So someone explain this to me. 67% of Americans complain of longterm symptoms, but only 1.5% of Englishmen?
As a contrarian, I feel like it’s worth putting down the following statements:
- As others have said, any bout of Covid that puts you in hospital (in America) is liable to leave you with complications due to lung damage, overheating, excess immune response, etc.
- That said - and especially if the person didn’t end up in ICU - it’s quite likely that a large number of people complaining of long Covid are simply wrong to blame Covid. Some of them will be people who are having a psychological reaction to social isolation and the like, depressing their health; others might have had a different, undiagnosed illness preceding Covid that they were never able to cure, and now they hope that if they claim “long Covid” they’ll get a new look by a doctor, and maybe finally have their issue solved; yet others simply want to jump on the “long covid” bandwagon, to get handouts, sympathy, etc.; other others had some other illness start up around the same time, with no relationship to their Covid case; and so on.
I suppose that it is entirely conceivable that Covid has some way of going dormant in the body, in some way, and reappearing some time down the line to jump out and jiggle on your innards for a little while before your immune system runs in and kicks it down again. But it seems unlikely to me that it would have some way of staying in your body at a low level, evolving so quickly as to be able to continuously stay just ahead of your immune system, and just keep causing problems for you on a day-to-day basis. If there is a true “long covid” and that’s not just physical damage done to your body while it was ravaged with disease, then it should be periodic, not continuous.
And if it’s the physical damage, then it seems unlikely that you would have gotten that while suffering nothing more than the sniffles and some diarrhea. It shouldn’t be mysterious that you would have continuing poor health after your body beats the disease. It should be pretty clear that you’re having a hard time breathing, probably because you coughed out a significant chunk of your lung while in ICU, dying from Covid.
Since way back at post #39 in May, I was making a similar complaint - when you try to drill down to the data behind headlines that cite frightening percentages for long Covid, it’s hard work to try to drill down to exactly what they mean. How do they define it? What exactly is the denominator - if it’s 50% of (say) hospital admissions that’s hardly surprising. If it’s 10% of all infections that’s frightening.
I don’t know that that’s true. There are other lengthy consequences of apparently minor illnesses. The best known is chronic fatigue syndrome. Its cause is not well understood, but it’s been documented (under various names) for decades, maybe longer, and it appears to be triggered (at least sometimes) by an apparently mild viral infection.
A virus can cause long-term damage without necessarily causing striking acute symptoms. For instance “brain fog” sounds like minor brain damage to me. And covid has been found in the brains of autopsied people, I believe. Another long-lasting mechanism that doesn’t require the virus to stick around is over-stimulating the immune system, or triggering it to attack some tissue. That’s how strep throat (which is a pretty minor acute illness) can cause rheumatic fever.
My job involves claims of disability, and I find claims of longterm effects w/ limited physiological signs just about the most challenging cases I encounter. Whether it be CFS, fibromyalgia, longterm Lyme, somatoform disorder, or what have you.
Looking forward to seeing a number of claims of disability due to LT Covid… 
I guess it provides me job security! 
Your rolly eye suggests you don’t believe the people with those diseases. Having had friends with chronic fatigue syndrome and long term Lyme, those can be really debilitating.
(And i had something like chronic fatigue syndrome in 8th grade. Just another reason that year was horrible.)
Roll eye entirely reflects my 36 yrs of experience that not every single person claiming disability is entirely forthcoming and desirous of working - even if at an unrewarding, low paying job. Makes it all the easier for such persons if they can allege a condition w/ no signs/symptoms other than their allegations.
I am not at all saying that I don’t believe every person with such conditions. Some may be disabled (under the definition we apply), others IMO are not.
Fair enough. I’ve seen plenty of faked and exaggerated workers’ compensation claims. For workers comp, whip lash is one of those “no good test” injuries.
I had whip lash once, and literally had difficulty getting out of bed. So i believe it’s real. On the other hand, i recovered in two weeks, and didn’t take any time off from my desk job.
(I’m an actuary, and have spent a lot of time looking at workers compensation claims.)
On another COVID thread, somewhere, I posted links to a couple of articles about long-COVID. The import was that significant inflammation (Cytokine Storm) was triggered by the virus, and that it doesn’t always resolve properly.
If the inflammation doesn’t resolve ‘normally,’ it can leave scar tissue (fibrosis) in place of healthy myocardium.
Think about blowing up a balloon. Now, think about sticking a balloon inside of a beer bottle, and then trying to inflate it.
For a cohort of these long-COVID patients, their heart muscle has likely basically stiffened and become less able to properly relax.
These are difficult findings to discern without a very high index of suspicion. Even cardiac MRI can miss it, because it can be a ‘diffuse’ process (ie, spread throughout the heart). The cMRI tends to best describe differences.
Echocardiograms may elicit some abnormalities (again: requiring a high index of suspicion), but this kind of cardiac pathology can often only be diagnosed invasively, via Right Heart Catheterization and Endomyocardial Biopsy – not something routinely performed in ‘fairly healthy’ patients.
