I Am Half-Sick of Shadows: Isolation in the “Post-COVID” Era
The Lady of Shalott is a lyric poem written in 1832 by Alfred Lord Tennyson. It’s a beautiful work; go on and give it a read if you’re not familiar. If you’d rather hear it, here is a haunting version sung by Loreena McKennitt.
If you’d rather the TL;DR version — the Arthurian Lady of Shalott is under a spell which compels her to keep weaving around the clock. Her only contact with the outside world comes from a mirror aimed at her window. She watches funerals and weddings and comings and goings, but cannot participate. At length, she spots Sir Lancelot, admires him, and decides that the curse is worth risking. She uses the last few moments of her life to write her own name on a boat, lie down in it, and drift to Camelot. Her last words, immortalized on a piece of parchment clutched to her chest:
‘The web was woven curiously,
The charm is broken utterly,
Draw near and fear not, — this is I,
The Lady of Shalott.’
I studied this poem in college (I won’t date myself by saying how long ago that was), but never really appreciated it as anything more than a very flowery piece of Arthurian fanfiction. Tonight, I happened to be scrolling through Facebook compulsively and the piece of art above appeared in my feed, and it was like somebody hit me in the head with a brick.
I have PASC (post-acute sequelae of COVID), or long COVID, as it’s colloquially known. The two infections I sustained in 2020 and 2022 wrecked me. I went from working forty hour weeks doing what I loved to lying on the couch in the dark doing very little at all. I took a leave of absence, maxed that out, and left my job with great sorrow. I refused to quit writing; despite the uphill battle it’s become (I can usually only hack ten minutes at a time before I need a nap), I would lose everything if I lost that too.
Among other things, PASC zaps the immune system. I was already immunocompromised to begin with. I probably should have left my job in public service far sooner, but silly me, I thought that with the public in masks and getting vaccines, I should be okay.
The problem came quickly after the introduction of the vaccine. My state’s governor, a full two weeks later and likely fueled by reelection fears, stopped requiring masks in public settings. The common refrain is “just wear yours and you’ll be fine!” Well, no. Masking as a means of reducing infections works far better when it’s reciprocal. Wearing my mask means I filter my particles and some of yours. It’s better than nothing! But as the CMAJ article I linked cites, if you’re stewing in air that has an infectious amount of virus in it, after an hour and fifteen minutes in an N95 (the only kind of mask I can safely wear), you’re susceptible.
My ability to thrive and survive has already been impacted by COVID. More reinfections would be devastating, possibly deadly. So I left work. I left socializing in person with all but a few safe individuals behind. Many of my doctors’ visits have been converted to televisits where possible, but the loss of the COVID emergency declaration has been devastating for getting resources like this.
Worse, most of the world has moved on. There’s very little understanding the few times I do need to step out in a mask. I’ve been harassed in public (“why are you still wearing that?” “take that garbage off your face”) and needled in private (“you can’t live in fear” “well, you can wear that if you want, but I’m not going to”). Hospitals are no longer required to report COVID caseloads, wastewater data is vanishing, certain places are banning masks altogether, and new variants keep coming, but are rarely discussed in the media. In short: the world is getting less and less safe as time goes on for people like me.
Where does the poem come in? Like the Lady, I am stuck in a room with unknown consequences for leaving it. Instead of a mirror, I have a phone — the shadows I watch are not people’s reflections, but their social media posts. I see their vacations, their weddings, their bar crawls, their graduations, their corporate retreats, and through it all, their absolute naiveté about the virus. And I am half-sick of it.
I say half, because if I don’t watch and try to reach out, I am completely forgotten. Begrudgingly, I have to ingratiate myself with people who are completely ignorant or unconcerned about immunocompromised folks still living in lockdown.
The Lady’s profound isolation hit me tonight, because I know exactly what it’s like to want to be recognized. Her desperate last acts were to get people to come closer, to know her name. The “wellfed wits at Camelot” were all baffled by her appearance the way friends often are when I say I can’t go to a bar or restaurant because, oh, yeah, COVID is a thing for me. The Lady weaved feverishly; I fight tooth and nail to get anything done.
So here it is, my piece of parchment clutched to my chest: I’m still here, I’m still stuck mostly alone the way you all hated being stuck in 2020, people with immunodeficiencies still need you to care about this disease, and yeah, you could easily find yourself being me. All it takes is marinating in the wrong air for fifteen minutes unmasked.
I’m not saying I haven’t taken my own risks. Despite my misgivings and significant challenges, I traveled this year as my husband hadn’t seen his family in five years and the opportunities to do so are dwindling. I do go to the store on occasion if there’s no other option. But these acts are the same sort of impulsive risk-taking born of sheer exhaustion and otherness the Lady felt when she left her loom. They’re not healthy risks. They’re a throwing up of the hands, a “well, screw it — I can’t do this anymore, so I may as well write my name on this damn boat” reaction.
And I am not alone in this experience. There are no compelling scientific studies of how many people live with immunodeficiencies, but there are many of us, and we are constantly growing. The figure for people suffering with PASC in the United States is estimated at 18 million, or 7% of the population — an increase from last year’s stats. That is not a rare disease. For comparison’s sake — 11.6% of the population has diabetes according to the American Diabetes Association. In 2021, the American Cancer Society estimated that 1.9 million people would be diagnosed with cancer that year. NIMH estimates that 8.3% of adults in the US have depression. NIH figures show that 16 million people have COPD.
To read more stories of PASC/long COVID and to channel awareness into action, check out the Long COVID Moonshot. Bipartisan Congress members are seeking 1.5 billion dollars to funnel into research to get us our lives back, so that maybe one day, deciding to leave the loom won’t be such a desperate act. Other acts of love — wear a mask in indoor spaces, particularly a well-fitted N95. Pressure government officials to acknowledge the ongoing pandemic. And check on us Ladies of Shalott. We’re not okay.