10 ms·

'Long Covid': Why are some people not recovering?

87 points by open-source-ux 6y ago

kalaido 6y ago
yawn
mikewarot 6y ago
Consider that most efforts are on slowing spread, not eradication. This is a bigger problem than most people realize.
- logicOnly 6y ago
  Yes, our Politicians and physicians failed us here. Epidemiologists have been correct in their pandemic physics. >Harsh violent lockdown for 2 or 3 years can eradicate coronavirus. >Soft lockdowns "flatten the curve". From the NYT study, this reduces death by 12% due to availability of ventilators, and find potentially other helpful drugs. >No government lockdown, where people must be personally responsible for their own health. This sacrifices the old and obese that refuse to comply with voluntary lockdown. And all of this effort is focused around a few percentage of the population, which is disproportionately unhealthy.
  - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
    Not necessarily. A 50-something person that rides centuries on their bike and runs half marathons, is very much at risk simply because of their age. Blame-throwing is not helpful nor correct.
    - oxymoran 6y ago
      Very much at risk, but the risk is very small.
      - MereInterest 6y ago
        1% chance of death and 2% chance of extended illness is not "very small". I would put those risks as "very high", since that is essentially your risk budget for the entire year. I used to play a tabletop RPG that used percentile dice. For every action, there was a 1% chance of a miserable failure. Turns out, those cropped up quite a bit.
      - xipho 6y ago
        So, if 50, you are willing to play Russian-Roulette and pick an M&M from a jar of 100 (or even 200) when, perhaps, 1-4 of them will kill you? I'd love to imagine (actually watching would be sadistic) a lineup of folks claiming they would, step up to the M&Ms, one after another, be told of the chances, and watch them pluck one, or step away. https://ourworldindata.org/mortality-risk-covid#case-fatality-rate-of-covid-19-by-age https://ourworldindata.org/mortality-risk-covid#case-fatalit...
      - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
        Nope. The risk is climbing rapidly at that age.
    - pfraze 6y ago
      It's not throwing blame to say that comorbidities increase risk of long-term or fatal effects.
    - base698 6y ago
      Even at 80 it only about doubles the chance they die. An 80 year old has a 5% chance of death, adding another 5% chance of death is striking no doubt, and would consider that very much at risk. 50 however... 50 year old is only about a 0.14% IFR: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02483-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02483-2 The IFR was close to zero for people between the ages of 15 and 44, increasing to 3.1% for 65–74-year-olds and to 11.6% for anyone older. The results of the study have been posted to the medRxiv preprint server1.
      - monadic2 6y ago
        "Only" doubles? Compared to what reasonable baseline?
        base698 6y ago
        A standard 80 year old, which is striking as stated above. It's bad odds for sure and if 80 you wouldn't want to contract it. Only implies it's not a death sentence, roughly as dangerous as space flight.
  - ttul 6y ago
    Plenty of perfectly healthy people are also dying of COVID-19, even with the efforts to slow its spread. If we didn’t work to slow its spread, our healthcare system would rapidly collapse.
    - ekianjo 6y ago
      > If we didn’t work to slow its spread, our healthcare system would rapidly collapse. Is that really the case though? We keep hearing of a lot more infected, but at the same time the hospitals have a lot of capacity now (across several countries) so what is the risk for the healthcare system right now?
    - oxymoran 6y ago
      > Plenty of perfectly healthy people are also dying of COVID-19, even with the efforts to slow its spread. If we didn’t work to slow its spread, our healthcare system would rapidly collapse. Reference please
    - abstractbarista 6y ago
      Ehh, the statistics show it is far less likely the younger you are. This is simply what the numbers show, and cannot be argued otherwise.
      - cowmoo728 6y ago
        Yes, but there are at least 100 million people (probably a lot more) still at risk in the US alone. An optimistic scenario of 0.1% of 100 million over six months requiring hospital care is 17,000 people per month being admitted to hospital for covid-19 alone. The level of care many of these people require is very high. We don't have the capacity to do it with our current healthcare system, even with these generous assumptions. Individual risk is low, but collective risk is unacceptably high.
    - base698 6y ago
      Citation needed. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02483-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02483-2
  - mschuster91 6y ago
    > Yes, our Politicians and physicians failed us here. Politicians indeed, but a large part of the blame lies on the general public - especially those parts who believe and spread beliefs that mask wearing is unmanly/dictatorship, that vaccines cause autism and the likes.
  - jmull 6y ago
    I'm not sure you appreciate what "no government lockdown" vs. a soft lockdown means. You can consider some of the ways it could go: (1) people/businesses do voluntarily substantially the same things as soft lockdowns codify. In that case, the impact on the economy, deaths, hospitalizations, etc, are about the same. (2) people/businesses do substantially less. Deaths/hospitalizations increase. I think the economy probably does worse -- many people get scared and avoid many kinds of economic activity, take their kids out of school, etc. Other businesses are disrupted as employees and owners get ill. In the US, the large number of seriously ill uninsured/underinsured throw an anchor on to the economy for years to come. You suggest to "sacrifice the old and obese", but it's not clear there's a payoff for that sacrifice. We may end up with 2x-5x dead and a worse, longer-lasting economic situation.
