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Despite a global pandemic that caused the deaths of millions of people and drastically altered our way of life, we still haven’t mastered the art of recognizing grief when it shows up.Four years ago, life as we knew it slipped away. As news of the covid death tolls rose around the world, we watched footage on television of our front-line workers struggling with overcrowded hospitals, our children were sent home from school, weddings and graduations were canceled, jobs came to a halt, and toilet-paper flew off the shelves. Everywhere you turned someone was losing something or someone. But instead of grief rising to the surface, it was anxiety that was soaring.By November of 2020 research shows that in the United States reports of anxiety increased to 50% and depression to 44%—six times high...

Today marks four years since I said the global outbreak of COVID-19 could be characterized as a pandemic.My decision to use the “p-word” was not one I took lightly. Pandemic is a powerful word, evoking fear linked to plagues and pandemics throughout history that have claimed millions of lives and caused severe disruption to societies and economies—as COVID-19 did.Many of WHO’s critics have pointed to my use of “pandemic” on March 11, 2020 as evidence that WHO was “late” in taking the threat of COVID-19 seriously. By that stage, more than 118,000 cases had been reported in 114 countries, and more than 4,000 deaths. The horse had bolted.However, the far more significant date was January 30, 2020, six weeks earlier, when I declared a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC)—th...

When Karyn Bishof started experiencing Long COVID, there wasn’t a name yet for the symptoms that lingered after her infection in March 2020. “I had these continued, prolonged symptoms that I wasn't hearing about initially,” says Bishof, who founded a group called the COVID-19 Longhauler Advocacy Project to help advocate for those suffering with Long COVID. She experienced extreme fatigue, nausea, and insomnia, among other things, but doctors kept testing her for COVID-19, or telling her her symptoms were psychosomatic. March 11 marks four years since COVID-19 was declared a pandemic. But while much of society has moved on from masking, quarantining, and isolating, some still feel the effects of the pandemic every day. Bishof, 34, who continues to experience Long COVID, says that many patie...