However, for others with lingering symptoms of the coronavirus, that light is harder to see.
“Well, it feels like I’m living a nightmare,” said Clay Shiflet, an Aspen Middle School teacher and valley resident who’s been suffering the effects of COVID-19 for a year. “Literally, it’s hard to wrap your head around feeling like you have something that’s become chronic, essentially.”
Shiflet and others are known as “long-haulers,” and studies across the country are showing that more and more people afflicted with the virus report symptoms that just won’t go away. The number of long-haulers appears to vary, with a recent article in the Journal of the American Medical Association and a study by British scientists estimating that 10% of COVID-19 patients belong to that group, though others have suggested the number is much higher.