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Comment by seriousquestion | Hacker News Reader

Long Covid is mostly self reported vague symptoms, namely fatigue and brain fog. It's what happens when you stay at home too much and don't get enough exercise and have a poor diet. Isolation? The Covid 15* that many of us packed on? You will feel worse and especially more fatigued, no doubt.

Not to mention being constantly immersed in an environment of fear. It's a misattribution to associate side effects of weight gain, isolation, depression with the Covid illness.

* https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-covid-15-if-only-this-...

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That's some pretty impressive remote diagnostic capability you have there, have you thought about a career in telemedicine? (Update: This snarky comment is in response to a much more hostile parent comment that has since been changed.)

> It's what happens when you stay at home too much and don't get enough exercise and have a poor diet

While both are risk factors for a wide range of illnesses, last time I checked, neither of those cause lung damage visible on a chest x-ray.

Source?

Yesterday I met a woman whose husband has lost his sense of smell for 4+ months and still has not regained it. My lungs still hurt sometimes on deep breaths 6 months later.

We'd have to distinguish between physical symptoms that are well-known long-term effects of viral infections and psychosomatic disorders that may be triggered without any infection whatsoever.

Losing your sense of smell, even permanently, is a known side-effect of Influenza infection:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23948436/

The same is true for many inflammatory conditions, such as myocarditis.

As for diffuse symptoms that are most likely psychosomatic: Look into ME/CFS. These are patients which may have a very real perception of debilitating symptoms that have no tangible underlying physical cause. There's a lot of misguided activism surrounding the topic, because people don't want to be perceived as having a mental disorder, due to the associated stigma.

Covid isn't influenza and these were verified cases. You seem to be working from a position of motivated reasoning, so I'm going to opt out of trying to convince you.

Indeed, Sars-CoV2 isn't Influenza, but its symptoms are anything but unique to respiratory illnesses and viral infections.

A popular media narrative has arisen, claiming that COVID poses some unique health risks that weren't already facts of life to some degree. This is then used for justifying endless interventions, re-arranging our whole lives around this one new illness.

This can cause panic among the psychologically vulnerable population, causing the very symptoms that are now attributed to "long COVID". I wouldn't phrase it quite as polemically as my flagged cousin, but there is truth to what they are saying.

> You seem to be working from a position of motivated reasoning, so I'm going to opt out of trying to convince you.

I don't even know what you would want convince me of. We probably agree for the most part. Sars-CoV2 isn't Influenza and (in aggregate) it is more dangerous than Influenza. It made everyday life riskier.

We may or may not agree on what an appropriate response to this new risk is. Either way, we both are susceptible to motivated reasoning. That shouldn't prevent us from having a conversation.

It is my understanding that many doctors have found "long covid" to 1. be a thing and 2. have specific, unexpected symptoms. Now it is possible that they are all wrong, but could you perhaps give a few arguments why you are right and all those doctors are wrong?

[0] unfortunately I only have a French source on this https://www.lemonde.fr/sciences/article/2021/03/22/epuisemen...

These are the same doctors that we now doubt their competence in when it comes to pausing vaccination with J&J and AZ, or are these doctors somehow more credible?

I can't really concern myself with a paywalled source in French.

"Long COVID" is a thing, but is it something unique and specific? Probably not:

https://www.vox.com/22298751/long-term-side-effects-covid-19...

As for ME/CFS being psychosomatic, that's a bit more controversial, with doctors on either side. Nothing is proven either way. Still, symptoms such as fatigue and brain fog are consistent with ME/CFS.

We like to dismiss such symptoms when it is convenient, e.g. when it occurs as a side-effect of a vaccine, while taking it rather serious when it occurs after some hyped-up new illness such as COVID. In either cases, it could simply be the Nocebo effect at work.

I apologize for not being American and the press in my country costing money. I'll try to do better next time.

I note that your link astablishes that long covid is the thing, which the parent comment denies.

> I apologize for not being American...

There's nothing wrong with not being American. You should apologize for being French.

> ...and the press in my country costing money.

Indeed, it's absurd to charge money for articles written in French. They should pay you for reading them.

> I note that your link astablishes that long covid is the thing, which the parent comment denies.

