Long Covid destroys teenage lungs in ways doctors never saw | Hacker News Reader

Long Covid destroys teenage lungs in ways doctors never saw

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54 pointslnyan31 comments

My cardiovascular health has never recovered from COVID, it’s been very depressing to go from low blood pressure and decent VO2 max to. . the opposite. Interval training has helped a little, but I dunno, I think it’s just gone.

Wish everyone had taken it more seriously.

Did you skip the vaccine?

No shortage of people who got vaccinated got long COVID anyway.

I caught it early, before vaccines were available in my area.

I got vaccinated when I could and got yearly updates, though I understand the US is clamping down on boosters now? Not sure what I’m going to do this year.

There's no "clamping down", it's just not a recommendation for some groups anymore.

“Not recommended” means probably no insurance coverage, which means probably too expensive for me to get.

Thanks for the nitpick.

Lots of "probably" in there.

Instead of spreading misinformation and being rude to strangers, you could check.

> There's no "clamping down". .

This statement is patently false, as you yourself admit in the next clause.

Thank you, I wasn't aware of that definition.

The facts: - FDA policy now limits readily approved boosters only to people over 65 or those with high-risk conditions. - The CDC officially removed routine COVID-19 vaccine recommendations for healthy children and pregnant women in May 2025. - The FDA adopted a stricter “vaccination regulatory framework” requiring randomized controlled trials for new boosters aimed at low-risk populations. - Across HHS and CDC, there have been substantial layoffs—around 20% in FDA and CDC—alongside overhauls that have disrupted pandemic preparedness programs and health agency capacity. Your friendly check on the shitty times we live in. Good luck with Covid, MAGA doesn't believe in vaccines.

> The FDA adopted a stricter “vaccination regulatory framework” requiring randomized controlled trials for new boosters aimed at low-risk populations.

Do the previous randomized controlled trials meet the new criteria?

Good question. Answer is probably yes. They were proven safe at the time. But of course this requires quite a lot of additional evidence, datasets, etc. And likely it would require Phase IV trials against large populations. Very expensive. These vaccine-denying Repubs will find a way.

The vaccines were all made for early varients. Once the omicron varient came along, it had so many changes from the original strain that the effect of the vaccines were essentially unproven.

The vaccines were definately useful, and had a big impact, but unfortunately corona viruses change too quickly.

Aren't the vaccines updated regularly? Isn't that the point of the boosters?

I had slightly below average respiratory health due to childhood asthma, but after having COVID, it has been much worse. It sucks to think I missed the vaccine by only a few weeks - I might have still gotten COVID but the symptoms would have been milder. Now, I am likely to lose several high-quality years off the back end of my life.

We still can take it more seriously!

Here's a PDF handout from 2023 for handing to hospital admins, https://www.nerode.org/clean-air/medical%20clean%20air%20rel... . The same statistics can probably be looked up for children acquiring covid at school, because like where else do they get it. $100 HEPAs in every classroom, $40 reusable p100 masks for every teacher, ask parents to voluntarily mask their kids.

Just share stories. You see [1], go to your social media and share it, “she got COVID like 3 or 4 times and it seems to have caused chronic kidney disease, even with vaccines reducing the rate of straight up death, we need get this thing under control otherwise our generation's not going to live to see 80. Each time you get it there is another small chance of long covid, another rolling the dice hoping for no snake eyes. Masking is just saying you want to roll the dice fewer times.”

Organize or join a covid slack channel at work, there are other groups like https://publichealthactionnetwork.org/ , if BTS Army can connect over K-pop we can connect over wanting to protect others.

1. https://x.com/HollyMars2/status/1936235382816784443?t=A4RaLq...

I wish articles like this would cite their sources. Here are two possible sources:

https://pubs.rsna.org/doi/10.1148/radiol.241596 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38940402/

This site is the kind of malicious clickbaiter that publishes articles with titles like "The toothpaste ingredient that’s messing with your memory"; you can't expect them to have any concern for correctness or verifiability.

“The heat dome survival guide meteorologists won’t tell you”

Literally a meme at this point.

Yeah, I get that pop-sci writers don't want to scare off their audiences with hard science, but at least a callout with a couple of cited sources would help add a lot of credibility.

Not just a lot; any credibility. As it stands, the article is not credible at all.

Covid is a vascular disease, its transmitted and caught through the air and our lungs but it does more vascular and organ damage. What is happening in teenagers isn't all that different to adults where Long Covid is a complete multisystem assault on the body impacting every organ and the blood itself and the problems extend far beyond just the lung structural changes.

For a while they assumed children were not as impacted but the prevalence numbers now suggest they are impacted by Long Covid at about the same rate as adults. Given our history with these types of diseases and things that look like this, ME/CFS, Fibromyalgia and chronic Lyme unfortunately its likely a lifelong disease.

We badly need a serious worldwide effort to research understanding and treating this disease because at its worst children (and adults) are locked by their bodies in bed, needing darkness and silence unable to chew their own food let alone do anything else. The level of suffering that is currently being ignored is horrific and the doctors have zero tools to help.

