The Forever Disease: How Covid-19 Became a Chronic Condition Thousands of people have been suffering a slew of crazy postinfection syndromes for months—and there’s no end in sight. Details from a long hauler’s life; bottom center: PET/MRI brain image of an infected SARS-COV-2 patient. Covid-19 is a trickster. Those who have lived with it the longest often describe the disease as if it knows what mischief it’s making. Miel Singletary Schultz, a 48-year-old “long hauler” and former sailing crew worker in San Diego, thought she had experienced every possible symptom when in October her skin began exuding tiny yellow crystals all over her body; a fellow long hauler suggested it might be uremic frost, the manifestation of a kidney disease. The skin discharge was not the most debilitating of her dozen-plus symptoms, which included headaches, nerve pain, cognitive dysfunction, hair loss, constipation, and extreme weight loss, but this one seemed especially sinister. It suggested a future defined by an endless parade of bizarre maladies, on top of the baseline fatigue that has kept her out of work since summer.