The Washington Post's self-parody reaches new heights

Think Trump Derangement Syndrome is bad? Try Long Covid Derangement Syndrome. No wonder the Post's readership is crashing. These stories call its basic credibility into question.

I wish I were making this up.

It’s hilarious. But it’s also pathetic in every possible way.

Two weeks ago, the Washington Post graced its readers with this headline, which hits basically the whole woke bingo card at once:

In communities of color, long-covid patients are tired of being sick and neglected

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(No, not THAT kind of community of color!)

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The article recounted the woes of a half-dozen long Covid patients of color. Or perhaps “patients of long Covid of non-whiteness” would be more sensitive? Anyhoo, it totaled 2,600 words, a length modern newspapers usually reserve for major investigations.

Then against, the piece was reporter Akilah Johnson’s first byline in three months. Show your work, Akilah!

What work it was. Nearly every paragraph contained an unintentional howler. Each patient was less sympathetic than the last.

The article opened with the story of Jeanine Hays, a 45-year-old, who is now allergic “to synthetic fabrics and processed foods,” because long Covid. Hays now carries “an extra set of clothes just in case what she’s wearing becomes unbearably itchy.”

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(Help fund long Covid anti-research. For 20 cents a day!)

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She also wears an N95 mask outside! Because long Covid. (Yes, she’s allergic to “synthetic fabrics” but somehow tolerates the N95. Maybe it’s an organic N95, who knows?)

After Jeanine, and her unfortunate husband Brian Mason - who also wears an N95 mask outside, because Jeanine’s long Covid - Johnson moved on to “Linda Sprague Martinez, a professor and health equity researcher who has studied the impact of long covid on Black and Latino communities.”

Your tax dollars at work!

Sadly, Martinez hasn’t found much impact. In fact, her focus groups with immigrants showed “that most people had not heard of long covid.”

Don’t worry, though, Martinez will enlighten them. “You need a doctor who believes you, who thinks you’re not just being lazy,” she said.

And why might those mean doctors think long Covid patients - sorry, I did it again, that should be “people of long Covidness” - are being lazy?

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(Obviously Jeanine Hays doesn’t take Covid seriously. If she did she’d dump the N95 for proper protection like this.)

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Why, indeed?

The article next turns to Chimére Sweeney. Sweeney has managed to wind up with long Covid without ever being diagnosed with short or medium Covid. (A not uncommon path for long Covidians.)

In March 2020 Sweeney wound up with a sore throat and stuffy nose. She’s certain she had Covid, because no one ever had those symptoms before Covid.

Sweeney quickly figured out she’d hit the disability jackpot — I mean suffered through endless trips to the emergency room where she was told there was nothing wrong with her.

“Things improved, she said, only when she started emailing community leaders begging for help and hired a patient advocate.” Eureka, in April 2022, she got the medical miracle she needed: a long-Covid diagnosis that let her “retire with full benefits, including long-term disability.”

She’s 41.

Once again, your tax dollars at work!

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Next: Gabriel San Emeterio, who “knows all too well what it’s like trying to battle insurers to cover the cost of care for debilitating illnesses.”

Or maybe he doesn’t, because until recently he was “a Medicaid recipient who received treatment at a clinic dedicated to helping low-income patients with HIV.”

(Say it with me: your tax dollars at work.)

But San Emeterio doesn’t just have HIV. He has “chronic fatigue, psoriatic arthritis, fibromyalgia and Lyme disease” — three-and-a-half mostly fake conditions. Psoriatic arthritis can be real, but in this case who knows?

And now long covid too! (In the single note of skepticism in the article’s 2,600 words, Johnson writes that “San Emeterio now believes” he has long Covid. DAMMIT, AKILAH! DO NOT QUESTION HIS TRUTH!)

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(They/elle? What even is that?)

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In San Emeterio’s own words, in 2023 he suffered from:

Light sensitivity. Dizziness when scrolling webpages. Daily headaches. Intense pain. Brain fog…

[So] San Emeterio went to the doctor, who “tells me I’m prediabetic. So I was like, ‘Could it be long covid? I’m still struggling, and my health is not the same.’”

The concern was casually dismissed, San Emeterio recalled, adding that the doctor said, “Well, you already had a lot going on before you got covid, so do we really need to put long covid” in your electronic medical records?

Hell yeah, sister! Yeah we do.

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(Help pay for my long Covid treatments! For 20 cents a day)

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The article ends with the sad tale of Angela Meriquez Vázquez. Long Covid has left her “allergic to changes in temperature and air pressure, [and] most foods.”

I urge you to read that again.

Allergic to changes in temperature and air pressure.

What could that possibly even mean?

The article has no answer. Akilah Johnson - Pulitzer Prize finalist Akilah Johnson! - merely ends her opus by regurgitating Vázquez’s bizarre claim like a stenographer.

Did anyone at the Post consider how any of this would read to someone who didn’t have a direct financial stake in making long Covid a thing, either as a patient or doctor or drug company trying to find treatments?

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(Going long on long Covid)

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Apparently not.

A fact that may help why the Post lost $77 million last year and has seen its audience shrink by half since 2020.

Even the most credulous reader can only take so much of the steaming nonsense that the Post is serving daily. And apparently even Jeff Bezos, the Post’s new owner, has decided his money would be better spent on a 417-foot mega-yacht than this tripe.

Who can blame him?