Finally, scientists are making progress on long COVID

I’ve been thinking about the old-fashioned term “invalid.” In the 19th century, popular literature was awash with characters like Beth in Little Women, who patiently knitted away in her sickbed until she succumbed to long-term damage from scarlet fever. Characters like Beth were a prettied-up version of reality. Many children died or were disabled by diseases that we can now fend off with antibiotics and vaccines.