In recent months, journalists Rianne van der Linden and Anne-Sophie van den Toren of the EO dived into the world of Long Covid, which thousands of people suffer from. The patients feel misunderstood, because no one seems to be able to tell what exactly is wrong with them.
“I’ve been waking up for a year and a half as if I drank a whole bottle of bad wine the night before. I feel an exhaustion in my whole body that just turns me off. It’s indescribable,” says Tjalco in the podcast. A while ago it was even worse: “When I unloaded the dishwasher, I had to stop halfway through to lie down for two hours.”
The 25-year-old Charlotte also speaks, who for months ‘felt like a zombie’. “I did go to work, but I don’t even remember what I was doing there,” she says.
Physically or psychologically?
In the series for NPO Radio 1, the first two episodes of which are online from today, the journalists are looking for answers. What exactly is Long Covid? And is it a physical illness, or is there also a psychological component to it?
The latter is what many people think, according to research by DataIM, which was carried out on behalf of the podcast. About 12 percent of the Netherlands think that Long Covid is caused by psychological factors. Young people in particular think this (25 percent). About 1 in 7 Dutch people think that Long Covid is comparable to a burnout.
The full research report can be found at the bottom of this article.
scientists
Scientists also place different accents. Pulmonologist Merel Hellemons can be heard, for example, who keeps track of all scientific studies and points out the physical causes that have now been found. Professor of clinical psychology Jan Derksen, on the other hand, believes that the psychological component in lung covid is overlooked too much.
The first two episodes of Long Covid, the shadow pandemic can now be heard in Spotify, Apple Podcasts and the NPO Radio 1 app, among others. They can also be heard below: