News colleagues, we’re failing

Post-Covid complications and Long Covid coverage is dismal at best

There is a well-known trope in journalism that “if it bleeds, it leads.” Although COVID did not prove full of blood and gore in the way that car accidents, shootings and war coverage has, its acute phase and the pandemic’s first year was just as insidious: refrigerated semi-trucks serving as morgues, stacking newly deceased bodies in plastic, hazmat-suited doctors throwing “the kitchen sink” at patients, not knowing what might save their life or make them worse, leading them to their eventual death, packed waiting rooms and primary care clinics, dying in isolation from family, hospital parking lot and Zoom funerals.

We, as newspeople, covered it the best we knew how.

In 2020, with hundreds of thousands Americans in ICU’s and the world locked down banging pots for healthcare workers from their balconies before they turned on them a year later, journalism followed daily case count and death data from public health institutions like the CDC and John’s Hopkins. Reporters and producers got access to overrun hospitals, interviewing wide-eyed nurses and doctors, peeking into anonymous sick bodies on ventilators. We aired helicopter views of snake-lined cars waiting at COVID testing sites nationwide. We covered the daily White House COVID Task Force Briefing. Then, when it turned out to be a circus of health misinformation and political bravado, we stopped. We showed the empty shelves in the toilet paper (still one of the most humorous and bizarre aspects of early 2020 vibes) and baby formula shortages. We covered the BLM protests, the riots, the virtual graduations and proms, the anti-mask rallies and 2020 presidential election during a Delta variant surge in the US.

These stories lended themselves to better coverage because they were visual. You could see all the horror laid out, tangible, mournful, and barren in our abrupt dystopian Brave New Sick and Lonely World. Our coverage was better because of the medium itself.

Broadcast news needs visual stories.

It likes short, concise topics that can be boiled down to one-minute packages in a 30-minute to hour-long show. Bouncing from topic to topic, in addition to visual need, there are timing and don’t-want-the-viewers-eyes-to-glaze-over limitations in how deep you can go. Broadcast news is run by advertisers. If you change the channel, they lose revenue. They don’t want you to change the channel, so there is always a balance of what is of public interest and important and what will entertain and engage the viewer.

“Post-Covid” life, and especially Long Covid does not offer those visuals.

Perhaps this is why the coverage of this phase of the pandemic has been so poor. Somebody having a stroke or seizure in their home does not make the news. Camera crews and producers can’t cover the fourteen-hour wait in a hospital, seeing a sick elderly couple’s son sent out unable to wait with his frail parents not knowing if that’s the last time he’d see them in the flesh, your own body tremoring and brain borderlining psychosis, to be seen in the twilight morning and told they don’t know what’s wrong with you, or worse, anxiety. We can’t cover the dwindling income, the stack of bills that show up in the mailbox and the soaring rent while you lay there in the fetal position in pain.

Those things are less straightforward.

They require nuance—and engaging with emerging, often jargon-filled, medical data. But we must meet the moment. We must do better. The headlines we saw early on in the pandemic have faded, along with what happens to the body after infection. And the mounting data of what will be arguably the most studied virus in human history makes me wonder why we haven’t followed-up like we’re trained, as journalists, to do. Why have we failed to give the same urgency to this information?

Some news organizations have done better, more in-depth coverage, while others—the majority—have failed to inform Americans with the most basic segments, headlines or digital pieces discussing the latest post-Covid medical news. These are the ones that show organ damage one year post-Covid, or the numerous peer-reviewed medical journal articles showing heightened risk of stroke post-Covid, or showing that those with Long Covid have an increased risk of death and disease, or maybe even the hundreds of studies showing how the virus can alter neurological function and brain anatomy.

Is it because the US journalism itself is run by corporations who have executives and share-holders, with a push to get back-to-the-office culture is necessary to stimulate an economy that desperately needs it?

The other option outside of the corporate media structure is state-run media, like that in the middle east, Russia, China and North Korea. As you see, not quite shining examples of independence and accountability—we have learned how dangerous that can be. Yet, we must acknowledge that our current model is failing us, still. Yes, news is changing. Media layoffs and business shifts have been happening at unsettling speed. Even subscription model outlets are struggling. We are having to decide on new media revenue models that can keep newspapers, cable news and digital media afloat without relying purely on ads.

I also wonder if coverage is lacking because editors know that COVID stories get less “clicks”? People are tired and traumatized from it. Editors know it. They’re people, too. Or is it plain ignorance, that they, the gatekeepers, like most Americans at this point, have no idea how serious Long Covid and post-Covid complications are, and would rather not find out?

I can’t answer why. I’ve mulled it over. Yet, I know I hold a personal stake in this fight. I have Long Covid. I’ve been sick since late 2020. A political reporting career, which was meticulously planned and sacrificed for, has been altered. Any plan, really, is uncertain. And it has been a painful reality to feel betrayed and unsupported by the institution you heralded as the beacon on a hill, the First Amendment entity that holds institutions accountable and informs the public of the truth, no matter what that truth is.

Those who aren’t on Twitter or don’t personally know someone affected by post-Covid complications— yet—aren’t aware of the lasting damage it has on the body. They’re shocked and surprised to find it impacting themselves or the ones they love. Even those who were formally healthy, or functioning, are having “mysterious” strokes due to blood clots and the like. Anyone who has been following the data knows that is indeed a post-Covid complication. We haven’t given it the coverage it needs. Thus, Americans are dumbfounded when new, urgent health issues creep up, one suffers a stroke, severe depression or anxiety so palpable it’s unlike anything they’ve felt before, or the neurological deficits begin. They’re left to wonder, ‘what is happening to me?’

And that is a failure of the fourth estate.

With distinct changes in the media landscape, in both content, business model and consumption. I hope we can serve a public that is in desperate need of health information until it has become not a novelty or surprise, but is commonplace to know it.