The linked article/web-site has "very low quality source of information" boldly written all over it. It contains no source what so ever ...

Is long COVID mostly a thing for early COVID (which was much more dangerous and often lethal) or is it something that is still happening with the latest circulating COVIDs which seem to be about as dangerous as a cold?

Is there anything to be said for more ivermectin…

Removes some parasites effectively, but there's no known antiviral mechanism.

Food for thought: It is so generally safe that some people have taken it to stop worrying about it. If it helps, then great. If not, then no harm done.

It was a troll that ultimately snowballed into a massive hoax (partially because the US president validated it).

Most major international health organisations have issued press releases warning against the use of ivermectin for anything except treating parasitic infections. - US Food and Drug Administration - US Center for Disease control and prevention - Eurpean medecines Agency - Work Health Organization

Even follow-up research triggered by the widespread confusion yielded no useful results for treating or helping any part of the COVID infection or recovery. Instead, there have been papers published on the massive uptick in emergency room visits from people falling ill after ingesting ivermectin in dangerous quantities.

The only thing we really learned is that the modern news landscape is in a catastrophic state, where outright dangerous lies pick up steam in order to cater to an increasingly divided and source-uncritical population. Critical thinking and journalistic integrity are gone, and I fear for the democratic process if even such fundamental factual errors can spread so faar among these "reputable" news organisations. If the organisations we are supposed to trust for worldly events are this broken, what is anyone ever supposed to believe or trust?

I don't even blame anyone for falling into it these days (i know a professor in nanotechnology who was swept up in 5G + COVID conspiracies). I get nausious when I think that this was PRE good LLMS. It's just a dumpster fire. May god save us all.

... rant over. Here are some sources.

https://web.archive.org/web/20210806053833/https://www.fda.g...

https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/109271

https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/news/ema-advises-against-use-iv...

https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/who-adv...

There’s a trainer in my gym who I frequently overhear recommending ivermectin rather than vaccines. Sadly I’m sure some people listen to him since, as a trainer, he appears to know something about health.

A comment was flagged and killed so I can't reply to it. But these questions are common and important to reply to in order to improve science literacy

> Long covid or the vaccine? Is there any way to tell the difference anymore?

Yes, 2 ways:

1) If you didn't take the vaccine, it's long COVID

2) If you got the vaccine, complications are rare and present in specific ways.

On 2) the long covid-like symptoms are clumped into a group called PVS (post-vaccination syndrome). The minor symptoms of PVS resolve within a few weeks, and the long-term effects are so rare that they're having trouble studying it to try to determine the cause. So we don't know whether or not the vaccine alone causes those reactions or why. But we do know it's very rare, whereas long COVID from not getting the vaccine is much less rare. OTOH, getting the vaccine actually resolves long COVID symptoms (we know this because long COVID predates the vaccine, and long COVID sufferers reported their symptoms abating once getting the vaccine, and in data from other studies).

Defunding/dismantling the NIH is not helping us find answers. If you want to "know the truth", call your representatives and ask them to invest more in NIH research and studies around COVID symptoms.

I am one of the lucky ones from situation n.2.

For info: I am a PhD in scientific computing, I am not an antivaxxer in any ways; also non native English speaker, so my writing might be a little 'meh'.

I am just writing my story here, I have no particular intention else than illustrate the topic.

I did 3 shots of COVID vaccine: 1st June 2021 Moderna, 2nd July 2021 Moderna, 3rd January 2022 Pfizer.

Before that: * I have smoked cigarettes for a few years (less than 10 years), in 2021 I was a non smoker for already 5 years. * I have depression, which had been treated with antidepressants and also with psychologists * Lower back pain -> nerd problem * I was overweight, for a 40yo I am 180cm high for 93kg * I don't do drugs, I don't drink, I don't eat fast food (or extremely rarely) Nothing else, no treatment, no long term disease, no specific pain, no family history of anything out of the ordinary.

1st Step:

In July and August 2021, it started with waking up all of a sudden in the middle of the night, with my heart racing. And my heart would be pounding for minutes after waking up, impossible to calm down. I did not think it was a consequence of the vaccine at that point.

2nd Step:

In September 2021, first back and forth to the ER. My blood pressure exploded up to 210-160 or 220-160. At that point, I'm starting to make the connection with the vaccine. Every blood tests, EKG, etc. comes back 'negative' -> nobody knows what's happening.

3rd Step:

From October 2021 to December 2021: * Hardcore migraines appear -> never had that in my whole life * Chest pain, intense after minimal effort, for instance walking 100 to 500m could put me to bed for 3 to 4 days * Constant pain in joints particularly in the shoulder * Weird 'nerve-like pain' in the body * Blood pressure issues still here

At that point, believe it or not, because we found nothing in my analysis, I 'gaslit' myself, and told myself: "maybe this is all psychosomatic" so I decided to take a new job.

