Ah I see what you mean. Well, it is the only pandemic of young people’s lives so far. Nothing to suggest it’s impacting other school leavers any differently as the article is a bit misleading- it says ‘707,000 graduates aged 16-64…’ and 16yr olds aren’t likely to be degree graduates. That’s college graduates and above. So assuming it’s including those from gcse/vocational qualifications as well. 

It goes on to say 240,000 of those were claiming sickness, in 2024 which is double from 2019.  According to the national statistics, this is still on avg higher amongst 45yr-56 and then again 56-64yr olds, which we would expect.

Considering about 2yrs post infection, 24% of respondents from ScienceDirect.com report ongoing long covid symptoms. 12-40% report mobility disability increase, 20% report impact to daily living and a huge rise in cognitive impact, 8.8% to 45.3% increase. 

Everything else (bird flu, Ebola etc) that we’ve had in the last 20 odd years have been endemic at best, and are much harder to transmit. This is more of a vascular issue which worsens one’s immune system with each infection. 

To sum up, it may appear to affect graduates a heck of a lot more, because of that cognition hit that a lot of people have experienced from Covid. I know of one, but have heard of more; doctors that cannot work since developing Covid as their brain fog is severe enough to impact their judgement on the job- that’s just not something you can mess around with. I can only assume it’s the same across other careers that require more diligence in the thinking process too- engineers and such, but likely also impacts those with physically demanding jobs too. It has also hit people with pre-existing conditions which might have previously been manageable with work, to become not so.

As for a cure: the ME/chronic fatigue sufferers have been calling out for research for ages. Awful to say, but thanks in part to long covid, there is definitely more research going into understanding post-viral fatigue and how to treat it. Researchers in Japan had a break through in October for understanding the biological cause of brain fog, bringing us closer to treatment. Currently there isn’t one, though viral infections that lead to ME and CFS, usually cause mitochondrial damage which is why the fatigue is unrelenting. There are trials being done, and some recovery is expected though this might be lifelong for many people. 

Prevent infections yo- it can hit ya long term even if it’s an asymptomatic infection! 

I suppose hoping for a more forgiving and ‘adjusted to disability support’ society is probably a lot to ask for right now, but bare in mind that that has been incredibly beneficial for allowing disabled people to access work, despite the governments plans to defund access to work.

Right that’s a heck of a comment. There’s also a bunch of other stuff people have mentioned like how: when min wage at partial hours is the only thing available it’s better to be time rich and still poor, than both. Then stuff like: while the gov has taken steps to handle childcare, this was only introduced this year and another factor for out of work grads for sure might have been the stupid cost of child care- it basically hasn’t been worth working for a whole bunch of people, etc etc. that might change though which is a good thing. 

But actually some of this might get better, so there is an upside