The Social Security Administration has posted Emergency Message EM-21032 REV 2 on Evaluating Cases with Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). It's a classic Social Security directive to staff that means absolutely nothing. They want to tell you that, yes, they're considering long Covid but there are zero details on what that means in practice and certainly nothing that could be interpreted as a standard that the agency must meet. The first priority is to make sure that no one at Social Security could be said to have failed to abide by the Emergency Message. It's impossible to fail to meet the standard since there is no standard. Is there one person at Social Security whose job it is to draft this sort of pabulum?
In the real world everyone with long Covid will be denied at initial and recon and some will be approved at the hearing level.
I'm still not seeing clients complaining of long Covid. I'm beginning to think that long Covid is definitely a thing but it's mostly a thing for those who are too old to be applying for Social Security disability benefits.
2 comments:
There are no details because there is nothing for SSA to do, except to add a note that claimant's complaints of "long COVID" were considered.
I can tell you from experience, long covid does CERTAINLY exist. I personally been suffering from it since I had it in January after avoiding it for 4-5 years. It's weird and hard to explain. Symptoms of covid comes on sudden, then vanish just as quick. The exhaustion is constant tho. SSA needs to work harder on long covid, it is very life-disrupting and can be disabling at times.
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