It's Friday March. I'm Oscar Emiras from the Daily Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America for many people that have experienced long COVID. They've had to deal with not only prolonged symptoms, but the hassle of trying to fight for disability benefits. We still understand very little about long COVID and how severe the effects are.
Can be difficult to measure. Ensures demand that there be evidence that a person cannot work, and some medical tests may not clearly show an impairment, leading to denials of benefits. Christopher Roland, business of health reporter at the Washington Post, joins us for the fight for disability payments. Thanks for joining us, Chris. Let's talk about an interesting angle to what's going on here during the pandemic. Obviously, we've got a lot of people that experience their COVID infection in
different ways. One of the more mysterious ones and and infections that have you know, this wider ranging effect on people is uh, those that are the COVID long haulers, so those that get long COVID, and you know it's a range of symptoms, the brain fog being extremely tired all the time, just not being able to operate completely normal.
And a lot of these people are you know, trying to get a disability payments out of this, uh you know, maybe file for short term disability, long term disability in some cases, and what they're finding is a really big battle with the private insurance companies or the Social Security Administration. So Chris tell us a little bit more about what these long haulers are facing. So we're talking about a category of long haulers. So there's a lot of people
do get long COVID. It can last for a number of weeks or uh, you know, a couple of months or even more. And then there's a category that where it lasts for quite a prolonged period, uh you know, three six months, nine months, and even some people now who've been sick for two years, um, and you know, they have this terrible fatigue and essentially they can't work.
There's probably around you know, the estimates are there's maybe around a million people like this who have severe long COVID who've been sick for a long time and it's so debilitating that they can't function at their jobs anymore. They can't even barely compose an email. You know, they can barely walk around their house, go upstairs without becoming extremely fatigued and have you know, rapid heart rate and
all kinds of serious pain and different problems. Um. But the problem with long COVID is that there is not any kind of great test uh medical tests to show what exactly is going on with your body. So you know, e k G s for these folks come back clean and normal. Um Uh, cognitive tests do not always show any significant decline in brain function. Even those people feel confused and exhausted. You can't measure exhaustion for the medical test.
So when they apply for disability, uh, you know, these reviewers are looking at this stuff and they're saying, well, these are all really subjective symptoms, denying a lot of these people even have notes from their doctors obviously saying it would be wise that the person takes time off, etcetera. But what a lot of people were saying that. You know, these disability evaluations are based on function, not the diagnosis. So you can have the diagnosis, you can have the
letter from your doctor. If the tests aren't bearing it out, they're more likely to just reject people. Yeah, and a lot of this is the medical system trying to catch up, right, Like, so you know there wasn't even a diagnosis code or you know that you could enter into computer saying this person has a long COVID. You know that wasn't even around for a year after the pandemic began. But you're right.
So even if you get diagnosed and your your physician says, okay, this person has a long COVID, you know, um, there's a whole other step that needs to take place. The physician needs to a test that you're so sick that you can't actually work. Um. You know, So for someone who has a physical job out outdoors, who has to climb ladders and as a roofer or something like that, or a painter or you know, has a lot or a lot of physical activity outside, you know they might
have a better shot. But for a lot of office workers, uh, you know, white collar workers. Um, I've talked to people who are white collar workers who you know used to run marathons. I've talked to doctors who what ran marathons and they got lawn COVID and you know they were debilitated. Took them a long time to get back to work. Sure, a few though, it's you know, a variety of symptoms
and um, it's it's hard to pin down. Share a few of the stories that you have people that you did speak to you because there were a few that you mentioned in the article. Through the help of a lawyer, they were able to secure some disability benefits. Others just flat out they just kept getting denied and going back and forth through appeals process and continually getting denied. Yeah. So you know, I talked to a woman, um in Pennsylvania for example, who in and by the way, everyone
I've written about they were got sick before vaccines were available. Uh, you know, I get a lot of feedback on these articles, Oh well they should have gotten a vaccine. Uh. You know, I I deliberately picked people to pro file uh in these stories that um were you know, could not get a vaccine before, but when they got long COVID and the points still you know how long the difficulty is
in obtaining these benefits even Yeah, yep. And so this woman in Pennsylvania, she was making over a hundred thousand dollars a year as a home care nursing supervisor, so you know, dispatching nurses out to clients, in their homes who you know, need help. Uh, and it's a pretty complex job. She had a number of nurses that she had to you know, send out all the time, troubleshooting, you know, helping manage meds and do all these different
things very you know, pretty high impact environment. UM, juggling a lot of things, multitasking, sending out emails, making calls, you know, arranging schedules, keeping track of a number of employees. Uh, you know, doing performance reviews. I mean, you know, an array of you know, fairly difficult tasks. Thanksgiving twenty, her whole family gets COVID. Her dad dies, her mother gets long COVID, she gets long COVID, and UM, she has remained sick the whole time. So she you know, her
unemployment ran out. Actually she did qualified for unemployment because she was too sick to work. So her extended sickly ran out and she um had to quit her job. And UH this past year she was applied for Social
Security disability and after exhaustive medical documentation was denied. She actually does have a lawyer working with her to help her UM, and a lot of people do that because they know they're going to get denied and now she has to mount an up keel and so you know, not only she exhausted and stressed out and can't you can barely walk, you know. Uh, you know, she's been
doing this bureaucratic battle. Um, so it's very difficult to situation then so other people who if you do have a lawyer, So some lawyers I talked to have they know how to what to help the doctors decide. You know, the doctors need to figure out how this is going to relate to your inability to work and document that very very carefully. A lot of doctors are unfamiliar with
long COVID. They're also unfamiliar with disability applicate. So, uh, you know, depending on what doctor you get where you are, if you're not in a big urban center with a COVID clinic along COVID clinic, you know, in rural areas they don't have long COVID clinics, you're not going to find doctors who are even familiar with US. And in the absence of those tests that will help bear out those diagnosis right there, you know, it's going to be a lot more difficult for them to obtain any of
these benefits. So yeah, just an interesting side look at what happens for these people with long COVID and then the struggle just to just get any type of payments back for work that they were losing. Christopher Roland, Business of Health Report at the Washington Post, thank you very much for joining us. Oh thank you. I'm Oscar Ramirez and this has been reopening America. Don't forget effort today's big news stories. You can check me out on the
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