walterbell 6y ago
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/10/06/the-exploitation-of-long-covid/amp/ https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/10/06/the-exploitation-of... > A post-viral syndrome can follow many types of viral infection, from the common cold to influenza and pneumonia. Yet no one has compiled and publicised data sets for those suffering from such a syndrome, let alone anointed it Long Flu or Long Cold ... There is a reason why the threat of Long Covid is being talked up right now, when the serious but manageable nature of Short Covid is becoming increasingly clear. It provides the often draconian response to the pandemic with the justification it increasingly lacks – that is, something for all of us to fear.
- e79 6y ago
  If you read the article, what makes this different is explained. The severity and number of different post-covid symptoms is alarming scientists. It’s unusual and therefore worth reporting. Some journalists are without a doubt hyping this up, but to blanket long covid as some sort of media hoax can do a lot of harm. People aught to know that their symptoms may linger and even worsen far after two weeks. Censoring this just because you don’t like it or it scares you is harmful.
  - walterbell 6y ago
    If virus consequences are not explainable by scientists, it may be time to revisit all assumptions on virus origins.
    - WarChortle 6y ago
      There are many known viruses that we can't fully explain everything about. Our understanding about Viruses in general is limited. Just because we can't explain something doesn't mean it was made in a lab.
    - e79 6y ago
      This has nothing to do with the original argument you referenced. Also, scientists are discovering more about Covid every day. What can’t yet be explained is a reflection of the rigorous scientific process being applied. Scientists are careful not to jump to conclusions. It can take years of research to confidently understand a complex virus like Covid. Public health officials needs to adapt to the latest understanding and work with data and statistics accordingly. It’s extremely boring and un-sexy (i.e., it’s not like scientists in the movies making a sudden breakthrough), which is I suppose why so many jump to conspiracies. We crave clear and spectacular reasons for the things we fear and have no control over.
oxymoran 6y ago
Because anxiety is a hell of a drug.
- DoingIsLearning 6y ago
  Psychosomatic speculation is a possibility but the evidence should make you cautious. The previous SARS-COV1 epidemic in 2003, created lung scaring and reduced lung function in patients, this damage was persistent even after 7 years post-recovery. [0] There is zero evidence that the reported endothelial damage in SARS-COV2 is any 'milder' than SARS-COV1. [0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27501327/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27501327/
  - irq11 6y ago
    There is evidence: we’ve now had 40 million cases, and if the WHO is to be believed, as many as 10% of the world population has had it. If this “endothelial damage” were happening at even a 1% rate, there would be millions of people with obvious symptoms. There simply aren’t.
    - DoingIsLearning 6y ago
      I am not sure why caution in a pandemic is a controversial point but I'll bite. Basically on top of lung damage, SARS-COV2 can also cause blood vessel and cardiac tissue damage, there are multiple cases of myocarditis post-infection.[0] Most of the symptoms are hard to study like shortness of breath or fatigue. Unless you have a prior VO2max study it's hard to _prove_ that you are worse off post infection but that is exactly what is happening with athletes being infected (loss of VO2max, which pretty much is a loss in peak performance for many athletes). Another aspect is that a loss in cardiac output or lung capacity is likely also a loss in life expectancy but it is the type of thing you would need decades to prove. My point is, with the information we already have the sensible approach is to use caution rather than trying to be stoic about it. [0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32747875/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32747875/
      - 6y ago
fab1an 6y ago
Good to see some data on how common/uncommon this may be: it seems that 2% of confirmed patients suffer from some form of "Long Covid", which definitely isn't great news, but certainly better than what some overeager media have irresponsibly reported (the Rome study comes to mind, where hospitalized patients where somehow taken to be representative of the entire pool of infected people). One does wonder about the 'nocebo' factor, too - if you've been told to watch out for lingering symptoms are an infection that certainly affects the way in which you are observing your own body, especially so if you're even minimally hypochondriac. There is an understandable media narrative to portray mostly severe cases (again, understandable from some sort of public health perspective) but that also adds to psychological add-on effects one might face with this disease. I'm in no way part of the just-the-flu crew, but feel that the OMG-COVID crew hasn't necessarily thought the above aspects through either.
- LeoNatan25 6y ago
  2% is actually a very large percent, considering how contagious the virus is. Many people like to say that all respiratory illnesses produce similar issues, but no other so widespread virus has such high chronic illness remains.
  - agent008t 6y ago
    The symptoms sound similar to the longer-term effects some people experience with mono (Epstein-Barr virus / glandular fever).
    - JimmyAxod 6y ago
