Your editorial “5 years after covid, scars linger” (March 13, TribLive) was (almost) right on target. I will give two examples.
1. My grandmother, born in 1898, had the 1918 Spanish flu but survived. On Thanksgiving morning 1974, she woke up with the strangest cough. I was home visiting my parents, and the next morning I called an EENT doctor I knew. He saw her that afternoon and after an exam he asked her about the 1918 flu, having just read an article about that flu’s return in immuno-compromised older adults. He was correct. My grandmother lived another 10 years with proper meds.
2. I was asked to consult on an example of post-polio disorder in a 70-year-old man who had polio in the 1950s but went into remission. Unfortunately his polio came roaring back and he lived less than a year.
Like the famous Farmingham studies (1948), we need both longitudinal and cohort studies of covid victims into their older years. Long covid will be with us for a long time.
The Rev. Robert J. Marks
Grapeville