Covid Cluster Bomb

The coronavirus's ability to attack multiple organs and weaken immunity is evident in still-high excess deaths

When Covid-19 struck Jerry Guerinot in January 2021, the stocky 77-year-old defense attorney, who already had diabetes and heart disease, developed double pneumonia and was given a 5% chance of survival. After three months in a Houston hospital, he beat those grim odds. But Guerinot’s scarred lungs and weakened immune system set him up for new infections requiring further hospitalization and rounds of physical therapy. Almost two years after getting Covid and more than $1 million in medical bills later, Guerinot says he still suffers from the virus’s devastating aftereffects. “Covid damn near killed me,” he says. “It did everything it could do to me and then some.”

Virus-damaged organs and compromised immune systems are just part of Covid’s public-health legacy; there’s also a litany of secondary effects still being measured, ranging from increases in mental illness to delays in getting cancer treatment. Some doctors also blame Covid for worsening the effects of other diseases, as with the cases of flu and respiratory syncytial virus now mobbing children’s hospitals. Weekly deaths from Covid reported to the World Health Organization have dipped to levels last seen in March 2020, as the number of severe cases is cut by vaccines, antivirals and the circulation of milder virus variants. But global excess deaths have remained stubbornly high in the pandemic era.