      I’ve had both. This (long covid, post virus fatigue, whatever) is a few orders of magnitude worse, at least for me. I had covid middle of March, and am maybe 50% energy most days, and have to do massive breaths every so often. After 7 months of “recovery”?! I don’t know if I’m even getting better... yeah extreme fatigue, brain fog, eating can be exhausting... OTOH, A lot of people came out of it far worse...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Izkata 6y ago
Specifically for fatigue, not so much the other symptoms, I'm wondering if there's correlation with it and places that have had long lockdowns. Could it be that when people stop normal activity, they lose an unexpected amount of muscle strength?
- cameronbrown 6y ago
  Unpopular opinion for sure... But I think you're right, in that, nobody is considering other costs of lockdown.
- suby 6y ago
  The descriptions I'm reading from people who say that they are suffering lingering effects from covid do not seem to match this hypothesis. In this thread for example someone described eating as being exhausting after having covid. Even after years of inactivity a person should not be experiencing this kind of difficulty from eating. You'd also expect to see these same complaints from people who have not gotten covid which I'm not seeing.
mrlambchop 6y ago
I caught COVID-19 back in Aug from helping out the local schools with their bumpy start into remote learning. 6 weeks later, I am suffering from occasional severe fatigue still - these days, it manifests itself after 8-9 hours or so and results in a crash where I have to sleep for 40mins+. If I don’t struggle through and go to bed then, it will screw up my sleep schedule. During the 2 weeks of COVID, it was way worse and I could sleep 3/4s of an entire day and still be tired. This is getting better - I push myself everyday just a little more and now can exercise for 2 hours straight and carry on, but it’s night and day different to pre-COVID behavior and I imagine it will be through to Christmas before I am back to “normal” (touch wood).
- nso 6y ago
  No idea if it's replicable, but I found that the only thing that ensured my sleep when I was at the stage you are at was to drink tea brewed on fresh oregano leaves (I have them in my garden), mixed with honey. It's something I'd never done before, but it put me to sleep in minutes and let me actually rest.
- diegoperini 6y ago
  Thanks for sharing. I wish we reserved one post/comment for people only who has/had COVID019 to hear their experiences. I know there are many people in HN with the disease but their words are scattered around, hard to explore.
- runemadsen 6y ago
  I'm 6 months into my COVID illness, and I'm still having fatigue and breathing difficulties on a daily basis. It started with severe breathing difficulties, but I was never in the hospital, and it has basically been going up and down in waves since then. X-rays shows that my lungs have recovered, but I don't feel good at all. I'm 37 and in great shape. I am so damn tired of the discussion being focused on deaths: If 2-5% of infected get long-term symptoms like me, it's going to be an absolute onslaught on the health care systems in the coming years.
- zigzaggy 6y ago
  I've had a fever every day for over a month. At the beginning they were 101 and up, and my heart rate spiked over 100 for long periods of time (normally I'm in the 60's and 70's). Now the "fevers" are pretty low grade (under 100 but definitely higher than "normal.") I'm also experiencing the crashes you mentioned - fine one minute and crawling back in bed the next. It's usually in the afternoons or evenings. But as you say, it's much better than before when I slept ALL DAY for several days. To end on a brighter note, I am back to exercising 45 mins, 3 days a week. And I go biking weekends, for 1.5 - 2 hours. My stamina isn't what it was, but it's building back. I even decided to go ahead with a (virtual) race I signed up for. I'll walk/run with the only goal of finishing.
ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
I had it early February (!). It may have been a different strain, or the antibody tests are garbage (or both), since they reported negative. There's no doubt I (and a number of friends and family) had it. The symptoms are pretty specific. If I didn't have it, then that's even worse, as it means there's a bug out there, with the exact same symptoms, in addition to COVID-19. Scary bug. I could def see what I had killing people. I had no idea what it was, back then. I just thought I was getting pneumonia, and it broke, just as I was ready to go to hospital. I'm glad I didn't do that, as I would have just infected a whole bunch of vulnerable people. Since then, I've had a persistent "throat-clearing" thing. Lots of "harUMPHf." My sense of taste never fully recovered, either (that was the weirdest part of it. I've never had that happen before). I'm really grateful that it wasn't worse. I know some folks that died from it.
- just-juan-post 6y ago
  > I had it early February (!) > or the antibody tests are garbage (or both), since they reported negative So you didn't have it?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - tathougies 6y ago
    I've had several friends tell me they have had covid all who later say that the tests were negative. this is a form of mass hysteria of course. While true that tests can be wrong. It is unlikely that 100% of the people I know who have had it hav had negative tests. I personally don't know anyone who's had it and had a positive test. I know 2-3 that claim they've had it but test negative. Again this is extremely unlikely. We are in denial that other infectious diseases are scary and that it's not just covid.
    - ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
      I have known many people that have had it. Not all were tested, and not all that were tested came up positive. I also know several people that have died from it. Directly; not hearsay. I live in New York. We've been dealing with this for a while now. Also, as is shown in this thread, just talking about it brings out the COVID-deniers, so this is the last post I'll make on the topic. Have a nice day.
