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24 Nov, 10 tweets, 4 min read
🚨I wrote about healthcare workers with long-COVID, & how their experience changed their view of medicine.

HCWs & long-haulers are often framed in opposition, but here's the story of people who sit across both worlds. 1/

theatlantic.com/health/archive…
Most medically trained long-haulers I interviewed were shocked at how quick their own peers were to disregard their medical expertise and tell them their symptoms were in their heads. Their status as patients completely subsumed their qualifications. 2/
theatlantic.com/health/archive…
Healthcare workers w/ long COVID have told me that their own doctor made the finger-circling-a-temple gesture at them, or told them “hormones do funny things to women.” For some, the experience has shattered their trust in their own profession. 3/
theatlantic.com/health/archive…
Several healthcare workers told me they only understood how debilitating chronic illnesses like long COVID or ME/CFS could be when they felt it themselves.

They completely revised their understanding of what “fatigue” can entail. 4/
theatlantic.com/health/archive…
For many, this has provoked painful introspection. Some candidly confessed that they dismissed patients in the same way that they have since been treated. They’re ashamed about it. “What else was I wrong about?” one said. 5/ theatlantic.com/health/archive…
Several of them spoke openly about *why* patients, even medically qualified ones, are so readily disbelieved.

They talked about the holes in their training, job pressures, insecurity, compassion fatigue, arrogance, and misogyny. 6/

theatlantic.com/health/archive…
Some HCWs said that having long COVID has already changed the way they practice medicine, and were optimistic that long-haulers could change the field from within. But others have left, are too sick to return, or are still being ignored. 7/

theatlantic.com/health/archive…
This piece is a companion to the last one about healthcare workers leaving their jobs because of the pandemic & medicine’s pre-existing weaknesses. The forces described in that piece will exacerbate the problems described in this one. 8/

theatlantic.com/health/archive…
Finally, and I cannot stress this enough: Every person quoted in this piece is both a medical professional and a long-hauler.

Doctors who think they understand long COVID might try to listen to what their peers *who have it* have to say. Fin/

theatlantic.com/health/archive…
PS: credit and a shout-out to the wonderful @natashamitchell who did a two-part radio documentary on doctors with long-Covid. Part 1 is here: abc.net.au/radionational/…

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More from @edyong209

Ed Yong Profile picture
23 Nov
We published this a week ago. Every day since, my inbox has filled with emails from HCWs who say it reflects their reality & mental state. Their messages are heartbreaking--stories of pain, anger, and moral distress, sometimes at essay-length, from people who've had enough.
There are people who want to leave but are trapped by debt, people who saw medicine as a calling but can't cope any more, people who feel so hollow that they're strangers to their loved ones, people who are staring at what looks a lot like another winter surge with utter horror.
In a way, it's gratifying to hear messages from people who say they finally feel seen, or who are thankful for something they can use to explain what's happening to their families. It's good to feel that these pieces make a difference to at least some people.
Read 7 tweets
Ed Yong Profile picture
16 Nov
🚨During surges, much is written about healthcare workers burning out. But they often get by on adrenaline only to find, once ICUs are empty, that so are they.

In the US, 1/5 have left. More plan too. I wrote about the hemorrhage happening right now. 1/ theatlantic.com/health/archive…
I spoke to so many healthcare workers who’ve been broken by the pandemic—by the traumas they saw, the institutions that failed them, the moral distress of being unable to do their job. Many thought they were in medicine for life. They’ve quit, too. 2/

theatlantic.com/health/archive…
COVID is hard to treat. It quickly inundates hospitals.
Healthcare workers aren't quitting because they can’t handle their jobs. They’re quitting because they can’t handle *being unable to do their jobs*. 3/

theatlantic.com/health/archive…
Read 10 tweets
Ed Yong Profile picture
10 Nov
End of an era. Flash Forward was a singular thing.

And no single journalist more heavily influenced my approach to pandemic coverage than Rose.

For years, I've marvelled at how she seamlessly wove science with history, culture, and sociology... 1/3

🧵
... how she eschewed easy technocratic solutions to complex problems; how she centered disabled, queer, POC, and other marginalized voices; and perhaps most importantly, how she maintained a core of hope even when talking about the bleakest futures. 2/3
She did all that, and for most of Flash Forward's life, she did it *single-handedly*, without the production crews that many popular podcasts have.

She's an inspiration, and a dear, dear friend. I can't wait to see what she does next. 3/3
Read 6 tweets
Ed Yong Profile picture
3 Nov
The whales killed during the 20th century collectively weighed 2x more than all the wild mammals alive today.

A new study reveals the enormous hole that their slaughter left in the ocean, and suggests a bold path for restoration.

My latest: theatlantic.com/science/archiv…
Pre-industrial whaling, whales ate 2x as much krill as exist today every year. Or 2x the global fisheries catch.

Which was fine because their poop fertilized the same food webs that they gorged upon. When the whales were killed, those webs imploded.
theatlantic.com/science/archiv…
One possible but controversial solution is to add iron to former whaling grounds, jumpstarting food webs that the whales once fuelled themselves.

This plan is essentially humans cosplaying as giant piles of shit, which we should be *amazing* at by now

theatlantic.com/science/archiv…
Read 4 tweets
Ed Yong Profile picture
25 Oct
There's a lot of Facebook coverage out there today, but I want to especially highlight this piece by Adrienne, not just because it's amazing in itself, but because it represents the latest of a deeply incisive series, all of which you should read 1/
Pair it, for example, with this piece from last December about Facebook as a doomsday machine. 2/ theatlantic.com/technology/arc…
And follow those up with this piece from Sept on Facebook as an autocratic state. 3/

theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
Read 5 tweets
Ed Yong Profile picture
23 Oct
🚨I wrote about public health’s history; why it spent the 20thC moving away from broad coalitions, political advocacy, and a crusading spirit that actively pushed for social reforms; and why it must regain those things to be relevant and effective. 1/ theatlantic.com/health/archive…
Public health is often cast as an underdog, invisible & ignored. That’s not the full story. In the 20thC, it made choices that silenced its voice, reduced its constituency, minimized its power. It “actively participated in its own marginalization.” 2/ theatlantic.com/health/archive…
Germ theory was a revolution that gave public health license to be less revolutionary. It allowed the field to move away from the social problems that underlie poor health towards a blinkered, individualistic, biomedical model—to its detriment, and ours. theatlantic.com/health/archive…
Read 8 tweets

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