It's great that there is progress towards better diagnosis.
More details: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-022-00846-2
Recovery seems to be in the first year or not at all. “As soon as it’s 12 months, it plateaus,” says study co-author Tala Ballouz, an epidemiologist at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. “You have a higher chance of recovery during the first year, and after one year it really becomes more of a chronic condition.”[1]
The incidence is estimated at 10–30% of non-hospitalized cases, 50–70% of hospitalized cases, and 10–12% of vaccinated cases.
Since roughly everyone should be expected to become infected, doesn't this mean that 10-30% of the population would have had, or should expect to get, Long COVID?
That just doesn't tally with what you see out in the world.
The term Long Covid (shortened here to "LC") covers an array of symptoms and severities. For example, depending on who's defining the duration, if after infection you feel light fatigue for 3 months and it then goes away, you've had LC. Most people I interact with have no idea I've been experiencing LC for a year. I know what it's done to my stamina, but they usually don't.
Right. That can start to reconcile things. But it is not only not visible from afar, but nor is it reported in smalltalk.
> [LC] covers an array of symptoms and severities
I'm fully behind the need to break down the array and make it studyable.
But, unless you net in a sizeable cohort for whom the symptoms were ultimately transient, barely noticed, or successfully managed by the sufferer, it simply can't stack up with the reality of life.
I'm aware that headlines generate $$$ for research, but 10-30% means it has to be ascribed to marketing over science. It's essentially an irrelevant figure in serious any analysis.
> I've been experiencing LC for a year
Right. And it is that long tail of high-severity/low-incidence research should focus. But here we're talking about 0.1% of the 10-30%.
I imagine whether you hear it in smalltalk varies a lot by peer cohort, average age within the cohort, and it wouldn't surprise me if it's distributed very unevenly across the population.
Using my cohort as an example: A brother-in-law took 18 months to feel normal again. One of my neighbors reported that three of her friends took at least 3-6 months before they felt better. She herself got it and said it took "months" to feel better. Yet my boss said I'm the first person he knows who has LC.
One thing's for sure: Covid seems like a pretty bizarre disease. :-)
A sizable chunk of the work force has dropped out due to long COVID. You don't see them, because they don't show up at work or go out much. They're just not there.
Bloomberg: [1]
Brookings Institution: [2]
Northern Trust: [3]
JAMA: [4]
NIH: [5]
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-12-07/long-c...
[2] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/08/long-covid-work-econo...
[3] https://www.northerntrust.com/japan/insights-research/2023/w...
[4] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2801719
I'd guess poor gut microbiomes and sleep disordered breathing caused by poor jaw development and nasal breathing issues to be far more common causes of fatigue and depression.
But yeah, science is slowly waking up to the fact that turns out that psychiatric conditions are, after all, caused by physiological factors in way more cases than we used to think.
If the downsides outweigh the upsides, why aren't we just eliminating them, as we have done for more deadly viruses like smallpox and polio?
- We don't have an effective vaccine yet, let alone one that is sterilizing.
- More than half of the population has HSV-1.
- HSV-1 lies dormant then reactivates and sheds, often asymptomatically.
It's unclear how you'd eradicate it, given these facts.
What is stopping modern medicine from engineering a competitive virus/bacteria/fungi that lurks about nerve bundles, attacks the herpes virus, and self-deprecates itself after.
Yes, living things are amazing, but any designer approaching even basic levels competence factors in repairability and serviceability.
So all that is to say: It's crazy complex and any single thing is liable to have myriad first order, second order, third order...30th order negative effects.
Here's what stopping modern medicine from doing that: 1) we don't know how to make what you describe 2) if we did, we don't know if it would be safe to put in humans 3) the consequences getting this wrong could be very severe 4) getting such a thing approved would be nearly impossible because we have no idea how to evaluate something like this.
It's not from lack of imagination- even if you solved the technical difficulties (which are copious), there would still be huge regulatory burdens to overcome (which are even harder to overcome than medical research).