e79 6y ago
I hear this a lot: “it only kills old people” or “it only has a 1.5% death rate.” Many of these statements are followed by the suggestion that we should just let Covid run its course so we can be out of this situation sooner. We still barely understand Covid. No public health official with an ounce of ethics and concern for their career is going to be in favor of letting a poorly understood virus just rip through entire communities. The death rate is only one part of the equation. As this article points out, scientists are now concerned about the growing number of cases in which severe symptoms stick around or even develop long after infection. When compared to the cold or flu. We also just recently learned that antibodies only stick around for a few months. There are reasons that public health officials are being so cautious. It’s not just to be “draconian” for the fun of it.
- jonathanstrange 6y ago
  I agree with you and just want to add that anyone who thinks a 1.5% death rate is low fails at elementary arithmetics, since without measures and without vaccine we'd have to expect at least 80% to be infected eventually within 1-2 years. Luckily, the estimates for the true Infection Fatality Ratio (IFR) are lower, between 0.6% to 0.7%, for industrialized nations. That's still a very high high number if we don't keep the disease in check or don't get a vaccine.
- jnxx 6y ago
  > We still barely understand Covid. We do not even understand well what it does to the brain of children. It definitively has neurological effects in some people and there could be really undesirable long-term effects we still do not know about.
Madmallard 6y ago
Iatrogenesis from hydroxychloroquine and other drugs probably contributes in some cases.
just-juan-post 6y ago
A dilemma for ‘long-haulers’: Many can’t prove they ever had Covid-19 https://www.statnews.com/2020/08/26/long-haulers-dilemma-many-cannot-prove-they-had-covid19/ https://www.statnews.com/2020/08/26/long-haulers-dilemma-man...
jaybrendansmith 6y ago
I see lots of doubt here. I just got over COVID-19, I had it for around 26 days with very mild symptoms after the first 2 days where my temp never went above 101.5. However I still have 'post-COVID' symptoms. I'm in my 40s and was very healthy prior: - Unexplained fatigue that happens 12-24 hours after exercise. I have to shut my eyes for 30 minutes, almost like narcolepsy or similar. - Random muscle aches that seem to be slowly going away. - Minor heart palpitations, slowly getting better. - Rare cases where I feel I need to take several deep breaths, maybe twice per day. - Continued GI issues. Finally, everybody I know over 40 who has had COVID-19, approximately 7 people, have reported these symptoms, some of them marathon runners who can no longer run a mile. Please set your doubts at rest, this is a real thing, not an anomaly, and will have major health impacts to many people over time.
- 46Bit 6y ago
  > Continued GI issues Ditto.
- noneeeed 6y ago
  I've managed to avoid it, but several friends have had it and still have some level of impact on their health and fitness months later. As an overwight man in my 40s I was nervous before, but with all these 'long' effects I'm even more worried about getting it, knowing that if I make it through I could still get screwed for months, just as I'm starting to improve my fitness a bit at a time.
- me_me_me 6y ago
  I have read report of people not recovering their sense of smell after months post recovery. We don't have much experience with Covid and post recovery effects yet, so not catching it is my priority (rather than rolling dice and hope for the best). I wish you full recovery.
- tchalla 6y ago
  > Continued GI issues Can someone tell me what GI is?
  - 6y ago
lend000 6y ago
The HN crowd is not one to support conspiracy theories, but if the CCP were to strategically release a virus into the world, what better way to give them a competitive advantage than to give a non-negligible percentage of their global competitors chronic fatigue? Speaking as someone in the tech space still suffering from fatigue and brain fog (with no real signs of improvement) 7 months after infection. My productivity has certainly gone down.
- namarie 6y ago
  Why would they release it among their own people first?
  - lend000 6y ago
    I'm not denying the plausibility that it was simply a mistake with a highly contagious virus being studied in their Wuhan lab, but they would have certainly been aware they would have a much better chance at curbing the virus than countries that support more individual freedom. Releasing it there first, if intentional, would further signal it was an accident and prevent severe diplomatic fallout.
    - hwillis 6y ago
      > I'm not denying the plausibility that it was simply a mistake with a highly contagious virus being studied in their Wuhan lab There are two labs in Wuhan. The institute of virology, and the wuhan CDC. The institute of virology is 12 km from where the virus started spreading. The CDC lab -which does not study viruses- was the one at the center of the spread. The amount of bullshit associated with the origins of the virus is embarrassing. It would be one thing if it was planted propaganda- there are obvious lies and embellishments, but the sheer number of mistranslations, misunderstandings, and hilariously implausible theories taken as fact is insane. Potholer54 did a rather methodical takedown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab-r0capbzk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab-r0capbzk
  - lsllc 6y ago
    If this were Tom Clancy or a James Bond 007 plot ... you'd release a less infectious/harmful version locally otherwise it would be too obvious and you might get nuked.
hikerclimber1 6y ago
good. hopefully more people die of covid. less people on earth the better it is.