4th Step

January 2022 I found a job in Germany, to go there I still need to do the 3rd shot of vaccine, which I did!

February 2022 - July 2022 I arrive in Germany, start my job But now the symptoms I have described earlier are EXPONENTIALLY and explosively multiplied in intensity. * I am in constant pain * Sensation of burning from the inside: I used to describe the sensation as "it's as if I'm wearing a croptop of pain" * Sensation of dying -> my heart skip beats, if that happens, chest pain follows * I go to the hospital in Germany, fortunately specialized in heart problems: we scan my heart under every aspects, blood tests, EKG, stress test -> nothing reveals any problem * I go to the general practitioner, who's telling me that I'm not his only patient having that kind of issues, we try cortisone, and even probiotics (lol) -> nothing works

5th Step

From August 2022 to January 2023 I lose my job in Germany and come back to France

I live in constant pain

It DOES NOT go away

Every day is the same, it's survival.

I notice 'funny' stuff happening, like if something like a random stress or negative emotions arises -> it increases the pain I feel, which is CRAZY. I can literally, physically FEEL negative emotions, or even small stress.

Anyway, I go back and forth between by home and the ER a few times, I consult with my GP and other general practioners I try meditation, yoga, hypnosis, keto diet, all the bullshit -> nothing works.

6th Step

In January 2023

I am at the ER again, with my blood pressure EXPLODING

A GP there, tells me: "ok nothing is wrong on the analysis, but let's try one thing, let's try anti-inflammatory medicine, intensively for one week"

So I go back home with a prescription of ketoprofene in a big big dose, for a week. I start to do that AND...for the first time in a year and a half -> the pain GOES AWAY. Of course, I stop the anti-inflammatory medicine after a week -> the pain comes back...but at a lower level than before; it's still a nightmare to live with, but it's better than before.

So, I decided (because I am too exhausted of going to the ER or consulting GPs) to take ketoprofene, one week per month at the same dosage the GP from the ER prescribed -> and every time I do this, the pain disappears COMPLETELY while I take the ketoprofene and it comes back but always in a decreased amount when I stop.

Another GP prescribed probiotics again -> honestly it does nothing, except that you go the toilets more easily :')

7th Step

Fast forward to now (2025)

I am left with: * Pain in the upper body, particularly shoulder joints -> completely bearable * Chest pain when I breathe -> nothing extreme, completely bearable, I can still exercise and all * Blood pressure is under control -> but I have to take a medicine for the rest of my life * I still get chest pain after some physical efforts (it's non systematic) -> I tried A LOT of things prescribed by GPs -> nothing works. * I still 'feel' negative emotions in my body (radiating pain in joints | and chest pain) -> but it's MUCH MUCH lower than it used to be

Conclusion I am a lucky one, because I can function again Depression still hits hard Pain still hits hard BUT I can do sport, I can think and I'm planning to go back to work soon

Personal bullshit scientific conclusion: The long term side effects of the vaccine, according to the science I've read are diverse, complex, and unsolved so far. You can get lucky and get your life back Some people did not

The antivaxxers completely polluted the mediatic and scientific space -> addressing side effects of COVID vaccine must be really difficult for scientists and rightfully so -> so many random stuff has been claimed by people who knew nothing. It's very hard not to hate on those "worried moms on Facebook and their groups". Some links on the matter https://www.science.org/content/article/rare-cases-coronavir... https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

Those sources are already old, there's probably more stuff now, but I don't have the courage to look it up tbh.

Appendix:

### * I have consulted 7 different GPs -> and I consulted most of them MULTIPLE TIMES * I have to three hospitals in two different countries * I have been to the ER 6 or 7 times (I lost count) * I have done 15 blood tests, EKG, etc. Thankfully I live in Europe, this cost me very little money.

### I skipped over some stuff that I tried. For instance in August 2022, a friend of mine, told me about this US company IncellDX, which offers treatment for a bunch of stuff: lyme disease, long covid, side effects of covid vaccine, etc.

I started to do the tests, I had to go to Spain for that, because it's not legal in France -> the whole thing cost me around 600€ (with travel cost included, etc.)

But anyway, I stopped that process -> this company's work and their treatments got debunked scientifically. They clearly sell false hope and bullshit 'one solution solve it all' for an EXTREME amount of money.

### I did declare my symptoms and analysis results to authorities in France (déclaration de pharmacovigilance) -> but it led to nothing.

I don't check publications super often now, but as far as I know: * Long COVID and long term side effects of the vaccine are comparable * There's a lot of studies on the matter -> the symptoms are so complex and diverse and the solutions are non existent for now.

### I'm writing this because this is the Internet: in case you're tempted to invalidate what I wrote: I want to see your peer-reviewed publications on the matter.

### In case you're tempted to advise me one of those 'whatever newage bullshit': reki, osteopathy, spiruline, etc -> please refrain to do so. I tried it all already, or I should say I tried enough You probably do not realize how much TIME, ENERGY, HOPE and MONEY this cost.

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