For Many Americans, Covid Is Still a Chronic, Disabling Disease. These Scientists Are Working Tirelessly to Bring Them Relief

Julia Moore Vogel was living with her husband, Bobby, and their 2-year-old daughter in the sun-drenched suburbs of San Diego when the Covid-19 pandemic swept into the United States on commercial airplanes and cruise ships. Vogel, who has both a PhD in computational biology and medicine and an MBA from Cornell University, worked for Scripps Research at its facilities in La Jolla. She cherished her job managing a part of an ambitious study funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) known as the All of Us Research Program, which gathers health information from a vast cross-section of Americans—collecting biological samples, health records and other medical data from nearly 750,000 people that might one day yield treatments for devastating diseases.

Her career allowed her to “work at the interface of science and business,” Vogel told me, helping ensure that research discoveries broke through academia to affect drug development and how doctors practiced medicine. A former college cross-country runner, Vogel spent afternoons jogging through the snaking footpaths of Torrey Pines state park or pushing a stroller around her neighborhood, and she relished weekends playing with her daughter in the sand while her husband surfed the breakers that careered into the shallows off Carmel Valley. During the pandemic’s first few months, when people were confined to their homes under lockdown orders, schools were closed, and the country was struggling to source N95 masks and ventilators, Vogel and her family were extremely cautious.

She only left her home to watch her daughter play outside while her husband went out for groceries. They wore masks everywhere. Nevertheless, one day that summer, Vogel noticed that she could not taste her morning peppermint tea.

Her sense of smell faded, too. She was diagnosed with Covid a few days later. Even now, the exact date she got sick, July 8, 2020, remains impossible for her to forget.

Vogel’s infection laid her up with a fever, shortness of breath and intense fatigue. Just as she was expecting to recover, however, in the weeks that followed her body and mind faltered. She felt her energy being sapped away.

She had battering migraines that left her reeling in bed, disoriented with pain. She took one week off from her position at Scripps, then another, and then a third. Finally, she returned to remote work in August.