Trump and DOGE that the lawmakers said is "blatantly undermining Americans' health and safety."
As Common Dreamsreported Wednesday, public health experts have also condemned the administration's decision to terminate funding for Gavi, the global vaccine alliance—a move critics warned could result in the deaths of over 1 million children in the Global South.
"Investing in Gavi brings other benefits for our world and the American people," the alliance said. "Here's why: By maintaining global stockpiles of vaccines against deadly diseases like Ebola, mpox, and yellow fever, we help keep America safe. These diseases do not respect borders, they can cross continents in hours and cost billions of dollars."
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Our Covid Reichstag Moment: How Eugenic Interpretations Fuel Authoritarianism
The retroactive calculus of whose lives are worth sacrificing for economic metrics is eerily reminiscent of early 20th-century eugenic practices that sorted humans into categories of "fit" and "unfit," determining whose lives were expendable.
Mar 21, 2025
In a recent episode of The New York Times' "The Daily" podcast, host Michael Barbaro interviewed two Princeton political scientists about their new book examining Covid-19 policy failures. Instead of contextualizing the pandemic response within our current democratic crisis, the episode introduced a troubling revisionist narrative: that public health officials who prioritized saving lives were somehow wrong.
Shrouded under the protective guise of political scientist academics presenting "objective" analysis, a politically biased argument was offered as necessary news for the day—an editorial choice made even more striking given the sheer volume of immediate, existential threats to our democracy that warranted urgent coverage instead. This was the necessary deep dive audience needed to know according to The New York Times to better understand the news of the day on the exact same day when U.S. President Donald Trump was expected to announce the closure of the Department of Education and days after Chief Justice Roberts issued a rare public rebuke of Trump for threatening to impeach a federal judge over a migration ruling. While our judiciary's independence was under direct assault and educational access for millions of Americans hung in the balance, The "Daily" chose to relitigate pandemic policies through the lens of economic grievance—a choice that speaks volumes about which narratives powerful media institutions consider worthy of amplification.
Public health officials who refused to accept this calculus—who insisted that every life deserved protection—were vilified by those who preferred simpler narratives about individual freedom over collective responsibility.
This shift in narrative about Covid-19 and the deliberately limiting analysis of this complex issue is not just provocative but dangerous given the coordinated assault on public health happening across the country. As multiple Republican-led states advance legislation to ban masks—tools proven to save lives and reduce symptom severity—and as the Trump administration threatens academic freedom by pressuring Columbia University to comply with a list of harrowing demands including criminalizing masking on campus, major media platforms are inexplicably amplifying critiques of the very experts who risked their careers and safety to protect the public during a deeply uncertain time. These public health officials have already endured death threats and targeted harassment campaigns from right-wing extremists, including Elon Musk who tweeted one early Sunday morning in 2022 "My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci." Now, The New York Times lends its institutional credibility to the same dangerous narratives, effectively mainstreaming the delegitimization of scientific expertise—a classic precursor to authoritarian control.
What's most striking about this conversation isn't just its timing, but what it omits. Throughout history, crises have been exploited by authoritarian forces to dismantle democratic institutions and consolidate power. Covid-19 represents our generation's Reichstag fire moment—a crisis that has been weaponized to erode democratic norms worldwide.
Crisis as Opportunity for Authoritarianism
The historical pattern is clear. After the 1933 Reichstag fire, Hitler immediately blamed communists, enacted emergency powers, suspended civil liberties, and used propaganda to create fear among the German population. Similarly, Russian President Vladimir Putin exploited the 1999 Russian apartment bombings to blame Chechen separatists, launch military campaigns, restrict civil liberties, control media, and crack down on political opposition.
Covid-19 has followed the same authoritarian playbook globally. Governments worldwide enacted emergency powers, increased surveillance, eroded democratic norms, and exploited societal fears. Myanmar's military used the pandemic to justify their 2021 coup. Right-wing extremist groups weaponized misinformation to promote xenophobic rhetoric.
But what's uniquely dangerous about The New York Times' framing is how it subtly reinforces the authoritarian narrative by questioning the very public health experts who refused to calculate human life against economic metrics. When the voices of Dr. Anthony Fauci and others are played alongside criticism from political scientists—not public health experts—who make clear that they measure success beyond the saving of lives, we're witnessing the normalization of disposability. This calculus of whose lives are worth sacrificing for economic metrics is eerily reminiscent of early 20th-century eugenic practices that sorted humans into categories of "fit" and "unfit," determining whose lives were expendable—a ideology that was once condemned by civilized society but now finds subtle—rolling back Medicaid and cutting special education impact disabled people the most—and terribly overt resurrection in our public sphere.
