Vulnerable to Covid, High-Risk Americans Feel Left Behind

Denisse Takes’s world is very small these days. She makes a living by producing songs from her living room, plays “Animal Crossing” online with friends and leaves her home in Burbank, Calif., only occasionally to walk her dog.

Even as her social media feeds are flooded with friends and family members returning to their normal lives, she sees no one except for her husband, who donated his kidney in 2015 so that Ms. Takes, 37, could receive a compatible donor’s kidney in return.

The medication that keeps her immune system from rejecting the organ also suppresses it from creating antibodies in response to a coronavirus vaccine. Her body is so bad at fighting off infection that she has gone to the emergency room with common colds, she said. She fears that Covid-19 would kill her.

But the isolation and depression — amplified as the rest of the world seemingly moves on from the pandemic without her — have also taken their toll. “I keep trying to hold on for my husband, honestly,” Ms. Takes said.

Millions of Americans with weakened immune systems, disabilities or illnesses that make them especially vulnerable to the coronavirus have lived this way since March 2020, sequestering at home, keeping their children out of school and skipping medical care rather than risk exposure to the virus. And they have seethed over talk from politicians and public health experts that they perceive as minimizing the value of their lives.

As Year 3 of the pandemic approaches, with public support for precautions plummeting and governors of even the most liberal states moving to shed mask mandates, they find themselves coping with exhaustion and grief, rooted in the sense that their neighbors and leaders are willing to accept them as collateral damage in a return to normalcy.

“I can still see your world, but I live in a different world,” said Toby Cain, 31, of Decorah, Iowa, who has lymphatic cancer and went through six rounds of chemotherapy and radiation during the pandemic, making her especially vulnerable to Covid-19.

She lives alone, eats almost every meal alone and scrolls through social media alone, lamenting the family weddings and friends’ babies she has missed — at least until she quietly gave up on social media altogether. “It’s like living behind a veil while the rest of the world moves forward,” she said.

More than seven million adults in the United States, or about 3 percent, are characterized by health professionals as immunocompromised because of a disease, medication or other treatment that weakens their body’s immune response, meaning that diseases such as Covid-19 can be more deadly to them, and that vaccines offer less protection.

Tens of millions more Americans have at least one medical condition, such as asthma or diabetes, that puts them at greater risk from Covid. How much greater can vary widely; many live with little worry, while others at higher risk have felt the need to isolate from society.

That is not what Aaron Vaughn, now 12, of East Lynne, Mo., hoped for when he received a heart transplant in June 2020. Born with half a heart, he thought a transplant would give him more freedom after years of long hospital…