“Chimere Smith, 39, a middle school teacher in Baltimore who has testified in Congress about covid’s impact on her life, has not worked since she caught the virus in the early weeks of the pandemic.

She has blown through $12,000 in savings and is on food stamps.

She said the sense of loss is profound because she worked her way up from a childhood in a poor area of Washington, D.C. Before she got sick, she had hoped to become a school principal.

‘I was following the trajectory of what I was told for years to be successful and Black in the world,’ she said, ‘and to have it all taken away by illness is a loss that I don’t think I’ll ever recover from. Even using the word devastation doesn’t really capture the full scope of my experience.’

She also plans to apply for disability assistance.

But many patients applying for disability insurance benefits are initially denied and require lengthy appeals, according to patients, doctors and lawyers, in part because the medical community is still grappling with how to diagnose their symptoms.”