Notes from a Long COVID hermit9 min read

After listening to the latest episode of the Death Panel podcast, where Bea, Artie and Abby talk about the end of mask mandates in medical facilities in the so-called USA, i thought it might be interesting to share some of the observations i made here in Switzerland, where the end of masking in medical settings happened much earlier, already in the spring of 2022.

First, i fully feel the rage the death panel crew is experiencing, it was totally like that for me. And sadly many of the concerned scenarios that were aired during the podcast have materialized here exactly as they suspected. There was one aspect, they didn’t mention in the podcast, having to do with eroding trust in the medical field as a whole, that i will try to explain later.

But first, anecdotally, here’s what happened to me during this process:

I was in shock as well as fuming from outrage, when the end of mask mandates in Switzerland was announced in February of 2022 by two federal councilors. Masks were dropped everywhere then and there in stores, schools etc. and even in public transport and medical facilities and pharmacies at the end of march. What a nightmare. How shortsighted could they be? Incidentally, Cassis one the two federal councilors present at the press conference, during which they had both taken off their surgical[!] masks live on TV, in the theatrical gesture, tested positive for COVID just two days later, but that’s besides the point.

So why was i so shocked/outraged, you may now wonder.

Since march of 2020 i suffer from what i strongly suspect is Long COVID (LC), and while a few doctors have confirmed this likely to be the case, i still have no official diagnosis. Whatever it maybe, whatever plagues my health, it seems clear to me, that i should avoid other infections, be they viral or bacterial, as best as i can. And data confirms this, secondary infections happen frequently in people with LC and they often make things much worse. Where do sick people go? To the doctor, and often they need to do so using public transportation. So to take away masks in medical facilities AND in public transport made the situation for the so-called vulnerable (i prefer to call them endangered) exponentially worse.

What i still don’t understand, is why certain pharmacies or clinics didn’t take the opportunity to keep up mask mandates, in order to cater for us, the endangered cohort. They could have scored trust points with the immunocompromised, disabled, chronically ill people, which, even from a capitalist standpoint (i hate this, but hey), could be seen as good marketing. In the beginning there was one pharmacy, where staff kept masking for some time. This was the talk of the town, at least among people in similar situations than mine, and i am sure it was even good for fucking business. But then dropped it a few months later to participate in the organized abandonment. WTF?!

Thankfully there was some public outrage after the announcement in February. Since Switzerland at the time was still experiencing wave after wave of COVID infections, some hospitals and even certain smaller medical clinics decided to maintain a mask recommendation. It could no longer be a mandate, since it was no longer possible to impose it without the backing of the state – which is … absurd! (not really, states gonna do state things) – but a recommendation, which in practice usually meant: staff was still wearing (usually bad) masks while for patients it was now optional… And take a guess how well that worked out. Sad story.

My personal doctor however practiced at a large HMO-clinic, where masks would be completely dropped on day one. Since i trusted her from a medial point of view and finding a new doctor in the middle of a pandemic sounded like a nightmare, i was stuck with her. I tried to avoid having to go to see her in person and resorted instead to consulting her via the telemedicine interface, they thankfully had. This worked fine for basic things, like getting a new subscription for asthma spray, but for other topics she often told me, i would need to come see her. Which i refused. As a consequence i stopped contacting her, and instead started to keep a list of the various ailments and complications due to Long COVID. And there were/are many of them.

When i developed an urinary infection, i knew this to be quite rare for someone like myself, stuck in a CIS male body, my doctor strongly urged me to come to the clinic. But i still did not want to risk it. Instead i took some old, expired pills, that were laying around here from an infection my partner had gone through a few years earlier. When the infection didn’t improve, we decided that it was she who would go see her gynecologist, since they had a strict mask policy in their clinic. The tests came back negative for the usual bacterial candidates, so it must have been something else that went wrong in my body. I kept drinking lots of nettle tea, cranberry juice and eventually things improved. Slightly.

