I think that people are really hesitant to talk about when they’re having a hard time, never mind admit that they might be lumped into the ‘disabled’ bucket.

We’re, uh, not great about how we treat people w/disabilities in our society. Having something that is ‘supposed to happen to other people’ happen to you is rough.

Yeah, like, there are plenty of people out there with long COVID. I have relatives with it. I have coworkers who are on leave because of it. About 5% of the US seems to have activity-limiting long COVID at any given time: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/covid19/pulse/long-covid.htm

Shit’s bad.

Indoors in public, all the time.

I don’t want to catch COVID again if I can help it. It’s a shitty, dangerous virus.

TBH, I don’t think most people understand that it’s not just a bad cold–it’s a virus that attacks your vascular system that also does some nasty respiratory stuff. The increased risks of heart attacks and strokes after even a mild infection are not great, and if you’re getting infected every year, you’re permanently carrying that elevated risk.