Another reason to avoid getting sick. Even if you were someone who figured the risk of dying was low, the risk to your health is worse than you might think. (I know most on this board are not COVID deniers and their ilk…this is something you can use to battle the COVIDIOTS).
A Texas trauma surgeon says it’s rare that X-rays from any of her COVID-19 patients come back without dense scarring. Dr. Brittany Bankhead-Kendall tweeted, “Post-COVID lungs look worse than any type of terrible smoker’s lung we’ve ever seen. And they collapse. And they clot off. And the shortness of breath lingers on… & on… & on.”
“Everyone’s just so worried about the mortality thing and that’s terrible and it’s awful,” she told CBS Dallas-Fort Worth. “But man, for all the survivors and the people who have tested positive this is — it’s going to be a problem.” -SOURCE
Questions that come to mind: why is a trauma surgeon dealing with asymptomatic Covid patients? and taking X-rays of their lungs?
How are top level athletes who have been positive for Covid (asymptomatic) able to continue peak performance levels with lungs that are so damaged? and without even noticing a change?
Is there a particular reason to take what this doctor says more seriously than other doctors who have spouted off erroneous information that has been pounced on by the right?
Well…she has pictures of their lungs post-COVID infection and is comparing them to people before the pandemic some of whom were smokers.
The question is are the lungs of people who have had COVID worse than those who did not? She says yes. A simple look at the pictures (x-rays or whatever is they do now) should tell the story.
Could she be lying? Sure. But it seems something easy other doctors could check.
Why is she reporting this? I dunno…I can’t say whether she has no knowledge of this or lots of knowledge of this. The article says she sees this so…?
What makes me very skeptical about this is that this is the first time we’re hearing about such an incredibly major alleged side effect of COVID. You’d think this would have been widely publicized a long time ago.
From what I can find, in the US alone, some 24 million Americans (probably more) have been infected with COVID. Taken at face value, the claim in the article means that 24 million people face severely diminished physical capacity and likely premature deaths due to having “worse than the worst smoker’s lung disease”. And yet we’ve never heard about it before.
What I have heard is vague rumblings that some people experience lingering or even permanent side effects from having had the disease. My suspicion is that what this doctor is describing has been seen in some small minority of hard-hit patients, perhaps those with pre-existing lung disabilities, but is not a universal effect of COVID. Just my WAG to try to explain a rather incredible claim.
ETA: The article seems to bear this out. Unlike actual smokers’ lung disease, in most people who are affected in this way, the lungs heal, and in only a small number of cases does it become permanent.
For the first time, researchers found that COVID-19 can destroy the fundamental framework of the lungs, rendering them irrecoverable, and lung transplantation is the only option for survival. A new Northwestern Medicine study published in Science Translational Medicine* discovered that COVID-19 causes permanent damage and severe scarring to the lungs, mimicking that observed in patients with pulmonary fibrosis, resulting in the need for a lung transplant. ~SOURCE
Like other respiratory illnesses, COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, can cause lasting lung damage. SOURCE
Can COVID-19 cause permanent lung damage? For those who have underlying health conditions, what does long-term lung damage mean for them? Yes, it’s possible and perhaps likely that people with chronic lung injury are at higher risk of long-term complications. We don’t know, but data from severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and middle east respiratory syndrome (MERS) suggests that as many as 50% of people who have had COVID-19 may have some lung damage. How bad it will be and how much of an impact they will have on their life is unclear. ~SOURCE
One of the scariest elements of Covid-19 is that even among those who survive the disease, damage to the lungs can linger afterward, and it’s unclear whether that tissue will fully recover with time. The destruction caused by the virus that causes Covid-19 can be so severe that in some cases patients require a lung transplant to survive. ~SOURCE
^ These points don’t seem to be addressing asymptomatic patients though. We’ve known it could cause lung damage for awhile; it’s the claim that 3/4 of asymptomatic patients have severe lung damage that I would like to see more evidence for.
And again, I would like to know how she came by her data, as a trauma surgeon. It doesn’t seem that asymptomatic Covid patients would be a group that she deals with.
I have a friend who is a trauma surgeon who regularly spouts off about Covid (she doesn’t think we should be worrying about it). I don’t give her opinion any more weight than any other non expert in the field. I would like to know how the doctor in question came by her data.
There’s a great deal of waffling in those quotes, with words like “can” appearing frequently, along with “we don’t know” and “it’s unclear”. In case you missed my ETA above, I added that, to the best of my understanding from the article, “Unlike actual smokers’ lung disease, in most people who are affected in this way, the lungs heal, and in only a small number of cases does it become permanent.”
From what we know of COVID as a respiratory disease, it’s not surprising that the lungs would be severely affected. The sensationalized “scare” part of the article seems to be the false implication that it’s permanent.
People are doing a massive disservice by saying that basically you have a <1% chance of dying, and therefore it’s no big deal. But it sounds like you’ve got a 30%+ chance of having lingering, perhaps lifetime health problems from COVID. That’s way more significant than the death toll. If 20% of covid patients have their lives shortened by 10 or 15 years, that’s more life lost than the 1% who die who tend to be older or in poor health. We should really be emphasizing this over the death rate. Younger, heathier people figure - no big deal, I won’t die, I’ll get sick and I’ll be fine. But if you tell them they might be out of breath more easily for their rest of their lives, or suffer a heart attack early, or suffer from other long term maladies that might actually scare them into giving a shit.
I suppose it does make a certain amount of sense that a trauma surgeon might be the one to catch this though. Who else would be taking X-Rays of the torsos of individuals who had no issues with Covid?
Perhaps we can agree that CBS News appears to have sensationalized this quite a bit, which is par for the course with media these days. I’m not an expert, either, but I don’t think anyone is denying that some people may experience long-term and even permanent effects from COVID. That fact, as mentioned before, was already known in a general way. But the quote in the OP makes it sound like anyone getting COVID is doomed even if they survive the immediate disease.
We see people who are asymptomatic with COVID, we see some who have a mild reaction, some with a bad reaction but no worse than a bad flu and stay home and some who need hospitalization and ventilators to survive.
I am willing to bet the lingering damage done follows that progression.
Just a WAG on my part but it may be this distinction the media is glossing over for clickbait.
The article starts, " A Texas trauma surgeon says it’s rare that X-rays from any of her COVID-19 patients come back without dense scarring."
I seriously doubt a Texas trauma surgeon is seeing ANY asymptomatic patients at all. It’s in the name…“trauma surgeon”. She’s not seeing healthy people.
That is likely lazy writing (shocker). 70-80% of the people the TRAUMA surgeon sees for COVID have this scarring.
I don’t think the reporter got it wrong. If they did, that is a huge error. A trauma surgeon wouldn’t be seeing asymptomatic covid patients related to them having covid. She would be seeing them coincidentally because they break a rib or have some other kind of injury. But a torso X ray could reveal the oddness of a nonsmoker having terrible lungs.