We Want To Be Seen: Visualizing the stories and data of 44 people with Long Covid by Meagan Hughes

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Long Covid is an invisible yet often debilitating condition. This post-covid chronic illness has taken a massive toll -- physically, mentally and emotionally -- on millions of people, spanning many months or years. Yet there are still no effective, government-approved treatments for LC as of 2025.

I've had Long Covid since Oct 2022, and felt isolated by the lack of cohesive data, resources, and support available to those with Long Covid. I collected patient-led data and stories from a cross-section of 44 people with Long Covid, via voluntary surveys with consent on various patient forums across Discord, Facebook and Reddit. These 44 data points display a diversity of Long Covid experiences with common threads throughout. By visualizing these stories, we can build empathy on a human level.

This project aims to raise public awareness of Long Covid, while hastening the call for clinical research, treatment options, and disability accommodations. It also aims to validate and make visible the struggles of people with Long Covid.

Visually, the hand-drawn data points give a human element to the project's patient-led data, and are a direct reference to Giorgia Lupi's Data Humanism and hand-drawn data viz. They're also reminiscent of droplets, particles, or virus in motion, showing the ephemeral, invisible-yet-visible nature of both COVID-19 and Long Covid.