Christina Stanton was on a bike ride with a friend last August when she couldn’t pedal another inch. “I got off and I laid in the grass,” she says. Stanton, 51, of New York City, was experiencing “incredible fatigue,” she recalls, the remnants of a COVID infection that began for her in March 2020 and never stopped. “It was right outside of this nasty industrial area. I could tell it scared [my friend] that I was doing that, laying in some gross grass behind an old nasty warehouse, because, literally, I couldn’t go.” Lisa Emrich, a total stranger to Stanton, says she understands. Emrich, 52, of Falls Church, VA, has grappled with chronic illnesses for years, including both multiple sclerosis (MS) and rheumatoid arthritis (RA). An avid bicyclist herself, Emrich (who has never had COVID symptoms) remembers a time not too long ago when she was out on her bike just three miles from home but became too exhausted to complete the journey. She, too, got off her bike and watched as her husband cycled home ahead of her, got their car, and returned to take her home, her bicycle strapped to the rooftop rack.