LCAP (Long Covid Action Project)
Media Contact: Joshua Pribanic
Phone number: 419-202-8503
Email: joshua@publicheraldstudios.com
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 1/20/24
Long Covid Activists Disrupt Senate Hearing
LCAP members removed while chanting for emergency, funding, treatments
WASHINGTON — Long Covid activists disrupted a Senate HELP Committee Hearing on Jan. 18 chanting for a declaration of a national emergency and more funding and treatments before quickly being escorted out. The activists from Long Covid Action Project (LCAP), Linda Roberts and Stephanie Conan, performed the first U.S. direct action for Long Covid after the HELP committee failed to include a witness who represented the Long Covid grassroots community.
Roberts and Conan both suffer from Long Covid — a disease impacting over 23 millions Americans of all ages.
“We had no choice but to act. If you fund the proposed legislation you’re not funding what we need. The amount of “moonshot” funding is insufficient, the focus of the legislation is not on development of treatments, and you’re checking a box instead of funding a cure for Long Covid,” said Roberts.
LCAP activists said the protest was necessary to reframe the discussion around Long Covid as an emergency. Policy proposals to direct adequate funding toward research and development for effective treatments, and a diverse spectrum of voices from people with Long Covid, were not included at the hearing. No members from LCAP were invited to testify.
“I felt compelled to act today because the government continues gatekeeping the patient community to curate a “moonshot” story that minimizes Long Covid demands,” said Roberts. “Patients are developing AIDS-like immunodeficiency and succumbing to opportunistic infections and cancer. But these stories are not being told. The situation is urgent. We have no treatments and no seat at the table to shift the focus to one that will save lives.”
Conan added, “we won’t be silenced about Long Covid demands that will save the lives of children and adults. Moonshot kills. Expect us.”
Caption: Two activists going by the names Stephanie Conan (holding ⬛️sign on right) and Linda Roberts (holding 🟧sign on left) held the first direct action for #LongCovid in the U.S. at a Senate hearing. © Joshua Boaz Pribanic for Public Herald
Many Long Covid patients experience disease progression and symptomatic flares so severe that they can rarely leave their homes let alone show up in person to testify before the Senate. At the hearing that kind of disease burden severity from Long Covid was mislabeled as symptoms like “brain fog,” “fatigue,” or “post exertional malaise” for what biomedical research is more accurately finding as damage from viral persistence.
Although Long Covid shares some symptoms with a disease referenced at the hearing called Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), leading experts have confirmed they are not the same — a distinction witnesses failed to convey.
Those who experience a chronic Covid infection can suffer various degrees of disability, an increased risk of severe cardiovascular outcomes, cancers, opportunistic infections, immune dysregulation, immune exhaustion, immune deficiency and widespread organ and tissue damage. All of these examples for people with Long Covid are potentially made more severe from reinfections. Yet, accommodations were not offered by the Senate HELP Committee to provide opportunities for remote testimonies.
LCAP has reached out to representatives and Biden Administration officials with phone calls and more than 400,000 letters, the largest Long Covid email campaign addressing demands for people with Long Covid. Despite these efforts, LCAP remained excluded not only from Thursday’s senate hearing, but every prior governmental meeting on Long Covid that has taken place between legislators and so-called advocacy organizations.
After 4 years of those meetings there are zero FDA-approved effective therapeutics and LCAP believes the situation is unacceptable. The organization demands that the government declare Long Covid a national emergency, establish $28 billion in funding for Long Covid programs, establish novel research and treatments that includes trialing novel antivirals, and assisting children with Long Covid.
About LCAP: LCAP is a grassroots united, diverse force of non-partisan individuals taking action to end the Long Covid crisis through awareness & government accountability. For more information visit longcovidactionproject.com.
Long covid hearing quickly interrupted by two protesters, unfurling banners and demanding that long covid be declared a national emergency. pic.twitter.com/F9rqd8K05q
— Dan Diamond (@ddiamond) January 18, 2024
Video of LCAP activists at the hearing
Photographs of LCAP activists at the hearing
