Health Beyond the Blog: Jason Gale’s “After COVID”

The science journalist’s new book explores what it means to endure a pandemic’s continuing impact on society.

by Ananya Dash

Journalist and author Maryn McKenna interviewed Bloomberg News senior editor Jason Gale about his new book, “After COVID: The Health Impacts That Will Last Generations” on Apr. 22, 2026, for the Health Storytelling live Q&A from the Center for the Study of Human Health.

In his book, Gale charts the story of the COVID19 pandemic, both how it unfolded, and what ripple effects it has created for the future. Gale explains that SARS-CoV-2 needed a completely different playbook compared to the preparedness countries had built for fighting an influenza pandemic. SARS-CoV-2 spread faster than flu viruses and caused asymptomatic transmission. Therefore, health officials did not possess strategies to stop the COVID19 outbreak from snowballing into the crisis it eventually became.

Gale brings stories of the pandemic to a conclusion: The virus will have long-lasting impact on health for decades to come. Through his reporting on COVID19, he learned that the virus imposed strange symptoms, such as taking people’s sense of smell, and causing blood clots. The COVID19 pandemic, he argues, was the first time that so many people became infected with an acute virus that also possessed the ability to cause chronic illnesses. Some, recovered completely but there have been many who never felt fully themselves afterward, experiencing prolonged and debilitating effects.

Patients came together in a grassroots movement to gather data that revealed more than 200 symptoms, eventually naming the long-lasting effects of the virus as a new syndrome, “Long COVID.” Gale explains that array of symptoms are not easily measurable, making the new syndrome hard to diagnose and depriving the illness of research funding. From his reporting, Gale also found that SARS-CoV-2 acts as an accelerant of diseases such as diabetes, Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s disease.

COVID19 also revealed how important it was for hospitals to build protocols that provide for treating massive numbers of respiratory illnesses. Patients in intensive care were isolated from friends and family, and clinicians and healthcare workers suffered as well from treating patients without a break, causing them to burn out and not return to hospital medicine.

Gale’s book is timeless. It ties our past to the present and future, and is a must-read for everyone to understand how a virus can have such broad effects on bodies and society.

After COVID: The Health Impacts That Will Last Generations is available at the John Hopkins University Press. The Health Storytelling Author Q&A series has concluded for the spring; episodes are available on YouTube to rewatch and revisit anytime.