In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, pulmonologist Joseph Varon offered an opinion that made headlines around the world and went viral on social media. Varon was fighting two wars, he said: one against COVID and one against stupidity.

President Joe Biden on April 5 tasked the U.S. health department with developing a national action plan to tackle the looming health crisis of long COVID, a complex, multi-symptom condition that leaves many of its sufferers unable to work.

A study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases found that the Pfizer-BioNTech, Oxford-AstraZeneca or Moderna vaccines resulted in a drop in “long-haul” Covid-19 by 50 percent. According to data collected by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), more than 500,000 children tested positive in the United States for Covid-19 from August 5 to August 26.