kalaido 6y ago

yawn

mikewarot 6y ago

Consider that most efforts are on slowing spread, not eradication. This is a bigger problem than most people realize.

logicOnly 6y ago
Yes, our Politicians and physicians failed us here. Epidemiologists have been correct in their pandemic physics. >Harsh violent lockdown for 2 or 3 years can eradicate coronavirus. >Soft lockdowns "flatten the curve". From the NYT study, this reduces death by 12% due to availability of ventilators, and find potentially other helpful drugs. >No government lockdown, where people must be personally responsible for their own health. This sacrifices the old and obese that refuse to comply with voluntary lockdown. And all of this effort is focused around a few percentage of the population, which is disproportionately unhealthy.
- JoeAltmaier 6y ago
  Not necessarily. A 50-something person that rides centuries on their bike and runs half marathons, is very much at risk simply because of their age. Blame-throwing is not helpful nor correct.
  - oxymoran 6y ago
    Very much at risk, but the risk is very small.
    - MereInterest 6y ago
      1% chance of death and 2% chance of extended illness is not "very small". I would put those risks as "very high", since that is essentially your risk budget for the entire year. I used to play a tabletop RPG that used percentile dice. For every action, there was a 1% chance of a miserable failure. Turns out, those cropped up quite a bit.
    - xipho 6y ago
      So, if 50, you are willing to play Russian-Roulette and pick an M&M from a jar of 100 (or even 200) when, perhaps, 1-4 of them will kill you? I'd love to imagine (actually watching would be sadistic) a lineup of folks claiming they would, step up to the M&Ms, one after another, be told of the chances, and watch them pluck one, or step away. https://ourworldindata.org/mortality-risk-covid#case-fatality-rate-of-covid-19-by-age https://ourworldindata.org/mortality-risk-covid#case-fatalit...
    - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
      Nope. The risk is climbing rapidly at that age.
  - pfraze 6y ago
    It's not throwing blame to say that comorbidities increase risk of long-term or fatal effects.
  - base698 6y ago
    Even at 80 it only about doubles the chance they die. An 80 year old has a 5% chance of death, adding another 5% chance of death is striking no doubt, and would consider that very much at risk. 50 however... 50 year old is only about a 0.14% IFR: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02483-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02483-2 The IFR was close to zero for people between the ages of 15 and 44, increasing to 3.1% for 65–74-year-olds and to 11.6% for anyone older. The results of the study have been posted to the medRxiv preprint server1.
    - monadic2 6y ago
      "Only" doubles? Compared to what reasonable baseline?
      - base698 6y ago
        A standard 80 year old, which is striking as stated above. It's bad odds for sure and if 80 you wouldn't want to contract it. Only implies it's not a death sentence, roughly as dangerous as space flight.
- ttul 6y ago
  Plenty of perfectly healthy people are also dying of COVID-19, even with the efforts to slow its spread. If we didn’t work to slow its spread, our healthcare system would rapidly collapse.
  - ekianjo 6y ago
    > If we didn’t work to slow its spread, our healthcare system would rapidly collapse. Is that really the case though? We keep hearing of a lot more infected, but at the same time the hospitals have a lot of capacity now (across several countries) so what is the risk for the healthcare system right now?
  - oxymoran 6y ago
    > Plenty of perfectly healthy people are also dying of COVID-19, even with the efforts to slow its spread. If we didn’t work to slow its spread, our healthcare system would rapidly collapse. Reference please
  - abstractbarista 6y ago
    Ehh, the statistics show it is far less likely the younger you are. This is simply what the numbers show, and cannot be argued otherwise.
    - cowmoo728 6y ago
      Yes, but there are at least 100 million people (probably a lot more) still at risk in the US alone. An optimistic scenario of 0.1% of 100 million over six months requiring hospital care is 17,000 people per month being admitted to hospital for covid-19 alone. The level of care many of these people require is very high. We don't have the capacity to do it with our current healthcare system, even with these generous assumptions. Individual risk is low, but collective risk is unacceptably high.
  - base698 6y ago
    Citation needed. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02483-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02483-2
- mschuster91 6y ago
  > Yes, our Politicians and physicians failed us here. Politicians indeed, but a large part of the blame lies on the general public - especially those parts who believe and spread beliefs that mask wearing is unmanly/dictatorship, that vaccines cause autism and the likes.
- jmull 6y ago
  I'm not sure you appreciate what "no government lockdown" vs. a soft lockdown means. You can consider some of the ways it could go: (1) people/businesses do voluntarily substantially the same things as soft lockdowns codify. In that case, the impact on the economy, deaths, hospitalizations, etc, are about the same. (2) people/businesses do substantially less. Deaths/hospitalizations increase. I think the economy probably does worse -- many people get scared and avoid many kinds of economic activity, take their kids out of school, etc. Other businesses are disrupted as employees and owners get ill. In the US, the large number of seriously ill uninsured/underinsured throw an anchor on to the economy for years to come. You suggest to "sacrifice the old and obese", but it's not clear there's a payoff for that sacrifice. We may end up with 2x-5x dead and a worse, longer-lasting economic situation.

