masks come off, people with chronic illness feel like outsid

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The pandemic was an equalizer in that regard. Come spring 2020, the entire country had to stay indoors, cancel playdates, and don masks in public. Two years later, public venues are open again, vaccines are widely available, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention no longer recommends masks for most US counties. The Omicron subvariant BA.2 threatens to drive up cases again, but public-health experts generally agree that COVID-19 isn't the threat it once was — at least to vaccinated people.

For chronically or critically ill people, however, returning to mask-free life is a riskier prospect. Insider spoke with seven of these individuals, some of whom said they're starting to feel like outsiders again.

Chronically ill people are finding their own version of normal
As many Americans dive headfirst back into normal life, immunocompromised people must reassess what risks they're willing to take. Most are still wearing masks or avoiding public indoor settings.
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But the couple isn't putting life on hold. They're grocery shopping and seeing friends on occasion.
"I don't want to let anything make me so afraid that I can't live my life," Carol said.

"Every once in a while, it does get to the point where you're just like, 'I just have to live a little,'" Angel said, adding, "What if I do get it again and that is the end of it for me? That's why I wanted to travel, because I was like, 'What if I spent the last two years in my apartment, so isolated and then I get it and I die anyway?'"

Immunocompromised people are also anticipating a return to their own versions of normal life one day.
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"I'm living on a ticking clock. There's always that hanging over my head, so I don't want take it to too far of an extreme where I never see people and I never take a risk," she said, adding, "At some point, the risk is worth it."

... Colin Killick, the executive director of the Disability Policy Consortium, has said, “People with disabilities found that accommodations they were denied for decades suddenly became universally available during the pandemic.” I can only speak to living with my kind of invisible disability, but these adaptations have been life-altering, providing a sense of belonging when for so many years I felt nothing but isolation and abandonment.

And there are so many of us. About 10% to 20% of concussed individuals will have symptoms that leave them suffering for months to years ― perhaps forever. More broadly, it has been estimated that up to 10% of Americans have a disability that is not easily detectable, many neurological in nature, like mine. Think: migraine, myalgic encephalomyelitis (chronic fatigue syndrome), multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, fibromyalgia. Symptoms vary from person to person, but these neurological conditions often cause debilitating pain, headaches, fatigue, dizziness and cognitive impairments, to name a few.

Let’s also not forget the newest group to join the invisibly disabled: those with long COVID. The American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation notes that 10% to 30% of Americans who had COVID may have long COVID, with many suffering from invisible symptoms like “brain fog,” fatigue, and muscle and joint pain. Many have and will become stuck at home, unable to work — and, like many of us, find themselves cut off from the world. ...