“If 20% of those infected get Long COVID, and 37% of those quit work due to the symptoms, that’s over 7% of the people catching COVID that leave the workforce and school. (See Stanford study linked below)

That is a staggering number.

Let’s sanity check that. Figure some 60% of the population has been infected in the last year. So out of the workforce of 150m that would mean some 90m were infected and over 6m would have left the workforce from debilitating Long COVID just in the last year.

While that is a depressingly large number, it does match up with earlier surveys that estimated between 18-22m had left the workforce due to Long COVIS and never returned since the start of the pandemic almost five years ago.

So yes, those are huge numbers which comprise a huge drag on the US economy. It would be WAY cheaper to develop and deploy new vaccines and air quality improvements, even on a national scale. (And it would save a lot of lives and livelihoods as well.)

But worst thing about our current lackadaisical approach to public health, is that the damage is ongoing and will continue until we force our leaders to do something about it.”