EGN NEWS DESK
To the Editor:
Re “Could Long Covid Be the Senate’s Bipartisan Cause?,” by Zeynep Tufekci (column, Feb. 20):
Like one of many folks you interviewed, I, too, was an “Energizer bunny” earlier than I contracted Covid. I labored as many as 18 hours a day for an aerospace firm, received A’s in my grad college courses, ran my very own nonprofit and served on the board of administrators of a number of different nonprofits.
However, two energetic Covid infections inside three months — in June and August of 2022 — left me nearly bedridden with lengthy Covid for 18 months. I wasn’t in a position to full my grasp’s diploma on time, needed to settle for a demotion at work (as an lodging for my infirmity), and am in additional hazard of dropping my job solely if my well being doesn’t enhance quickly.
To add insult to harm, there are too many dismissive docs who deal with lengthy Covid in an ineffective method and imagine that lengthy Covid is basically a psychological subject. That simply smacks of gaslighting.
We want robust, constant funding and relentless, focused analysis to determine efficient diagnostic testing and profitable therapies. We have to require insurance coverage corporations to fund experimental or off-label utilization of prescription drugs and nutraceuticals (meals merchandise with well being advantages). We, the sick, need assistance.
Please hold producing articles that shine a light-weight on this vicious affliction. There are so many people who desperately want a treatment and a voice.
Sorina Suma Christian
Mobile, Ala.
To the Editor:
Thank you for the unbelievable piece about lengthy Covid. My husband is 30 years outdated and was in his residency for neurology on the University of California, Irvine, when he got here down with lengthy Covid. It’s ruined his life. He can’t speak or stroll and has 24/7 sensory deprivation.
His story issues. Long Covid tales matter. We could have a complete technology of chronically unwell folks whom we lose from the economic system and every day life if we don’t educate the general public now.
Please write extra about lengthy Covid and its affect on folks’s our bodies — it’s not simply an prolonged chilly. For some, it’s a power and systemic illness related to neurological, immunological, autonomic and power metabolism dysfunction.
Our lives have been derailed. At 28, I’m my husband’s full-time caregiver. We’ve given up every part to offer him a shot at survival. And our story just isn’t distinctive.
To the Editor:
Re “Recycling Cans Changed My Grandpa’s Life,” by Andrew Li (Opinion visitor essay, Feb. 21):
I recognize Mr. Li’s tribute to his grandfather the “canner,” who supported his immigrant household by redeeming the 5-cent returnables that the majority of us simply throw away. He made town a cleaner and extra sustainable place for everybody whereas setting his children and grandkids up for fulfillment.
But why can we make his entrepreneurial efforts out to be “unhappy and degrading,” as his grandson suggests? Because we power him to dig by means of our trash to search out the nickels buried beneath (or dimes, if the deposit have been doubled as has been proposed).
If neighborhoods, companies, co-ops and householders would put their redeemable cans and bottles in a separate bag, field or bin, he can be simply one other member of the group buying and selling helpful providers for compensation. Isn’t that the American approach?
David Eisen
Cambridge, Mass.
To the Editor:
I lived in New York City my complete life earlier than I retired elsewhere. For years it made me smile to see folks stand on the redemption machines with carts filled with cans and “make a dwelling” feeding them. I referred to as them “the poor man’s A.T.M.s,” and I used to be completely satisfied that they existed.
Whenever I went to redeem my very own cans and bottles, if there was an individual there forward of me with a considerable amount of them, I might at all times hand them mine with a smile, and it made me really feel good. So it introduced again good reminiscences to learn Andrew Li’s essay about what this chance has meant to folks. I hope they do elevate the redemption quantity.
I now reside in one other state, the place there are lots of indigent and deprived folks and no such returnable container regulation, inflicting many to show to petty legal exercise to outlive. I’ve at all times felt unhappy that this higher alternative to assist folks truthfully, and in addition to encourage recycling, doesn’t exist right here.
Judy Weintraub
Louisville, Ky.
Teachers ‘Pushed to the Brink’
To the Editor:
Re “Teacher Sick Days Are Rising Nationwide, and Substitutes Often Aren’t Available Either” (information article, Feb. 20):
That lecturers are taking extra sick days for the reason that pandemic shouldn’t be stunning. Scrambling in 2020 to regulate to distant instruction, juggling hybrid courses in lecture rooms unequipped to deal with them, risking our lives to show our nation’s youngsters, and feeling maybe extra intensely than ever scorn towards our career, we lecturers have been pushed to the brink.
If college students skilled studying loss, lecturers skilled stamina loss. Four years later, we’re nonetheless recovering.
But the foundation of teacher shortages can’t be ascribed to the pandemic alone. According to a New Jersey Education Association ballot revealed final 12 months by a job power finding out public college employees shortages, solely 21 p.c of its members stated they’d advocate that associates or members of the family grow to be lecturers.
Your article rightly factors out that lecturers have much less work flexibility and are paid lower than equally educated professionals. But a well-deserved bump in pay gained’t do something to alleviate the unreasonable workload, administrative paperwork, inadequate skilled growth, insufficient sources, lack of autonomy and poor mentoring that lecturers face every day.
What’s wanted is a sea change in attitudes towards instructing in America. If the nation paid lecturers the respect it pays skilled athletes, film stars and C.E.O.s, extra folks would wish to be lecturers.
Gary J. Whitehead
Norwood, N.J.
The author is the 2024 Bergen County Teacher of the Year.
Religion on the Border
To the Editor:
Re “At the Border, a Blending of Politics and Religion,” by Mark Peterson (Opinion visitor essay, Feb. 11):
Thanks for this picture essay. To inform the total story of the border, you also needs to publish a photograph essay of the spiritual establishments combating every day for justice and freedom for immigrants. There are different, reverse methods folks reveal spiritual conviction on the border.
Lucia Savage
Oakland, Calif.
Lounging in Bed
To the Editor:
I simply completed studying “How Long Is Too Long to Stay in Bed?” (Well, nytimes.com, Feb. 17). I’m now penning this letter, and as quickly as I click on “ship” I’ll rise up and dress — or perhaps not.
Ann J. Kirschner
Brooklyn
To the Editor:
“How to Rest” (The Morning e-newsletter, Feb. 17) made me so glad that I’m sufficiently old to not be on TikTookay, the place the development appeared, so I don’t have “mattress rot.” I awoke this morning to a wonderful dawn, and now I’m going to roll over and sleep for an additional hour. Without guilt.
Holly Witte
Bellingham, Wash.
