Coronavirus Thread: Worldwide Pandemic

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Roger Marshall’s finally taking COVID seriously. Is that just because it got personal? | Opinion​


BY JOEL MATHIS REGULAR OPINION CORRESPONDENT

JANUARY 24, 2024 5:08 AM​
roger%20marshall.jpg

Kansas’ junior senator — a doctor — pushed junk science and downplayed vaccines. But now, a member of his family is suffering. JACK GRUBER USA Today Network file photo

Sometimes, Roger Marshall seems so close to getting it.

The junior senator from Kansas — a medical doctor, don’t forget — hasn’t always seemed to take COVID-19 seriously. He went maskless on the campaign trail in 2020 and touted his use of hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug that has done more harm than good against the coronavirus.

Marshall has also allied with anti-vaxxers too often, positioning himself against COVID vaccine mandates for military service members and — astonishingly — health care workers.

Those mandates, he charged in 2022, weren’t enacted with public health in mind but instead were “ about Joe Biden fulfilling his desire to control every aspect of our lives.”

It was a very silly comment about attempts to battle a virus that has killed more than a million Americans.

But Marshall wasn’t being silly last week.

At a committee hearing, he announced that his family had been affected by the scourge of “long COVID,” a condition that can persist for months or years after contracting the virus.

“This is personal for me,” he said. “One of my loved ones is one of those 16 million people who suffer from Long COVID, incapacitated for some two years.”

The condition, Marshall said, is like mononucleosis “that never goes away.”

Before we go much further, let’s get something straight: I am not here to mock Marshall’s unnamed family member. It’s a miserable thing to live with chronic illness. Nobody should make light of it, no matter what you think of a man’s politics or medical advice.

If you think any of this is funny, you’re a jerk. Period.

Still, one might hope that Marshall would take that awful personal experience and use it to — perhaps — reconsider his benighted efforts to cast COVID vaccines as tools of tyranny. Maybe see an opportunity to urge his fellow conservatives to get the jab.

Nope.

“I am frustrated that our CDC (and NIH) seems to be more focused on just vaccines than they are treatment for long COVID,” Marshall told the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, later adding: “I couldn’t be more frustrated that it’s vaccines, vaccines, vaccines, rather than focused on diagnosis and treatment.”

So close. Yet so far.

EXISTING VACCINES OFFER PROTECTION FROM SYMPTOMS​

Now, Marshall is right about one thing: The medical establishment really has moved too slowly to begin to solve the mysteries of long COVID.

There has been no Operation Warp Speed of the kind that produced COVID vaccines within a year. It was only in August — three-and-a-half years after the virus first appeared in the United States — that the Biden administration launched its Office on Long COVID Research and Practice.

So if you’re suffering from long COVID, the wait for answers, for any treatments that might alleviate the condition, has already taken too long. The senator is absolutely correct to nudge the nation’s medical authorities into action.

In the meantime, though, the best way to avoid or minimize long COVID probably is to go get a vaccine shot.

That’s what the research seems to say. One study released last March revealed that people who had received one dose of vaccine had a 35% lower chance of developing long COVID than their unvaccinated brethren. Another study — this one from Mayo Clinic, in August — found long COVID patients who had been vaccinated “were less likely to experience symptoms such as abdominal pain, chest pain, dizziness, and shortness of breath.” Yet another journal article this month found “that COVID-19 vaccination consistently reduced the risk of long COVID symptoms.”

None of that helps people who already have long COVID of course. For now, though, “vaccines, vaccines, vaccines” really do offer a pathway to prevent more people from suffering.

Marshall surely knows this. He is a doctor after all. It would be nice if he could say it in public. As he knows from experience, a lot of suffering could be saved.

Joel Mathis is a regular Wichita Eagle and Kansas City Star Opinion correspondent. He lives in Lawrence with his wife and son. Formerly a writer and editor at Kansas newspapers, he served nine years as a syndicated columnist.
 
brickfare

brickfare

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months after what i think was my second infection, insomnia is kicking my ass. initially thought it was anxiety/stress but I’ve never struggled to sleep like this before. trying taurine, melatonin and magnesium glycenate supplements with little success. about to just sleep aid it up
 
GnauzBookOfRhymes

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brickfare said:
months after what i think was my second infection, insomnia is kicking my ass. initially thought it was anxiety/stress but I’ve never struggled to sleep like this before. trying taurine, melatonin and magnesium glycenate supplements with little success. about to just sleep aid it up
Click to expand...

Sounds like you should revisit the anxiety/stress theory breh.

I get that they're technically called supplements but sounds like you've already tried the "sleep aid it up" route.

Try going to the gym in the evening and making it a point to cut out the screens at least an hour before your target bedtime.

Go find a chiropractor that accepts your insurance and has a masseuse on staff. I get one once a week.
 
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