To the Editor:
Re “Could Long Covid Be the Senate’s Bipartisan Cause?,” by Zeynep Tufekci (column, Feb. 20):
Like one of many folks you interviewed, I, too, was an “Energizer bunny” earlier than I contracted Covid. I labored as many as 18 hours a day for an aerospace firm, obtained A’s in my grad faculty lessons, ran my very own nonprofit and served on the board of administrators of a number of different nonprofits.
Nonetheless, two lively Covid infections inside three months — in June and August of 2022 — left me nearly bedridden with lengthy Covid for 18 months. I wasn’t capable of full my grasp’s diploma on time, needed to settle for a demotion at work (as an lodging for my infirmity), and am in additional hazard of shedding my job completely if my well being doesn’t enhance quickly.
So as to add insult to harm, there are too many dismissive medical doctors who deal with lengthy Covid in an ineffective method and imagine that lengthy Covid is basically a psychological challenge. That simply smacks of gaslighting.
We want sturdy, constant funding and relentless, focused analysis to establish efficient diagnostic testing and profitable therapies. We have to require insurance coverage corporations to fund experimental or off-label utilization of prescribed drugs and nutraceuticals (meals merchandise with well being advantages). We, the sick, need assistance.
Please preserve producing articles that shine a light-weight on this vicious affliction. There are such a lot of of us who desperately want a treatment and a voice.
Sorina Suma Christian
Cell, Ala.
To the Editor:
Thanks for the unbelievable piece about lengthy Covid. My husband is 30 years outdated and was in his residency for neurology on the College of California, Irvine, when he got here down with lengthy Covid. It’s ruined his life. He can’t discuss or stroll and has 24/7 sensory deprivation.
His story issues. Lengthy Covid tales matter. We may have an entire era of chronically ailing folks whom we lose from the financial system and every day life if we don’t educate the general public now.
Please write extra about lengthy Covid and its influence on folks’s our bodies — it’s not simply an prolonged chilly. For some, it’s a persistent and systemic illness related to neurological, immunological, autonomic and power metabolism dysfunction.
Our lives have been derailed. At 28, I’m my husband’s full-time caregiver. We’ve given up all the pieces to offer him a shot at survival. And our story shouldn’t be distinctive.
To the Editor:
Re “Recycling Cans Changed My Grandpa’s Life,” by Andrew Li (Opinion visitor essay, Feb. 21):
I recognize Mr. Li’s tribute to his grandfather the “canner,” who supported his immigrant household by redeeming the 5-cent returnables that almost all of us simply throw away. He made the town a cleaner and extra sustainable place for everybody whereas setting his youngsters and grandkids up for fulfillment.
However why will we make his entrepreneurial efforts out to be “unhappy and degrading,” as his grandson suggests? As a result of we drive him to dig via our trash to seek out the nickels buried under (or dimes, if the deposit have been doubled as has been proposed).
If neighborhoods, companies, co-ops and owners would put their redeemable cans and bottles in a separate bag, field or bin, he can be simply one other member of the neighborhood buying and selling helpful companies for compensation. Isn’t that the American method?
David Eisen
Cambridge, Mass.
To the Editor:
I lived in New York Metropolis my complete life earlier than I retired elsewhere. For years it made me smile to see folks stand on the redemption machines with carts filled with cans and “make a residing” feeding them. I referred to as them “the poor man’s A.T.M.s,” and I used to be comfortable that they existed.
Each time I went to redeem my very own cans and bottles, if there was an individual there forward of me with a considerable amount of them, I’d at all times hand them mine with a smile, and it made me really feel good. So it introduced again good reminiscences to learn Andrew Li’s essay about what this chance has meant to folks. I hope they do increase the redemption quantity.
I now stay in one other state, the place there are numerous indigent and deprived folks and no such returnable container law, inflicting many to show to petty felony exercise to outlive. I’ve at all times felt unhappy that this higher alternative to assist folks truthfully, and in addition to encourage recycling, doesn’t exist right here.
Judy Weintraub
Louisville, Ky.
Academics ‘Pushed to the Brink’
To the Editor:
Re “Teacher Sick Days Are Rising Nationwide, and Substitutes Often Aren’t Available Either” (information article, Feb. 20):
That lecturers are taking extra sick days because the pandemic shouldn’t be shocking. Scrambling in 2020 to regulate to distant instruction, juggling hybrid lessons in lecture rooms unequipped to deal with them, risking our lives to show our nation’s youngsters, and feeling maybe extra intensely than ever scorn towards our occupation, we lecturers have been pushed to the brink.
If college students skilled studying loss, lecturers skilled stamina loss. 4 years later, we’re nonetheless recovering.
However the root of trainer shortages can’t be ascribed to the pandemic alone. According to a New Jersey Education Association poll printed final 12 months by a activity drive finding out public faculty employees shortages, solely 21 p.c of its members mentioned they’d advocate that pals or members of the family turn out to be lecturers.
Your article rightly factors out that lecturers have much less work flexibility and are paid lower than equally educated professionals. However a well-deserved bump in pay received’t do something to alleviate the unreasonable workload, administrative paperwork, inadequate skilled growth, insufficient assets, lack of autonomy and poor mentoring that lecturers face every day.
What’s wanted is a sea change in attitudes towards educating in America. If the nation paid lecturers the respect it pays skilled athletes, film stars and C.E.O.s, extra folks would need to be lecturers.
Gary J. Whitehead
Norwood, N.J.
The author is the 2024 Bergen County Trainer of the 12 months.
Faith on the Border
To the Editor:
Re “At the Border, a Blending of Politics and Religion,” by Mark Peterson (Opinion visitor essay, Feb. 11):
Thanks for this picture essay. To inform the total story of the border, you also needs to publish a photograph essay of the non secular establishments combating every day for justice and freedom for immigrants. There are different, reverse methods folks reveal non secular conviction on the border.
Lucia Savage
Oakland, Calif.
Lounging in Mattress
To the Editor:
I simply completed studying “How Long Is Too Long to Stay in Bed?” (Effectively, nytimes.com, Feb. 17). I’m now scripting this letter, and as quickly as I click on “ship” I’ll stand up and dress — or perhaps not.
Ann J. Kirschner
Brooklyn
To the Editor:
“How to Rest” (The Morning publication, Feb. 17) made me so glad that I’m sufficiently old to not be on TikTok, the place the development appeared, so I don’t have “mattress rot.” I awoke this morning to a wonderful dawn, and now I’m going to roll over and sleep for one more hour. With out guilt.
Holly Witte
Bellingham, Wash.
Source link