walterbell 6y ago

https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/10/06/the-exploitation-of-long-covid/amp/ https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/10/06/the-exploitation-of... > A post-viral syndrome can follow many types of viral infection, from the common cold to influenza and pneumonia. Yet no one has compiled and publicised data sets for those suffering from such a syndrome, let alone anointed it Long Flu or Long Cold ... There is a reason why the threat of Long Covid is being talked up right now, when the serious but manageable nature of Short Covid is becoming increasingly clear. It provides the often draconian response to the pandemic with the justification it increasingly lacks – that is, something for all of us to fear.

e79 6y ago
If you read the article, what makes this different is explained. The severity and number of different post-covid symptoms is alarming scientists. It’s unusual and therefore worth reporting. Some journalists are without a doubt hyping this up, but to blanket long covid as some sort of media hoax can do a lot of harm. People aught to know that their symptoms may linger and even worsen far after two weeks. Censoring this just because you don’t like it or it scares you is harmful.
- walterbell 6y ago
  If virus consequences are not explainable by scientists, it may be time to revisit all assumptions on virus origins.
  - WarChortle 6y ago
    There are many known viruses that we can't fully explain everything about. Our understanding about Viruses in general is limited. Just because we can't explain something doesn't mean it was made in a lab.
  - e79 6y ago
    This has nothing to do with the original argument you referenced. Also, scientists are discovering more about Covid every day. What can’t yet be explained is a reflection of the rigorous scientific process being applied. Scientists are careful not to jump to conclusions. It can take years of research to confidently understand a complex virus like Covid. Public health officials needs to adapt to the latest understanding and work with data and statistics accordingly. It’s extremely boring and un-sexy (i.e., it’s not like scientists in the movies making a sudden breakthrough), which is I suppose why so many jump to conspiracies. We crave clear and spectacular reasons for the things we fear and have no control over.

oxymoran 6y ago

Because anxiety is a hell of a drug.

DoingIsLearning 6y ago
Psychosomatic speculation is a possibility but the evidence should make you cautious. The previous SARS-COV1 epidemic in 2003, created lung scaring and reduced lung function in patients, this damage was persistent even after 7 years post-recovery. [0] There is zero evidence that the reported endothelial damage in SARS-COV2 is any 'milder' than SARS-COV1. [0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27501327/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27501327/
- irq11 6y ago
  There is evidence: we’ve now had 40 million cases, and if the WHO is to be believed, as many as 10% of the world population has had it. If this “endothelial damage” were happening at even a 1% rate, there would be millions of people with obvious symptoms. There simply aren’t.
  - DoingIsLearning 6y ago
    I am not sure why caution in a pandemic is a controversial point but I'll bite. Basically on top of lung damage, SARS-COV2 can also cause blood vessel and cardiac tissue damage, there are multiple cases of myocarditis post-infection.[0] Most of the symptoms are hard to study like shortness of breath or fatigue. Unless you have a prior VO2max study it's hard to _prove_ that you are worse off post infection but that is exactly what is happening with athletes being infected (loss of VO2max, which pretty much is a loss in peak performance for many athletes). Another aspect is that a loss in cardiac output or lung capacity is likely also a loss in life expectancy but it is the type of thing you would need decades to prove. My point is, with the information we already have the sensible approach is to use caution rather than trying to be stoic about it. [0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32747875/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32747875/
    - 6y ago

fab1an 6y ago

Good to see some data on how common/uncommon this may be: it seems that 2% of confirmed patients suffer from some form of "Long Covid", which definitely isn't great news, but certainly better than what some overeager media have irresponsibly reported (the Rome study comes to mind, where hospitalized patients where somehow taken to be representative of the entire pool of infected people). One does wonder about the 'nocebo' factor, too - if you've been told to watch out for lingering symptoms are an infection that certainly affects the way in which you are observing your own body, especially so if you're even minimally hypochondriac. There is an understandable media narrative to portray mostly severe cases (again, understandable from some sort of public health perspective) but that also adds to psychological add-on effects one might face with this disease. I'm in no way part of the just-the-flu crew, but feel that the OMG-COVID crew hasn't necessarily thought the above aspects through either.

LeoNatan25 6y ago
2% is actually a very large percent, considering how contagious the virus is. Many people like to say that all respiratory illnesses produce similar issues, but no other so widespread virus has such high chronic illness remains.
- agent008t 6y ago
  The symptoms sound similar to the longer-term effects some people experience with mono (Epstein-Barr virus / glandular fever).
  - JimmyAxod 6y ago
    I’ve had both. This (long covid, post virus fatigue, whatever) is a few orders of magnitude worse, at least for me. I had covid middle of March, and am maybe 50% energy most days, and have to do massive breaths every so often. After 7 months of “recovery”?! I don’t know if I’m even getting better... yeah extreme fatigue, brain fog, eating can be exhausting... OTOH, A lot of people came out of it far worse...

