Covid-19 Changes Our Sleep

Didn't you learn anything at all in the last 11 months? I recall you categorically dismissing it and claiming that it was going to all be over in a couple of months. Here we are, almost a year later, the worst is yet to come - in spite of a vaccine, the roll-out is obviously not going to be instantaneous - and still you're harping away in every COVID-19 related thread minimizing whatever is written. It really is astounding.

The pandemic is disrupting people's routines, not the lockdowns. The idea that society would be functioning as normal without lockdowns is silly.

> It seems to me this is just another pernicious example of how lockdowns and disrupting a population’s routines directly and indirectly damages public health

And people literally dying from a virus isn't a public health priority?

> In recent months, however, Salas has watched a more curious pattern emerge. Many people’s sleep continues to be disrupted by predictable pandemic anxieties. But more perplexing symptoms have been arising specifically among people who have recovered from COVID-19. “We’re seeing referrals from doctors because the disease itself affects the nervous system,” she says. After recovering, people report changes in attention, debilitating headaches, brain fog, muscular weakness, and, perhaps most commonly, insomnia.

There is a contingent of HN posters who are primed to blame a lot of bad effects on "the lockdown." Frankly, I was one of them 8 months ago when there was actually a lockdown, but at least in most places in the USA there really hasn't been anything I could reasonably describe as a "lockdown" since early Summer. Mask mandates, and limits on how specific businesses can operate, sure, but nothing like the draconian shelter-in-place orders we saw in the spring.

I can say from firsthand experience that my families mental health is severely compromised at this point, but unfortunately none of it could be solved by less restrictive laws. It's all related to the pandemic and the choices we've had to make to reduce our chances of getting infected and passing that virus on to other people who have higher risks of dying.

For me the disruption was that I finally slept enough. You save so much time commuting, there's nothing to do at night, so you get a much more stable circadian rhythm, and more hours of sleep on average.

While there are plenty of confounding variables caused by changes to the population's lifestyle, that doesn't mean that covid can't also affect these things. It is possible for there to be overlap.

Don't think like one of those doctors in the 60's that told patients their Epstein-Barr was all in their head or gave them anti-depressants.

I used to wake with near panic attack just like that.... turns out I wasn’t breathing well. And you don’t have to be overweight to have sleep apnea. Since treating it, I sleep like a baby.

Maybe covid induces some type of central sleep apnea?

The amount that we do know about the potential long term effects of various other illnesses, including some that most of us have already had in our lifetimes, is also terrifying.

Let's not forget that many illnesses can, in some percentage of cases, cause serious and ongoing problems. COVID-19 doesn't appear to be bizarrely unique in this respect, it's just new and receiving a uniquely massive amount of attention (obviously for good reason).

Maybe a dumb question, or maybe I did not understand (the part before the "and"), but how can one be terrified of what one does not know about?

I agree with the part after the "and".

A terrifying prospect. Misuse of lead (pipes, paint, gas) was a national tragedy with demonstrable ill effect on society and, IMO, still badly affecting the mental health of the older folk who grew up in that era. We can’t afford to take on another generation of mentally diminished, emotionally fragile citizens.

Could you describe what feeling you’re referring to here?

https://www.evms.edu/covid-19/covid_care_for_clinicians/#d.e...