I haven’t looked to see if these studies have been repeated and the results reproduced, but my guess would be … this is still happening.
And the result can be tantamount to heart failure, though probably what’s called HFpEF – Heart Failure with Preserved (ie, normal) Ejection Fraction.
And some cardiologists, seeing a patient with a normal ejection fraction, assume everything is normal.
Even when it decidedly is not.
DAMHIKT.
Some information on the issue in the UK here:
Some of the key stats:
The ONS survey, over four weeks in November and December 2021, suggests, of those with long Covid:
- 51% have fatigue
-
37% have loss of smell -
36% have shortness of breath -
28% have difficulty concentrating
In line with previous analyses, about 20% said their symptoms meant their ability to do day-to-day activities had been limited a lot.
And those most likely to have long Covid are:
- women
-
35- to 69-year-olds -
people with underlying conditions -
those working in health, social care and education
That demographic impresses me as somewhat similar to the groups which seem most likely to complain of/be diagnosed with fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue.
I’m curious as to how longterm Covid is distinguished from chronic fatigue and other such conditions. It would not surprise me to hear that people working in health and social care and education were experiencing fatigue and other symptoms. I’m often confused as to how doctors differentiate between conditions such as these.
Chronic fatigue syndrome is believed to often be triggered by a previous viral infection. I assume that a lot of long covid IS chronic fatigue syndrome – this is a just a virus with a fairly high chance of triggering it.
So I don’t think it makes sense the “distinguish it”. Count excess cases over what would otherwise be expected, maybe.
I’m pretty sure “long covid” is a collection of different maladies:
- chronic fatigue syndrome
- residual lung damage
- residual damage to the olfactory nerve
- residual brain damage
- residual damage to the pancreas (sudden onset diabetes seems to be a thing)
- residual kidney damage
- residual damage to the heart and surrounding tissues
Probably some other stuff I’m forgetting.
Also… any news yet on long covid and omicron?
Further validation about the incidence and severity of long COVID. I didn’t correlate the time period of the study with which variant was prevalent at the time.
TL;DR: it isn’t good. You don’t want this.
Underlying paper:
This is… disheartening, no pun intended, and a big reason to continue efforts to avoid catching this disease.
It’s also a good reason to double down on combating the ignorance and selfishness of those who resent being asked to take even a modicum of care to avoid infecting other people.
The “It’s just a cold/flu” crowd looks worse and worse as we learn more and more.
And that’s a pretty strong statement.
Covid increases the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. A big review of data from the US veteran’s administration hospitals finds that those who survived covid for 30 days were about 40% more likely to develop diabetes than if they hadn’t had covid. That was an increase in the number of cases of about 13.5 per 1000 at twelve months.
The increased risk was greater for those who were seriously ill with covid than for those who had milder cases, but were still significant for those who weren’t hospitalized.
Study:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8587(22)00044-4/fulltext
Intro:
A growing body of evidence suggests that beyond the first 30 days, the acute phase of the disease, people with COVID-19 could experience post-acute sequelae—referred to as long COVID—which can involve pulmonary and extrapulmonary organ system manifestations, including diabetes outcomes.
1
Although diabetes and other glycometabolic abnormalities have been widely reported during the acute phase of COVID-19, less is known about the risk and burden of diabetes and related outcomes in the post-acute phase of COVID-19.
2 ,
3 ,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9
A detailed assessment of the risk and burden of diabetes in the post-acute phase of COVID-19 is needed to inform post-acute COVID-19 care strategies.
The article ends by suggesting health care systems should gear up for managing more diabetes cases.
WaPo article coving this paper:
Covid infection associated with a greater likelihood of Type 2 diabetes, according to review of patient records
I think the good news [cough]sarcasm[cough, cough] is that lingering symptoms don’t seem to be limited to the heart and lungs.
It looks like the brains wants in on the action, too:
Brain fog after COVID-19 is biologically similar to cognitive impairment caused by cancer chemotherapy, something doctors often refer to as “chemo brain.” In both cases, excessive inflammation damages the same brain cells and processes {…}
[It all seems to come back to an immune overreaction of profound significance: the nefarious and sinister cytokine storm]
So, for anybody still vacillating … it’s worth it to try to avoid getting COVID if at all possible 
Yeah, a lot of people have taken the attitude that now that hospitalizations are down a Covid infection is no big deal, but post-acute sequelae are a bit of a dice roll. The odds are good that unless you’re sealed yourself into an underground vault you’ll probably be exposed and infected at some point but hopefully we have progressively better vaccines and treatments to minimize symptoms and the likelihood of ‘Long Covid’ effects.
Stranger
Another recent study that (also) points to cardiac involvement in long COVID:
Long-term cardiac pathology in individuals with mild initial COVID-19 illness
Ongoing inflammatory cardiac involvement may, at least in part, explain the lingering cardiac symptoms in previously well individuals with mild initial COVID-19 illness.