Covid-19 survivors become outcasts
PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEATEN THE DISEASE DESCRIBE BEING SHUNNED BY RELATIVES AND FRIENDS
On the day Elizabeth Martucci and her 11-year-old son were deemed to have recovered from the coronavirus, they emerged from their home on the Jersey Shore with some sidewalk chalk to sketch a message in the driveway.
“We are COVID survivors,” they wrote. “I thought I’m going to tell everybody, ‘I had this, and I’m OK,’ just to show people it’s not a death sentence,” Martucci said.
She also bought T-shirts that said “COVID SURVIVOR,” anticipating that some of the neighbours on her cul-de-sac in Cape May Court House might have some lingering discomfort.
Martucci soon learnt that she had drastically underestimated the anxiety she and her son, Marcus, would encounter. Even now, a month into their recovery, some neighbours see them and run.
Navigating a new world
As those who have been stricken with the virus emerge from hospitals or home quarantine, they are being forced to navigate a world that clearly is not yet ready to welcome them back into a stillsheltering society.
There are still many unanswered questions about the efficacy and duration of any post-virus immunity, and the uncertainty has caused some people who have survived the illness to confront a fear-driven stigma from the outside world.
The veterinarian who refused to treat a recovered woman’s dog. The laundromat worker who jumped at seeing an elected official whose illness had been
reported on the local news. The gardener who would not trim the hedges outside a recovered man’s home. “My gut thought was not, ‘Oh, people will now be afraid of me because I had this virus,’” said Martucci, 41.
Feeling stigmatised is not what many survivors said they expected after their tough bouts of illness.
‘Untouchable’
“There is a dichotomy between feeling like you can go give your plasma to save other people’s lives but feeling like you’re an untouchable,” said
Sheryl Kraft, a health journalist in Fairfield, Connecticut, who has written about surviving Covid-19 and how it affected her physical and mental health.
Samantha Hoffenberg, who lives in Manhattan, said she understood why her family had stayed away from her for nearly two months after she had recovered: Her father died of the virus in April after contracting it at the hospital where he was admitted because of complications from dementia. She said the ordeal had been deeply traumatic.
After she became infected, she was committed to staying far away from her loved ones.
Then on April 23, there was a fire in her building. After being hospitalised for smoke inhalation, she had a series of panic attacks.
I have never been in such a sad dark place after that happened. My own family is that scared of me that they are not even able to see through the fact that I am alone through this.”
Samantha Hoffenberg | Hiring recruiter