With that said, we've already done similar things with lentivirus, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lentiviral_vector_in_gene_ther... but one side effect is cancer, another being complex immune system reactions. Lentivirus are useful because they can invade non-dividing cells, for example nerve cells aren't dividing, which means most viruses won't target them.
I worked in this field for a few decades but it was all wasted time. Nobody is going to support you working on a research project like this.
[1]: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-launches-c...
Thats easier to achieve.
Just google 'post viral fatigue syndrome.'
Acute onset ME/CFS is also frequently linked to a viral infection.
I think there is a lot of overlap with burnout too.
Basically when you are in a chronic state of stress from work or other factors, a viral infection can be the straw which breaks the camel's back, which can provoke a burnout.
Repeat every month as new variants start to spread.
Consider it a 'nationwide immune system'.
Would there be ethics problems - surely yes. But if it can be shown to save lives, can we ethically not do this?
Ex: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/04/how-covid-made-it-n...
The vaccines dangers are questionable. There are huge incentives to cover up any dangers and pharmaceutical companies and governments have a long history of covering up dangerous medial products and drugs.
There is nothing that isn't a fact about what I just said. I'm not downplaying anything. You are, in fact, overplaying the risks of covid. Which itself is a form of misinformation that somehow has been allowed to continue to circulate.
What danger got "pushed by the media"? Are you talking about right-wing media that downplayed the dangers all along ("it's just a flu!")?
> The median age of death from covid is higher than the average life expectancy of a human. Most healthy people under the age of like 70 will handle covid just fine. This is an absolute fact that downplays nothing.
Sure. Most healthy people will still benefit from the vaccines, as they lower the chance for long Covid for the ~10-15% of healthy people who don't handle Covid just fine, and it - you know - keeps those not healthy and under 70 from dying. Small things like that.
> There is nothing that isn't a fact about what I just said. I'm not downplaying anything. You are, in fact, overplaying the risks of covid.
Where have I done that? You just went off and said "it's not that dangerous" without even stating what you're comparing the level of danger to. You were, literally in the most literal sense, downplaying the dangers of Covid while talking up the dangers of the vaccine.
Trust me. I was you before these lockdowns. I even phone banked for Obama. I had nightmares when trump was elected. I sneered and disowned trump people. Now I’m a political orphan who will probably never again vote (D).
My (former) political party tossed literally their entire platform to hitch onto covid hysteria.
Stop playing tribalism. It isn’t healthy and sets you up to get played. We are all just people. Most of us are right in the center just trying to live. Both parties are authoritarian, fascist assholes that want to steal your rights.
Covid was and is real but it turned political and not in the way you think. You and a lot of other people like me got badly, badly played. Once you realize that, all the mental gymnastics required to support your takes on covid melt away. And even better, you can finally stop hating other people. Unfortunately it also means you’ll have to accept you probably wasted three years of your very short life playing covid theater and getting all worked up about other people (rightfully) disregarding all of it…
My guy, I'm not even from America, and I don't cleanly fit into your political system. It's pretty rich of you to say "I was you" when I haven't stated my own position so far. Yes, I know, you want to project your own journey onto me to make it seem like you're more evolved than me - that's what enlightened centrists who just so happen to veer right always say. But if you jump the gun and start this before I clearly state my own position it will just make you look like... well, like you do now.
> My (former) political party tossed literally their entire platform to hitch onto covid hysteria.
Really? The Democrats left their entire platform behind? If I were to compare Bidens platform today with Obamas from 2012 there would be no overlap? Nothing about healthcare, or social services, or taxes etc?
> Stop playing tribalism. It isn’t healthy and sets you up to get played. We are all just people. Most of us are right in the center just trying to live. Both parties are authoritarian, fascist assholes that want to steal your rights.
I'm an outsider looking into the clusterfuck you guys call politics. I'm stating my subjective views as such. What you call tribalism I call "human decency" - calling out people who downplay the dangers of a virus for example is something we should all do for those who can't anymore, because they died.