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Izkata 6y ago

Specifically for fatigue, not so much the other symptoms, I'm wondering if there's correlation with it and places that have had long lockdowns. Could it be that when people stop normal activity, they lose an unexpected amount of muscle strength?

cameronbrown 6y ago
Unpopular opinion for sure... But I think you're right, in that, nobody is considering other costs of lockdown.
suby 6y ago
The descriptions I'm reading from people who say that they are suffering lingering effects from covid do not seem to match this hypothesis. In this thread for example someone described eating as being exhausting after having covid. Even after years of inactivity a person should not be experiencing this kind of difficulty from eating. You'd also expect to see these same complaints from people who have not gotten covid which I'm not seeing.

mrlambchop 6y ago

I caught COVID-19 back in Aug from helping out the local schools with their bumpy start into remote learning. 6 weeks later, I am suffering from occasional severe fatigue still - these days, it manifests itself after 8-9 hours or so and results in a crash where I have to sleep for 40mins+. If I don’t struggle through and go to bed then, it will screw up my sleep schedule. During the 2 weeks of COVID, it was way worse and I could sleep 3/4s of an entire day and still be tired. This is getting better - I push myself everyday just a little more and now can exercise for 2 hours straight and carry on, but it’s night and day different to pre-COVID behavior and I imagine it will be through to Christmas before I am back to “normal” (touch wood).

nso 6y ago
No idea if it's replicable, but I found that the only thing that ensured my sleep when I was at the stage you are at was to drink tea brewed on fresh oregano leaves (I have them in my garden), mixed with honey. It's something I'd never done before, but it put me to sleep in minutes and let me actually rest.
diegoperini 6y ago
Thanks for sharing. I wish we reserved one post/comment for people only who has/had COVID019 to hear their experiences. I know there are many people in HN with the disease but their words are scattered around, hard to explore.
runemadsen 6y ago
I'm 6 months into my COVID illness, and I'm still having fatigue and breathing difficulties on a daily basis. It started with severe breathing difficulties, but I was never in the hospital, and it has basically been going up and down in waves since then. X-rays shows that my lungs have recovered, but I don't feel good at all. I'm 37 and in great shape. I am so damn tired of the discussion being focused on deaths: If 2-5% of infected get long-term symptoms like me, it's going to be an absolute onslaught on the health care systems in the coming years.
zigzaggy 6y ago
I've had a fever every day for over a month. At the beginning they were 101 and up, and my heart rate spiked over 100 for long periods of time (normally I'm in the 60's and 70's). Now the "fevers" are pretty low grade (under 100 but definitely higher than "normal.") I'm also experiencing the crashes you mentioned - fine one minute and crawling back in bed the next. It's usually in the afternoons or evenings. But as you say, it's much better than before when I slept ALL DAY for several days. To end on a brighter note, I am back to exercising 45 mins, 3 days a week. And I go biking weekends, for 1.5 - 2 hours. My stamina isn't what it was, but it's building back. I even decided to go ahead with a (virtual) race I signed up for. I'll walk/run with the only goal of finishing.

ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago

I had it early February (!). It may have been a different strain, or the antibody tests are garbage (or both), since they reported negative. There's no doubt I (and a number of friends and family) had it. The symptoms are pretty specific. If I didn't have it, then that's even worse, as it means there's a bug out there, with the exact same symptoms, in addition to COVID-19. Scary bug. I could def see what I had killing people. I had no idea what it was, back then. I just thought I was getting pneumonia, and it broke, just as I was ready to go to hospital. I'm glad I didn't do that, as I would have just infected a whole bunch of vulnerable people. Since then, I've had a persistent "throat-clearing" thing. Lots of "harUMPHf." My sense of taste never fully recovered, either (that was the weirdest part of it. I've never had that happen before). I'm really grateful that it wasn't worse. I know some folks that died from it.

just-juan-post 6y ago
> I had it early February (!) > or the antibody tests are garbage (or both), since they reported negative So you didn't have it?
- deleted 6y ago
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- tathougies 6y ago
  I've had several friends tell me they have had covid all who later say that the tests were negative. this is a form of mass hysteria of course. While true that tests can be wrong. It is unlikely that 100% of the people I know who have had it hav had negative tests. I personally don't know anyone who's had it and had a positive test. I know 2-3 that claim they've had it but test negative. Again this is extremely unlikely. We are in denial that other infectious diseases are scary and that it's not just covid.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
    I have known many people that have had it. Not all were tested, and not all that were tested came up positive. I also know several people that have died from it. Directly; not hearsay. I live in New York. We've been dealing with this for a while now. Also, as is shown in this thread, just talking about it brings out the COVID-deniers, so this is the last post I'll make on the topic. Have a nice day.