The Real Covid-19 Story Is About Who We Choose to Save
The pandemic revealed which communities our society deemed worthy of protection and which were considered sacrificial for economic priorities. Public health officials who refused to accept this calculus—who insisted that every life deserved protection—were vilified by those who preferred simpler narratives about individual freedom over collective responsibility.
We cannot separate our understanding of the pandemic from the broader context of growing authoritarianism. The forces threatening democracy today are not single-issue problems but interconnected crises: white supremacy, media fragmentation as social media algorithms feed us visions of worlds comprised of binaries instead of nuances, attacks on gender and racial equity, and ludicrously widening wealth inequality. The rich are getting richer while essential workers—disproportionately the economically marginalized and people of color—were sacrificed during the pandemic. And we have lost our shared reality as social media oligarchs make billions from our mistrust of one another—the same oligarchs who now fund the politicians seeking to rewrite pandemic history, who now have metaphorically repaved the front lawn of the White House as a used car lot. These aren't coincidences but a coherent authoritarian strategy: fragment the population, erase collective memory, pit communities against each other, and dismantle faith in expertise and shared facts. And, as The New York Times demonstrated on March 20, you can do this all under the guise of objective reporting.
Covid-19 was successfully exploited by authoritarian leaders worldwide precisely because they offered simple explanations where reality required nuance. They promised quick returns to normalcy when responsible leadership demanded difficult truths. They divided communities into the essential and non-essential, the worthy and unworthy.
Responsible Media Must Connect the Dots
When major media outlets like The New York Times allow political scientists to critique public health experts without this broader context, they become unwitting accomplices in the authoritarian project. By focusing narrowly on whether lockdowns were "effective" without examining how authoritarians exploited both the crisis and the response, they miss the forest for the trees. They become complicit in emboldening authoritarians.
The question isn't whether public health officials made perfect decisions with imperfect information during an unprecedented global emergency. The question is: Who benefits from undermining trust in the institutions and experts who tried to save as many lives as possible, regardless of economic cost? The answer should trouble us: the same authoritarian forces that have weaponized every crisis throughout history to dismantle democratic institutions and consolidate power.
As we approach the fifth anniversary of the Covid-19 crisis, we will inevitably see more attempts to understand and reframe that era—but these analyses must be conducted responsibly.
As we reflect on Covid-19's impact, responsible journalism must place these conversations within our broader democratic crisis. The political scientists at Princeton should know better. The New York Times should know better. And those of us who lived through the pandemic—who witnessed firsthand how extremist politicians like Trump weaponized confusion and suffering to stoke fear, cultivate rage, and deepen divisions—we certainly do know better. We watched as misinformation about masks, vaccines, and public health measures was deliberately spread to fracture communities and undermine institutions. We saw how this manufactured outrage directly fueled the violence at the Capitol and created the fertile ground for today's authoritarian resurgence. Our lived experience of this cynical exploitation demands more from our media than revisionist narratives that conveniently forget this deliberate destabilization.
We must ask ourselves why certain narratives are amplified at specific moments in our national conversation. As we approach the fifth anniversary of the Covid-19 crisis, we will inevitably see more attempts to understand and reframe that era—but these analyses must be conducted responsibly, with full awareness of how limiting narratives can embolden authoritarians and reinforce eugenic hierarchies. The New York Times chose to revisit Covid-19 policies on the same day the Department of Education faced potential elimination—yet they failed to connect how disabled students, already disproportionately harmed during the pandemic, would lose critical protections and supports if this department disappeared. This is not coincidental. It is part of a pattern where eugenic ideology infiltrates mainstream discourse precisely when vulnerable communities need protection most. Media institutions that claim to help us make sense of the world instead reinforce the disposability of certain lives—whether by advocating economic metrics over human survival, by giving platforms to those who see the disabled as acceptable collateral damage, or by simply choosing which crises deserve attention and which can be ignored.
Our responsibility is clear: We must identify these eugenic patterns whenever they appear, name them for what they are, and refuse to accept any worldview that sorts human beings into categories of those worth saving and those not worth saving. When media fails in this moral obligation, we must hold them accountable—not just for the stories they choose to tell, but for the future they help create through those choices. The lessons of history demand nothing less.
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