In short, i was too terrified to go see my doctor. I had decided it was not worth the risk to go see her, the danger of getting a nosocomial infection too high. As a result, my social isolation increased even more. And here’s the thing, i am pretty sure, many endangered people felt and still feel the same way, i personally know a few of them. And if you think this through, it really is a no brainer: sick people go to the medical doctor, therefore clinics are where diseases float around in abundance, therefore best to avoid visiting these establishments as best as one possibly can.

When i developed strange symptoms in my hands and feet, a hypersensitivity to heat and cold as well as strange twitching sensations, i knew i needed to force myself to go to the clinic. Thankfully this was at a time when COVID infections were at a low point in my hometown, local infection numbers being another important factor to gauge in this situation. The blood work showed that i had developed a severe B12 deficiency, a common side effect of LC, and needed to get regular shots for the next weeks and months. That’s when i understood i needed to change my doctor, this clinic was not a safe place for me.

After i had practically begged her, my doctor had been willing to wear a mask when seeing me – turns out she wore a shitty surgical mask not an FFP2, but whatever, better than nothing. Twice when i walked to the clinic while already wearing my mask, people had aggressively coughed in my direction. I guess they were trying to send me a message or to terrify me, a mask wearer had triggered them to lash out. Every single time when i sat in the very busy waiting room, it was a huge HMO clinic, other patients were coughing or sniveling in the same room – without wearing masks. But what pissed me off the most was, the way i got treated every time when i entered the clinic. It was made clear to me, that they suspected me to be the sick one. People were looking at me sideways, avoiding me, taking their distance (to be fair, i did not mind that part of it). Staff asked me, loudly and not in a discreet way, if i was feeling sick, even though i had announced when making the appointment on the phone that i would be wearing a mask out of caution for my own health.

It is just like they said on death panel podcast, wearing a mask is no longer just the scarlet letter, it has now become a red flag, a justification for random aggression and shaming.

Thankfully i was soon able to find a smaller clinic to get my B12 shots, where a mask recommendation was still in place. Staff was wearing masks, but guess who walked around without one? One of the doctors, thankfully not mine. One time i arrived at the clinic wearing my FFP2 mask to sat down in the waiting room, there was another, older man also wearing one, he looked scared, when a younger man waltzed in without a mask. After seeing us, he asked for a mask at the front desk. Peer pressure, it actually can work both ways.

Since then, this clinic has also dropped their mask recommendation, so once again i am forced having to beg people to please wear a mask while treating me. Can’t they understand how fucking humiliating it is to have to beg your fucking MD to wear a mask, i can’t even… But even worse than that, as a secondary effect my trust in medical doctors and the medical apparatus as a whole has eroded significantly. Don’t get me wrong, i am a son of a MD and still firmly team science and team medicine, obviously, but how can i trust this particular person with extensive medical training, who knowingly participates in the normalization of a pandemic and propagates a mass disabling event like Long COVID? How?! It’s very hard. Medical doctors should know better, in fact, they do know better. Yet somehow they lack the back bone to take a stand. Or do they willingly participate in a eugenic experiment on real life patients? Okay, here it gets conspiratorial. But you know, capitalism gonna capitalism.

Last week the mask recommendation at the university hospital in our city has also ended. Bummer. The only thing i can now hope for, maybe even prey for, is to not get seriously ill in these next months. Because there is simply no way i could go to a hospital under these conditions. I need to score more helpful things (medication, oxygen, psychoactive drugs etc.) for palliative care, because i would much rather stay at home to die, than going to a hospital to live in terror of a iatrogenic mistake or a nosocomial infection. You do you, for me means, you’re on your (almost) own (thankfully i have a very supportive partner!).

The stigmatization, the fear for my life, the mistrust, the increased social isolation, all the ingredients are there. This is what organized abandonment looks like. This is a public health debacle, and almost no one is talking about it