For many people, COVID-19 can be a relatively mild infection. For many others, it is not. For someone who is living with so-called long COVID, in which the symptoms last for months or even years, it can contain a litany of debilitating symptoms from extreme fatigue to heart problems. For Angela Meriquez Vázquez, a long COVID patient and advocate, "brain fog" is “one of the most disabling symptoms.” The condition is exactly what it sounds like: a cloudy feeling in the mind that can make it difficult to focus or remember. It's one of many ways in which the SARS-CoV-2 virus responsible for COVID can impact the brain and alter perception.
Prior to getting infected with COVID-19 in March 2020, Vázquez said she was decent at multitasking. For example, she could write an email about one topic and engage in a verbal conversation about another topic at the same time. But today, she struggles to maintain focus and attention on phone calls. She tells Salon she is now bad at multitasking. And on days where she is really struggling, she has to turn on closed captioning on Zoom to follow along with the conversation.
