COVID Isn’t Over For Some

A reply to Samuel Kronen’s “The Cost of Indifference.”

Don’t Look Up (2021), an entertaining film about a small group of scientists who detect a world-ending asteroid plummeting toward Earth and set out on the thankless task of warning everyone before it’s too late, was intended as a satirical allegory of society’s response (or lack thereof) to scientific warnings about climate change. The movie emphasises the dangers of American apathy, tribal politics, and capitalistic greed. Leonardo DiCaprio, who plays the lead scientist, acknowledged to Forbes that the climate commentary grew into a broader message about the public’s rejection of science more generally—something that was on full display during the COVID-19 pandemic and has only intensified since, under Trump 2.0.

I say “was” because the federal public health emergency declaration for COVID-19 ended years ago, despite the fact that endemic COVID has proven it’s here to stay, spiking each winter. And I mention a comedic movie not to make light of the situation, but to draw more attention to the underreported and underappreciated science surrounding Long COVID, an issue that persists regardless of the pandemic’s status in the eyes of the US government and much of the public.

Similar to the plot of Don’t Look Up, another movie is in the making; this one, however, has far graver implications and is playing out on the world stage in real time rather than on a screen. This real-life story is anything but a comedy—and it goes beyond denying that an asteroid is coming. The Long COVID story increasingly resembles a society behaving as though asteroids simply don’t exist. While the ending hasn’t been written, if we fail to learn from the mistakes of the past, it’s unlikely to be a happy one.

With COVID now treated as a settled issue by political institutions, discredited by the CDC itself, there’s a growing risk that a slow-burning, secondary crisis of chronic illness (often including ME/CFS) will be completely overlooked. Things may appear “back to normal” for many, but those living with Long COVID continue to suffer. An alarming pattern has emerged, suggesting links between Long COVID and neurodegenerative processes involving protein misfolding in the nervous system. These processes may be triggered by an initial SARS-CoV-2 infection and, over time, could precipitate ME/CFS or other debilitating symptoms before fully manifesting as a Parkinson’s-like disorder.

It’s imperative that this scientific trail be followed all the way to its conclusion. We can hope these links are ultimately disproved, but ignoring them carries its own peril. In Don’t Look Up, the threat is framed as a single, unmistakably catastrophic event. Long COVID, by contrast, poses a more insidious kind of danger: not sudden extinction, but the normalisation of mass disability. Yet even as the danger becomes clearer, what little COVID-19 precautions remain continue to dissipate. Every infection still carries a non-trivial risk of Long COVID—one that appears to compound with repeated infections and lower levels of immune protection. This should be deeply concerning in a world that has largely abandoned mitigation altogether.

The politicisation of COVID-19 has rendered Long COVID, like ME/CFS, nearly invisible in public discourse. Even when patients are formally diagnosed, treatment options are fragmented and limited, as uncertainty and funding cuts plague clinical guidance. In many cases, patients’ symptoms are minimised or dismissed outright due to the absence of a single, easily identifiable biological marker. This leaves patients and doctors alike trapped between uncertainty and denial. That denial is the metaphorical asteroid—plainly observable to those who study it, yet politically inconvenient to acknowledge.

In 2024, Dr Janko Nikolich, then-Principal Investigator of Arizona’s RECOVER site, warned in a letter to the Biden-created and subsequently Trump-dismantled Office of Pandemic Preparedness that “Long COVID is the next pandemic.” But acknowledging that would require reframing health as a core pillar of national security. While figures like RFK Jr. may have rightly drawn attention to the deep failures of American health and chronic disease prevention, whatever gains his MAHA movement promises are undermined many times over by vaccine scepticism and the systematic downplaying of COVID-19 and pandemic risk, policies that directly exacerbate the very mass-disabling conditions they claim to oppose.

SPOILER: At the end of Don't Look Up the planet is destroyed by the asteroid because the response comes too late. Don’t Look In—the story we’re currently living through—can have a better outcome, so long as a proactive and fully-informed approach to living in a world with endemic COVID-19 is carried out.

Let’s not become the punchline of another satirical film decades from now. As the vast majority of Americans have already contracted COVID-19 at least once, act responsibly to avoid reinfection. Reject tribalism and follow evidence rather than demagoguery. Most importantly, confront reality as it is, not as it’s politically convenient to imagine. Ignorance, after all, is only bliss for so long.

—Philip Finkelstein