Three months ago, a 28-year-old UK environmental researcher was traveling with friends in a gang while touring places in the French Alps.
He came down with symptoms of Covid-19 and, like many coronavirus patients, spent weeks in bed. He asked that his last name not be used in this story for professional reasons.
However, unlike other people, Daniel’s life has not returned to normal.
“Since then it has been on and off with extreme exhaustion and fatigue,” he said.
Every day, she has mental confusion, difficulty concentrating, and short-term memory problems that make reading, writing, and speaking difficult.
“Breathing has been very difficult,” he said. “I don’t feel like I have my full breathing capacity. If I go for a walk for a minute, I’m really exhausted.”
The deep mark that the disease has left on Daniel’s life is not uncommon.
“About 80% will experience a mild or asymptomatic version of Covid. It’s the other 20% that worries us,” said Dr. Luis Ostrosky-Zeichner, professor of medicine at the McGovern School of Medicine at the University of Texas.
“One in five patients will contract a severe form of the disease.”
Some young people are not improving
As the number of cases among youth increases, Daniel and others in their 20s want to share stories of the remains Covid-19 has caused in their lives.
Those patients can potentially experience permanent lung damage, including scarring and reduced low respiratory capacity.
“We don’t know the extent of full recovery or partial recovery, so there is a lot we have to learn,” he said.
Young people, who are less likely to die of coronavirus than their grandparents, are an important target of those lessons.
If they caught the virus among the snowy peaks of the Alps or at the heart of the outbreak in New York Queens City, About 20-somethings are getting sick from Covid-19. And stay sick.
Their stories are a warning from the millennial generation to the millennial generation: don’t play around with the coronavirus because this disease it could permanently damage your body.
“What I like to tell my students and patients is that this is a lottery that you don’t want to win,” said Ostrosky-Zeichner.
28-year-old scientific researcher feels leprous
At home in the UK, Daniel is in his fourth month of Covid-19.
He has a note from the doctor that he shouldn’t go back to work full time, but he takes an occasional project when he can. Not much else to do while resting in bed.
Symptoms persist and are severe.
“Two weeks ago I had a crushing feeling in my chest,” he said. “I felt like I couldn’t breathe. That was the worst part.”
Last week, while driving, he felt dizzy and had to stop on the side of the road to call an ambulance to pick him up. Fearful of passing out behind the wheel, he decided to take a break from driving.
His girlfriend, a nurse, lives in the city, but aside from a few socially estranged walks, they haven’t seen each other in person in months.
“When I feel sick, I wonder if it’s Covid, or if I’m picking up every mistake because my immune system is so low.”
You are trapped in limbo somewhere between illness and health. He has a disease that the medical establishment is still struggling to define, and it is unclear whether it is safe for him or others to be in contact with each other.
“You really feel like a leper,” he said.
28-year-old television writer needs an inhaler to exercise
When Morgan Swank got sick at Christmas, she texted her friends: “I’m dying. I’ve never felt like this before.”
The Atlanta-based television writer has credits on “Saturday Night Live,” “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” and “The Mindy Project,” and now she runs a production company focused on uplifting projects for women and filmmakers of color.
Swank had a fever for three weeks and lost her sense of smell for nine days. While she was sick with what she thought was the flu, she passed out at an airport on an international trip, she said.
A non-smoker who exercised three times a week, she was not used to fighting for air.
Swank finally tested positive for Covid-19 antibody in April, but his lungs are damaged from a month of heavy coughing.
She has returned to exercise and, in addition to boxing gloves, now keeps albuterol inhalers with her boxing gloves in her gym bag. Inhalers help her finish her workout.
“I have to use an inhaler every two minutes to revitalize my lungs,” he said.
Even short conversations can be a struggle. “I hear it in my voice just talking to you,” he said in a phone interview. “I’m breathless”.
Getting sick again is your biggest concern, and you feel like your immune system is now compromised.
“I really want people to wear their masks all the time,” he said. “If I have another respiratory infection like the flu and my lungs are damaged by that, I may have to be hospitalized.”
29-year-old lawyer tested positive for Covid-19 twice
When Jordan Josey first received Covid-19, he felt like he was suffocating. The disease partially collapsed one of his lungs.
“Difficulty breathing was my biggest problem,” he said. “The coronavirus drains your energy completely. You are always stunned and tired. I can sleep 13 hours.”
Finally she started to feel a little better and tested positive for antibodies. He donated his blood plasma so that others could also benefit from his immunity.
But then, in late June, that same shortness of breath and lightheadedness returned. I was out of breath just folding the clothes. Tested positive again.
“I just sat there and shook my head,” he said. “I didn’t want to go through all of that again. It was horrible.”
On July 1, he dropped that bomb in a text message to his family. With an immunocompromised mother and grandfather undergoing chemotherapy for cancer, Josey Covid-19’s second diagnosis makes the whole family nervous.
“Nothing in my test indicated that it was a second strain,” he said. “I thought, ‘How is this possible?’ And really, no one knows. Doctors think it may have reappeared. “
One of the things that bothers him is the common belief that people will be fine after contracting the coronavirus and testing positive for antibodies.
“I don’t buy that at all,” he said. “My doctor said he might even test positive a third time.”
Like many in their 20s, Josey and his wife loved meeting friends for dinner before going to a concert, bar, or club. With him testing positive twice and she testing positive once, They have not done so since February.
“This is not a joke. I am young and healthy, and he did all this to me,” Josey said. “The coronavirus is now a much bigger threat than when I got sick. And it’s all related to people going to bars, nightclubs, and big parties.”
A 24-year-old college student has a warning for his generation.
Almost 1,000 miles away in Queens, New York, Kevin Garcia is also grappling with the long-term consequences of Covid-19. He desperately wants his peers to be safe as the number of cases increases.
The college student is currently suspended from work during the pandemic. But even if it wasn’t, you don’t feel like you can get back to work. It’s only 75% working, and just climbing a flight of stairs is a big challenge.
It’s not close to its pre-pandemic days of going to work, school, the gym, and bars, all on a marathon-filled day.
Her symptoms started on March 25 when she had to call an ambulance. “I felt something strange in my body.”
Within a week and a half, it felt like his body was in “total war.”
After more than two weeks of body aches, fatigue, and gastrointestinal problems, he managed to survive. But his new life is different from the previous one.
“I saw doctors remove bodies every day. I heard ambulances probably 50 times a day,” he said. “I’m glad to be alive because so many people my age died.”
He also wants to push against the conventional narrative that young people can get sick, get immunized, and go back to their previous lives. And you want the world to know that post-Covid symptoms are not imaginary.
“You don’t tell people with Covid that they have anxiety,” he explained. “We are nervous. We have a disease that you don’t know enough about. We survived and now we have symptoms that come and go.”
“I hope it isn’t chronic and that I don’t stay in bed,” he said. “I have a long life ahead of me.”
He will be 25 in December, and he did not imagine that he would celebrate such a humble and almost certain quarter of a century without a party. But now giving up on the holidays is his top priority for him and his generation.
“After the Spanish flu, we had the roaring 1920s. That could be the case after the coronavirus. This is temporary,” he said. “But don’t risk your life. You can die for this.”
His message to youth was that if you didn’t want to hear it from public health officials, you could take it off: wear a mask. Avoid crowds. Wash your hands. Don’t touch your face.
“I don’t think anyone should see someone die during an hour or two of fun,” he added.
“We can have fun days when this is over. Sacrifice time now.”
Clarification: This story has been updated to remove the surname of a subject who asked not to be fully identified for professional reasons.
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