People isolated by long Covid find hope and connection through social media

Hackett has struggled with her health due to long-haul Covid-19 symptoms. — The Philadelphia Inquirer/TNS

As often as three times a day, Alexandra Hackett posts on her TikTok account, adding another video entry to her chronicle of a 20-month journey with long Covid-19.

Some are wry, such as the one showing her haunted by a computer-animated ghost as a metaphor for symptoms that continue her suffering long after the initial illness. Others are fiery. She has no tolerance for Covid-19 deniers or anti-vaxxers, and readily responds to trollish comments. In a few, the really raw ones, the 44-year-old Philadelphia woman seems both anguished and exasperated by a condition that saps her energy, plagues her with inexplicable fevers, and so far evades science's efforts to understand or treat it.