> Covid was and is real but it turned political and not in the way you think. You and a lot of other people like me got badly, badly played. Once you realize that, all the mental gymnastics required to support your takes on covid melt away. And even better, you can finally stop hating other people. Unfortunately it also means you’ll have to accept you probably wasted three years of your very short life playing covid theater and getting all worked up about other people (rightfully) disregarding all of it…
The funny thing is that you haven't stated any single specific thing that got changed, or that I should change my mind on, or that signifies your move to "the center" (as you call it). It's all just platiudes and big nebulous terms ("my former political party tossed literally their entire platform", "you and a lot of other people like me got badly, badly played", "all the mental gymnastics required to support your takes on covid melt away"). Is it possible for your to say anything of value?
It's not hard to see that each of these factions have taken views (quite stridently in fact) that would have been anathema to their positions not all that long ago. Views can evolve, but we're talking about total reversals in a very short period of time.
This is fine with me, but what's been very eye-opening is listening to the same people who were stridently in favor of view X just a few years ago are now stridently in favor of Not-X, and not only that, they think you're a monster for thinking X.
It's not R vs D, it's tribalism, as you said. I just didn't realize how strong it is and how close-minded it makes people to alternate views. Belonging is clearly an incredibly strong thing in humans, the need for it seemingly making suspension of disbelief involuntary. I'm aware I'm probably _still_ stupidly believing things for no reason than some group I like thinks it, so this isn't me being superior. It's just something we as humans should be wary of.
COVID risk seems to be mostly related to other, known risk factors that are personalized.
This is supported by most current medical literature.
What matters is how people evaluated the information at the time when there was uncertainty about the severity.
Just because he the poster may have gotten lucky doesn't mean his arguments were well founded during the time period where it mattered.
Let's cut to the heart of it, this 'not in my body' argument is just a rationalisation for an oppositional personality trait.
Hey, I hate being told what to do, but I don't push it to the point where I refuse to do something which benefits me.
No personal choice about the air pollution every american breathes.
Seems odd to offer personal choice about things which are likely more beneficial.
For example, herpes viruses. They are widespread and likely cause any number of health problems that are hard to disentangle.
His only recourse after doctors were clueless was a naturopath. Now high dose of vitamins and never ever stopping is the only way he can stay moving. I'm talking like 100hr weeks doing beekeeping moving beehives around the country, dragging tonnes of beehives using 4wd and trailers, winching up 4wd tracks etc and in the off season wheeling and dealing vehicles.
If he takes a holiday his immune takes a dive and he gets sick as a dog.
It is also a symptom of pneumonia.
I had COVID, back before it was fashionable (February, 2020). It took me 10 months to feel normal again (the acute symptoms lasted 2 weeks. I hadn’t been that sick in decades).
Fatigue figured prominently. While I was experiencing acute symptoms, getting up to go to the bathroom basically finished my day.
I thought I had pneumonia, and the really scary stuff stopped, just before I was going to go to hospital. Thank Cthulhu I didn’t go. They would have killed me, and I would have infected a lot of people (as it was, all my family and friends got it. Share, and share alike).
I'm curious about this. Could you share more?
Is there evidence that hospitalization with COVID worsened the outcome?
As background, my father was hospitalized with COVID and passed away.
Apparently, this was the worst thing you could do.
You say that as if there is a just one doctor running one hospital in the entire world. I'm also aware the CDC gives advice but was this part of it?
It was what it was, and it is, what it is.
Still here, and still breathing, so that's a win, in my column.
Then when asked why you would have died you said "In the early days, they jammed you onto a respirator. Apparently, this was the worst thing you could do."
Are you not implying doctors at hospitals were acting against your best interest? Specifically the use of "they" instead of saying "it would have killed me" (as in going to the hospital)
Considering that diseases which spread through the air existed long before Covid wouldn't it be obvious that hospitals would be properly set up to isolate patients and avoid infecting visitors and people at the hospital for other reasons?
[1]https://www.csemag.com/articles/why-indoor-air-quality-matte...