On his NewsNation show “Cuomo,” journalist and former CNN anchor Chris Cuomo recently opened up about his struggle with long COVID. He shared that he’s currently been battling a cold for over a month, and also relayed that since contracting COVID in Spring of 2020, his health hasn’t been the same as it was pre-COVID. He has always considered himself very healthy—he lifts weights and is in great shape—but in the years following his COVID infection, he has struggled with more frequent illnesses that he doesn’t bounce back from like he used to. He stated, post-COVID, “I can beat nothing” without medicine. He also shared that he has lost bone density from COVID.
Cuomo announced that he’s starting a new series where he’ll be bringing experts onto his show to discuss long COVID, so that he and his audience can learn more about it, together. Cuomo explains, “We need to be talking about it more, because that’s how you figure things out.”
Even though Cuomo doesn’t mention lowering the risk of catching COVID through wearing good quality respirators, cleaning the air with HEPA filters and Corsi-Rosenthal boxes, or avoiding sharing indoor air with people not in your household, this frank and open discussion of long COVID on mainstream news has been welcomed and praised by many in the “COVID cautious” and long COVID communities on X/Twitter. This discussion is even more important at this particular moment, as the United States is currently in the midst of a big COVID wave, as professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research, Dr. Eric J. Topol, outlines in this recent opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times, where he explains:
By wastewater levels, JN.1 is now associated with the second-biggest wave of infections in the United States in the pandemic, after Omicron. We have lost the ability to track the actual number of infections since most people either test at home or don’t even test at all, but the very high wastewater levels of the virus indicate about 2 million Americans are getting infected each day.
The pandemic is far from over, as evidenced by the rapid rise to global dominance of the JN.1 variant of SARS-CoV-2. This variant is a derivative of BA.2.86, the only other strain that has carried more than 30 new mutations in the spike protein since Omicron first came on the scene more than two years ago. This should have warranted designation by the World Health Organization as a variant of concern with a Greek letter, such as Pi.
Thank you, Chris, for bringing mainstream attention to long COVID. Mask up, clean the air, and stay safe, friends!
