The COVID pandemic’s lingering physical and mental toll, five years later

John Yang:

It was five years ago this week that the World Health organization called the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic. In the United States, officials declared a national emergency, triggering travel bans for non US citizens and shutdowns nationwide. Now, many who lived through the pandemic, including those who treated infected patients, are still dealing with the fallout. Ali Rogin has their story.

Ali Rogin:

John the events, which began in 2020, changed people`s lives. Nearly 75 percent of people said the pandemic took a toll on them, according to a new Pew Research Survey. We spoke with people across the country about how the pandemic transformed their everyday lives.

Aubrey Nagle, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania:

My name is Aubrey Nagle. I live in Philadelphia.

Kristin Urquiza, San Francisco, California:

My name is Kristin Urquiza and I live in San Francisco, California.

Mei`lani Eyre, Seattle Washington:

My name is Mei`lani Eyre and I live in Seattle, Washington.

Steph Fowler, Chicago:

My name is Steph Fowler and I live in Chicago.

Rachel Valdes, Portland, Oregon:

My name is Rachel Valdes and I live in Portland, Oregon.

Aubrey Nagle:

Life before the pandemic for me was very active. I was super busy, loved hiking, doing things on the weekends, and going to lots of concerts.

Kristin Urquiza:

Before COVID started, I was finishing up graduate school.

Mei`lani Eyre:

My life before COVID I was working as a software engineer.

Steph Fowler:

These are unprecedented times, was the phrase, and it really was. There was no class in grad school that prepared you for helping people through a pandemic. At the same time, you`re trying to cope with it yourself.

Rachel Valdes:

I was a labor and delivery nurse, and so the trauma of having pregnant people have COVID get really sick and die and then trying to save the baby, it made me not want to be a labor and delivery nurse anymore. It was scary.

Kristin Urquiza:

The pandemic completely transformed my life. I lost my dad, Mark Urquiza, early on to COVID-19. It was one of the most agonizing experiences I`ve had in my entire life to be — to have to say goodbye to him over a computer screen was so foreign.

Aubrey Nagle:

Once I did get infected, I pretty quickly, within like six weeks or so, noticed some drastic changes to my health. Eventually, we did determine it was long. COVID.

Mei`lani Eyre:

Yeah, so long COVID has taken a lot from me. I`m seeing my mobility is greatly limited. I`m also seeing my cognitive ability be limited.

Aubrey Nagle:

COVID has not gone away. COVID-19 is still with us. It`s still with me every day.

Steph Fowler:

It`s really hard to wrap my brain around all the changes that have happened in the last five years. I think partially because a lot of times I feel like I`m living in a different reality than other people.

Kristin Urquiza:

Because of COVID I`ve been navigating personal grief as well as collective grief over the course of the last five years, we`re working to make sure that everyone is remembered through a national COVID Memorial.

Ali Rogin:

For more on the pandemic and its lasting effects, we turn to Sacha McBain, a clinical psychologist at Rush University Medical Center, and Dr. Fritz Francois, Chief of Hospital Operations at NYU Langone Health.

Dr. McBain, I`d like to start with you. Many of the people we heard from in that clip and through the years in our reporting cite a sense of loss, either of a loved one or of their own sense of identity following the pandemic. How have you been advising people moving through those feelings?

Dr. Sacha McBain, Rush University Medical Center:

The first thing is to label it as grief and loss. Before the pandemic, I think we had a narrow idea of what grief meant and over the last few years we`ve been validating different forms of grief in a bigger way. And so I think that labeling is an important first piece and gives us new avenues for coping and emotional processing when we can validate these experiences are just that grief.

Ali Rogin:

Dr. Francois, we heard from a nurse who spoke about how difficult it was to get through that period in labor and delivery. Tell us more about what it was like for medical professionals on the front lines.

Dr. Fritz Francois, NYU Langone Health:

Indeed, it was very difficult and it`s something that you can`t prepare for. For us at NYU Langone, the experience was a little bit different because went through a crisis back in 2012, Superstorm Sandy, that then allowed us to do something different, which is to start preparing for what ifs.

And believe it or not, we back in the fall of 2019, we prepared for such a what if? We asked the question what if there was an outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome and we held that tabletop exercise on January 8, 2020 and had more than a six week lead time to prepare. And that helped our staff to deal with all the uncertainties that COVID brought.

Ali Rogin:

To that end, Dr. Francois, if I could stick with you, what lessons have you and your colleagues derived from the early days of the pandemic that they might apply to such emergencies in the future?

Dr. Fritz Francois:

I think the most important lesson is to the extent possible, to be prepared. And what I mean by that is that there are a lot that we don`t know during crises, but you at least try to anticipate to the extent possible of what you might need. And the basics, such as thinking about appropriate staffing, thinking about supplies, thinking about equipment, asking the question of what if? And being prepared to pivot. You do the best you can with the information that you have and we have new information, then you adjust. And that lesson, I think, continues to this day.

Ali Rogin:

Dr. McBain, we heard in that clip from some people struggling with long COVID and they talk about how they feel like they`re existing in a reality that`s different from other people for whom COVID is more of an afterthought these days.

What is that like psychologically for people who might be dealing with lasting impacts of a COVID infection?

Dr. Sacha McBain:

It`s incredibly isolating in your social circles when you`re trying to access care, thinking about navigating work and family roles. My expertise is in medical traumatic stress. And so these sensations that arise in the body can also be reminders of what had happened in the past in terms of hospitalization and recovery and can create this distance in the people that we previously felt very connected with. So I think that isolation, uncertainty about how to move forward is really common.

Ali Rogin:

I want to ask both of you this next question. What lessons do you think we should learn writ large from this pandemic? Dr. McBain, why don`t you start?

Dr. Sacha McBain:

One of the positives that`s come from this time is an increasing awareness about mental health and the ways that we need to protect our mental health every day, how to pull in appropriate resources for resilience and how to access the care that we need.

So I think that one of the lessons learned is having a really strong infrastructure for our mental health system to support people when these types of crises come up, when people are dealing with the long term effects in ways that support wellness, integration into society and individual mental health as well.

Ali Rogin:

Dr. Francois, the same question for you. What about on the individual level for doctors? How are they thinking about the lessons that have come out of this period?

Dr. Fritz Francois:

I will echo Dr. McBain`s comment about the importance of infrastructure and for doctors, for other providers, the importance of being prepared, being proactive is critically important because of the uncertainty of what is to come.

For us at NYU Langone having a culture in which we continue to ask the question about what if? And to take steps to support our staff has been incredibly powerful. The idea that we want to ask the questions, we want to do research, we want to learn new things that can help us to better serve our patients, that can better help us to support our staff and help us to also serve our communities.

Ali Rogin:

Dr. Sacha McBain and Dr. Fritz Francois, thank you both so much for being here.

Dr. Fritz Francois:

Pleasure.

Dr. Sacha McBain:

Thank you.