Opinion Today: What long Covid is like, and how to cover it

A lingering illness changes lives, and possibly journalism.

View in browser|nytimes.com Continue reading the main story December 14, 2023 By Vanessa Mobley Op-Ed Editor "I hope one day I will be able to take walks again, snowboard, sit with my friends and eat at a restaurant, travel to my home country, be pain-free and simply enjoy a day in the sun without symptoms or fear. I hope one day I will get back to the person I used to be." This is how the information designer Giorgia Lupi describes the effects of long Covid in the arresting visual essay "1,374 Days: My Life With Long Covid." Brushstrokes are just one way Lupi conveys the mark the condition has made on her. The number of people who, like Lupi, are living with long Covid is not yet fully known and medical understanding about the illness is evolving. Part of that evolution, Ed Yong explains in his guest essay "Reporting on Long Covid Taught Me to Be a Better Journalist," has been thanks to the work of patients and patient advocates. Yong's reporting on Covid for The Atlantic was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in explanatory reporting in 2021. For his Times essay, Yong explains how reporting on long Covid fundamentally altered how he writes and how he thinks about journalism: "As a science writer, I have written about many topics throughout my career. None have affected me more than long Covid. None have more profoundly changed my view about what journalism can achieve and how it can do so." Yong's essay encouraged me to more fully appreciate the difficulty, but also the possibility, of approaching journalism in new ways, especially in terms of developing an ethic and practice of care and respect for the people whose lives we explore. Read the essays: Julia Saimo 1,374 Days: My Life With Long Covid Chronic illness has a way of picking apart your mind and breaking your heart. 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