Thank you so much for your understanding.
What I think would be really meaningful to long-haulers would be the acknowledgement and messaging in public health and across the nation that long COVID is an issue, that it does exist and that people need to take the necessary precautions not to catch COVID so that they, in turn, don't catch long COVID because it's not a thing that you want to mess with and you certainly don't want to have your life thrown to the wind because of this virus. That would be number one, the messaging.
Number two is definitely funding research. This is really a top priority, and a plan of execution needs to be made to coordinate all of the provinces and territories to really put a focus on this, prioritizing it. We need massive funding. The studies that are being done now with the $20 million that is allocated can end up being piecemeal studies, whereas we need large longitudinal studies that will really look at the underlying mechanisms of what long COVID is. We need clinical studies set up. That's very important. That's number two.
Number three would be the treatment of long-haulers. It needs to be accessible to all. This is an issue, a challenging issue, with the health care communities running on empty right now, and to bring long-haulers in on top of that is a crisis. It needs to be expedited and really looked at through a magnifying glass in terms of how critical this is. There are studies out of Australia that are already noticing the effects on their economy. The workforce is being affected and women are disproportionately suffering from this disease and are falling out of the workforce. These are caretakers, families, caregiver roles, just everything is being affected.
Those would be my three points.