Presiding last month at a hearing of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), addressed the many issues faced by patients suffering from long COVID, an often debilitating condition that can persist for months or years following a SARS-CoV-2 infection.

In addition to inadequate research funding and the difficulty of accessing quality care, Sanders observed that “far too many patients have struggled to get their symptoms taken seriously” because “far too many medical professionals have either dismissed or misdiagnosed their serious health problems.”

Sanders knew what he was talking about. The medical profession often reacts slowly, and sometimes obdurately, to novel conditions that do not fit previously known categories, especially in the absence of available tests or biomarkers that can succinctly tell the doctor “what’s wrong.”

Angela Vazquez knew something was wrong in March 2020, but she didn’t have a name for it. An early COVID-19 patient, her relatively mild case of the virus progressed into an “increasingly scary set of symptoms,” including seizures, heart palpitations, shortness of breath and confusion. A serious athlete for decades past, she became unable even to walk for days at a time. Doctors were not much help.

As Vazquez put it, she was “medically gaslighted,” with her persistent symptoms brushed off as anxiety or depression.

Vazquez was only one of a multitude of COVID-19 “long haulers,” by now comprising over 6 percent of American adults, who have developed the baffling condition called “long COVID.”

At first........

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