e79 6y ago

I hear this a lot: “it only kills old people” or “it only has a 1.5% death rate.” Many of these statements are followed by the suggestion that we should just let Covid run its course so we can be out of this situation sooner. We still barely understand Covid. No public health official with an ounce of ethics and concern for their career is going to be in favor of letting a poorly understood virus just rip through entire communities. The death rate is only one part of the equation. As this article points out, scientists are now concerned about the growing number of cases in which severe symptoms stick around or even develop long after infection. When compared to the cold or flu. We also just recently learned that antibodies only stick around for a few months. There are reasons that public health officials are being so cautious. It’s not just to be “draconian” for the fun of it.

jonathanstrange 6y ago
I agree with you and just want to add that anyone who thinks a 1.5% death rate is low fails at elementary arithmetics, since without measures and without vaccine we'd have to expect at least 80% to be infected eventually within 1-2 years. Luckily, the estimates for the true Infection Fatality Ratio (IFR) are lower, between 0.6% to 0.7%, for industrialized nations. That's still a very high high number if we don't keep the disease in check or don't get a vaccine.
jnxx 6y ago
> We still barely understand Covid. We do not even understand well what it does to the brain of children. It definitively has neurological effects in some people and there could be really undesirable long-term effects we still do not know about.

Madmallard 6y ago

Iatrogenesis from hydroxychloroquine and other drugs probably contributes in some cases.

just-juan-post 6y ago

A dilemma for ‘long-haulers’: Many can’t prove they ever had Covid-19 https://www.statnews.com/2020/08/26/long-haulers-dilemma-many-cannot-prove-they-had-covid19/ https://www.statnews.com/2020/08/26/long-haulers-dilemma-man...

jaybrendansmith 6y ago

I see lots of doubt here. I just got over COVID-19, I had it for around 26 days with very mild symptoms after the first 2 days where my temp never went above 101.5. However I still have 'post-COVID' symptoms. I'm in my 40s and was very healthy prior: - Unexplained fatigue that happens 12-24 hours after exercise. I have to shut my eyes for 30 minutes, almost like narcolepsy or similar. - Random muscle aches that seem to be slowly going away. - Minor heart palpitations, slowly getting better. - Rare cases where I feel I need to take several deep breaths, maybe twice per day. - Continued GI issues. Finally, everybody I know over 40 who has had COVID-19, approximately 7 people, have reported these symptoms, some of them marathon runners who can no longer run a mile. Please set your doubts at rest, this is a real thing, not an anomaly, and will have major health impacts to many people over time.

46Bit 6y ago
> Continued GI issues Ditto.
noneeeed 6y ago
I've managed to avoid it, but several friends have had it and still have some level of impact on their health and fitness months later. As an overwight man in my 40s I was nervous before, but with all these 'long' effects I'm even more worried about getting it, knowing that if I make it through I could still get screwed for months, just as I'm starting to improve my fitness a bit at a time.
me_me_me 6y ago
I have read report of people not recovering their sense of smell after months post recovery. We don't have much experience with Covid and post recovery effects yet, so not catching it is my priority (rather than rolling dice and hope for the best). I wish you full recovery.
tchalla 6y ago
> Continued GI issues Can someone tell me what GI is?
- 6y ago

lend000 6y ago

The HN crowd is not one to support conspiracy theories, but if the CCP were to strategically release a virus into the world, what better way to give them a competitive advantage than to give a non-negligible percentage of their global competitors chronic fatigue? Speaking as someone in the tech space still suffering from fatigue and brain fog (with no real signs of improvement) 7 months after infection. My productivity has certainly gone down.

namarie 6y ago
Why would they release it among their own people first?
- lend000 6y ago
  I'm not denying the plausibility that it was simply a mistake with a highly contagious virus being studied in their Wuhan lab, but they would have certainly been aware they would have a much better chance at curbing the virus than countries that support more individual freedom. Releasing it there first, if intentional, would further signal it was an accident and prevent severe diplomatic fallout.
  - hwillis 6y ago
    > I'm not denying the plausibility that it was simply a mistake with a highly contagious virus being studied in their Wuhan lab There are two labs in Wuhan. The institute of virology, and the wuhan CDC. The institute of virology is 12 km from where the virus started spreading. The CDC lab -which does not study viruses- was the one at the center of the spread. The amount of bullshit associated with the origins of the virus is embarrassing. It would be one thing if it was planted propaganda- there are obvious lies and embellishments, but the sheer number of mistranslations, misunderstandings, and hilariously implausible theories taken as fact is insane. Potholer54 did a rather methodical takedown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab-r0capbzk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab-r0capbzk
- lsllc 6y ago
  If this were Tom Clancy or a James Bond 007 plot ... you'd release a less infectious/harmful version locally otherwise it would be too obvious and you might get nuked.

hikerclimber1 6y ago

good. hopefully more people die of covid. less people on earth the better it is.