less than a month after victoria waldo recovered from covid she woke up feeling drunk dizzy and slurring her speech she went to the emergency room only to be sent home after routine blood work turned up negative the newly engaged 26yearold who worked long days in finance at a startup and taught skiing on the weekends would spend the next several months in a haze on her couch in her washington dc apartment unable to focus she lost her job at one point she stumbled upon a pair of slippers she liked and asked her fianc who they belonged to they were hers he said a christmas gift from his sister abcs start here on labor day focuses on how long covid is having a widespread impact on the american workforce another time she forgot what her wedding planner looked like and introduced herself to the woman as if the two had never met i had no idea what was going on nobody diagnosed me with anything everyone said i was fine based on my labs someone asked me if i was on my period she said waldo was an avid skier and taught skiing on the weekends courtesy victoria waldo more nearly 1 in 5 american adults who had covid still have longhaul symptoms data shows now at an age when many young professionals consider financing a home traveling or starting a family waldo is weighing her options her employer didnt offer disability insurance with her job a benefit she didnt think shed need as a healthy twentysomething so shes waiting to see if her condition improves with time and burning through her cash savings in the meantime i think in a parallel universe where none of this happened we would be doing that now she said of house hunting but instead im kind of like oh i want to see if we can get away with this cheap rent again a mass disabling event more than two years after covid began millions of survivors say they still dont feel right brain fog difficulty breathing and intense fatigue are among the symptoms they say are still lingering in their bodies upending their ability to work and derailing their financial independence the government estimates as many as 7 million to 23 million people are impacted by long covid and a census bureau survey suggests that among people who have been infected one in five still experience lingering symptoms vaccination is expected to significantly reduce a persons chance of developing long covid that immunity though wanes with time and doctors say some people like waldo who was fully vaccinated but days away from a booster shot when she caught the virus can still be young and healthy when they get sick advocates have called this phenomenon a kind of mass disabling event that both insurers and the federal government have yet to reckon with data on disability claims with private insurers tied to long covid