How and why patients made Long Covid

Patients collectively made Long Covid - and cognate term 'Long-haul Covid' - in the first months of the pandemic. Patients, many with initially 'mild' illness, used various kinds of evidence and advocacy to demonstrate a longer, more complex course of illness than laid out in initial reports from Wuhan. Long Covid has a strong claim to be the first illness created through patients finding one another on Twitter: it moved from patients, through various media, to formal clinical and policy channels in just a few months. This initial mapping of Long Covid - by two patients with this illness - focuses on actors in the UK and USA and demonstrates how patients marshalled epistemic authority. Patient knowledge needs…

• WH
  World Health Organization
• WT
  Wellcome Trust

  Awards: 209513/Z/17/Z, Z/17/Z, 209513
• DU
  Durham University
• NI
  National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases