Myopic focus on mortality and hospitalization rates downplays the harms of COVID-19. There are people who tough it out at home but can’t care for their children or do their jobs. There’s the pain and fear they feel. Stressed loved ones who cover for them and worry about them.

There seems to be a large subset of people whose symptoms last for many months, ranging from weariness and body ache to debilitating fatigue that leaves you bedridden. These additional harms are not captured by the numbers we see in the media.

Some of these harms don’t lend themselves to quantification, and others haven’t been quantified because COVID-19 is so new. But existence doesn’t depend on quantification, and I’d like to see these harms addressed more frequently in mainstream media coverage of the virus.