Nobody in this thread denies that it exists. We're talking about what it is and is not.

> It's what happens when you stay at home too much and don't get enough exercise and have a poor diet.

Surely this means that "long covid" is not caused by the coronavirus infection itself, but by staying at home too much and a poor diet and not enough exercise. Is that not what this meant?

It is true that many "long covid" symptoms are vague symptoms like fatigue, it also true that many who self-report "long covid" never had a positive COVID test.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/these-patients-tested-ne...

It is also true that staying at home and listening to media dramatizations causes stress, which can cause the aforementioned symptoms.

So, if you put two and two together, you may come to the conclusion that many or even most "long covid" cases are psychosomatic and not caused by the virus itself, even in those people who actually were infected.

Like I said, this needs to be differentiated from symptoms that are clinically verifiable long-term effects of respiratory illness and viral infection.

One of my best friends and his wife have long covid and it has completely wrecked their lives. They had covid 6 months ago and are still incapable of going back to work. My friend was an avid cyclist and his wife was also pretty physically fit.

My friend described to me how hard it was for him to make a grilled chese sandwich and how it required him to take breaks in between taking the things out of the fridge and beginning the grilling. He also described to me how he couldn't even listen to music until recently because he couldn't focus on it.

It is only recently that he can talk to me on the phone for 30 minutes without getting completely exhausted from the mental energy of it.

I have lc. It is borderline crippling. I can barely climb the stairs and terms like "brain fog" are comically inaccurate. Its like being drugged or having something like dementia. I've only somehow managed to barely keep my job by hiding this from my employer. I'm also usually unable to stay away the entire daya and have hard crashes in the afternoon where I must lie down and crash into a weird deep sleep or I might faint standing up. Before this I was active, fit, and generally a high energy person. This also isn't "stress." I won't tell you my life story but I have more mileage on me than most and I've handled serious stress without my entire body falling apart on me.

Secondly, the only thing that has helped was my first dose of pfizer, which made me very sick for a week but since then helped with my symptoms significantly. Its very, very clearly linked to the actual virus and how our immune system reacts to it and I'm guessing things like the vaccine may help our immune system recalibrate itself or help our bodies fight off resident infections we just can't beat.

Thirdly, post-viral effects are well studied. We see them in all sorts of infections like Lyme, SARS, or EBV. This isn't necessarily new, its just different per virus family. Doctors usually can't help because there's no real treatment, and write people up like me as CFS/ME and hope it goes away (which so far thankfully there are a lot of reports of lc going away after a 2nd dose of the vaccine). Lesser so, people without lc still have chronic issues with their lungs, heart, sense of smell, tinitus, etc. Its really all a matter of degree. This isn't the common cold where you just beat it and go back to normal. For many people normal doesnt come back for a long time and how bad it is in the meantime is the big question.

Lastly, I think calling people hysterical from your comfy armchair where you're enjoying good health is tasteless, rude, and ignorant. I hope you never get lc or have to help a loved one with it. I hope you also stay out of the medical field if you have such an ungenerous and anti-compassionate attitude towards sick people.

The fact that you feel like the vaccine helped you makes me suspect your symptoms are not due to covid. Getting covoid will provide the same type of lasting immunity as a vaccine. Moreover, the existence of chronic lyme disease is very dubious.

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/chronic-lyme-disease-anothe... https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/fake-diagnoses-not-fake-dis...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo#Psychology

That's an awfully simple interpretation to post without linking to at least one study or professional analysis.

How about all the other people who did not get covid but also stayed home? Shouldn't they all be complaining about fatigue and brain fog? Come on.

They do, and would if asked!

Question: Do you feel more fatigued over the past year?

Common Answer: Yes.

Question: Are you having a harder time concentrating or focusing?

Common Answer: Yes.

Again, do you have any data to back this significant claim?

To paraphrase, your thesis is "there is no significant difference in physical and mental health between covid patients and people that have only been suffering the social/economic effects of a quarantine but not contracted covid".

This thesis seems highly verifiable/falsifiable in an empirical way.

> They do, and would if asked!

Today I learned I must have fatigue and brain fog...

What delusionally contrived nonsense.

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