6 ms·

I've seen some pushback that a lot of hard-to-diagnose chronic syndromes are now being deemed "long covid." My assumption is that at least some of this is happe

by gxqoz 6y ago

I've seen some pushback that a lot of hard-to-diagnose chronic syndromes are now being deemed "long covid." My assumption is that at least some of this is happening as it's the trendiest disease of the moment. Not to say there aren't a lot of people with clear-cut long covid syndromes.

JulianMorrison 6y ago
It looks like there's an overlap with post-viral syndromes and chronic fatigue syndrome, pointing to a common etiology under the hood.
- sprkwd 6y ago
  It would be nice if this helped research in to chronic fatigue conditions.
  - JulianMorrison 6y ago
    I strongly suspect it will.
- gnabgib 6y ago
  There is some overlap and some similarities.. if long covid doesn't end perhaps it'll even be considered M.E[0]. Myalgic Encephalomyelitis sufferers have been ignored by mainstream medicine, maybe this will bring change. [0]: https://valerieeliotsmith.com/2021/02/19/a-short-post-on-long-covid-media-exposure/ https://valerieeliotsmith.com/2021/02/19/a-short-post-on-lon...
howinteresting 6y ago
Or maybe, people have been dealing with post-viral syndromes for a long time, our society is completely unequipped to understand and deal with them, and they see post-COVID syndrome as finally a chance to address this. But taking that perspective requires correcting for the systematic underweighting of the testimonial evidence of patients of chronic illnesses. Less trendiness, more empathy, please.
- galangalalgol 6y ago
  A lot of post viral stuff seems to be autoimmune, and we don't treat autoimmune well. Chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia weren't even recognized as real things not that long ago. Others like RA or Hashi's we suppress the immune system and/or rely entirely on simple tests to determine medication levels instead of relying on patient testamony and testing instead for over medication symptoms. These feedback loops are amazingly complex and looking at a few numbers doesn't cut it. In addition we know diet and environmental triggers are a thing from many studies, but doctors don't say "eat more greens" anymore, they say lets do a test now take this pill.
  - noir_lord 6y ago
    I have chrohn's and the treatment for that is high dose steroids or chopping sections out. Fortunately I'm on the mild end of the spectrum and flairs are infrequent but it'd be nice if we had something better to treat auto-immune disorders. To control my chrohns I changed my diet by removing foods, keeping track of general well being for a few weeks then gradually introducing them to see what happened til I found a routine that worked, it's bland most of the time but I'll take the win - basically a Mediterranean diet which is fine. There is however a bunch of things in the pipeline including things like targetted biologics to selectively target the immune system that are exciting.
    - galangalalgol 6y ago
      Do you have any good wisdom on how you got diagnosed and what diets? I've always had GI issues and I have found some triggers like mushrooms, blackberries and cauliflower which poimt towards SIBO but my GI doc says there is no SIBO treatment or diet, and sometimes I have problems even on fodmaps. I did AIP diet with my wife who has Hashi's and I think that might have helped a little but not sure. Everything my GI prescribes just makes it worse. I can't eat sweet potatoes anymore after he put me on a round of fluconozole.
      - noir_lord 6y ago
atoav 6y ago
I know anecdotes are not evidence, but I knwo two personally. Both had covid and no troubles breathing before they had it. Afterwards not so much. I am not a medical professional, but I know these people and how their bodies functioned beforehand. The way they are now is certainly not a hard-to-diagnose chronic syndrome that is unreleated to them catching the damn thing.
- mlyle 6y ago
  He said: "Not to say there aren't a lot of people with clear-cut long covid syndromes." But, also, you'll find people with long COVID who are finally paying attention to other symptoms and ascribing them to the C-19 infection.
  - watwut 6y ago
    The long haulers I know have long symptoms that would be impossible to ignore previously too. The doctors won't care about tiny symptoms either.
    - mlyle 6y ago
      Some of the things that cause concern are studies finding depression, fatigue, brain fog, etc. But if you screened any population of lower health you'd find a fair number of instances of these... and historical baselines are probably not valid because we've had a weird year. So-- the exact incidence of some of the milder end of long COVID is hard to pin down.
      - watwut 6y ago
        The fatigue here is not vaguely feeling fatigue. It is "I can't work full time as before and need to take nap twice a day fatigue. Same with brain fog and depression. Vaguely noticeable symptoms are basically ignored.
        mlyle 6y ago
nonameiguess 6y ago
Just to add to the post-viral syndrome chorus, this happened to me when I was 20. I caught what seemed like a pretty normal flu, but it eventually morphed into bronchitis and then pneumonia because I was an idiot who thought he was immortal and continued going out clubbing and staying out late with friends and it was four months before I finally saw a doctor and took the advice to rest and get blasted with high dose antibiotics. I was down for about two additional months after that, in which I caught another flu twice, and could barely get out of bed for a while. And then I proceeded to have complications from colds and flus that evolved to bronchitis or pneumonia every single flu season for the next 8 years. It took nearly a decade to really recover from that. I see no reason to think any sufficiently bad respiratory infection with high enough viral load wouldn't do the same thing, especially to people much less healthy than 20 year-old me, a two-time state champion cross country runner in high school.
- clairity 6y ago
  yes, what we're seeing is the frenzy around covid latching onto any and all related phenomena and pulling them into it's orbit. it's reasonable to study those phenomena for their relationship to a particular infection, but not to conclude that relationship based on merely studying it, as is happening here. post-infection complications are not uncommon, although specifics certainly vary. i'd also had a long tail of recovery from a flu->bronchitis->pneumonia cascade a few years ago (on the order of many months, not years).
- stretchwithme 6y ago
  I had persistent lung congestion for weeks. I did some research online and found this thing called a salt inhaler. That cleared it up in a couple of days. Salt has a way of pulling infections out of tissues.
  - sithadmin 6y ago
    I'm not a physician, but intentionally inhaling salt particles into the respiratory tract to 'pull infections out of tissues' strikes me as an extremely bad idea.
splithalf 6y ago
One unexpected long covid symptom: writing buggy code. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/03/buffer-overruns-license-violations-and-bad-code-freebsd-13s-close-call/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/03/buffer-overruns-lice...
- brundolf 6y ago
  The virus has hopped from humans to computers
- djmips 6y ago
  Interesting article, the whole landlord part was out of place but it does seem like he was unmotivated because those faults are not even tricky.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
genericone 6y ago
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong... but I don't think it's just trendy, its also profitable. Insurance claims with "covid" noted are, in my rational opinion, processed a lot more liberally, quickly, and without deeply looking at the details of the claim. The claimant could probably even charge insurance more for the same service if covid is noted in the claim notes. The political/social powder-keg of denying a covid related insurance claim is not one that a health insurance corporation would probably be willing to take, at least for another year or 2.
Florin_Andrei 6y ago
> I've seen some pushback that a lot of hard-to-diagnose chronic syndromes are now being deemed "long covid." My assumption is that at least some of this is happening as it's the trendiest disease of the moment. The "pushbacks" you see on social media are essentially the output of a random sentence generator. Covid is not real, covid escaped from a lab, covid is a conspiracy, etc. etc. Be careful with that stuff. You are what you read (and believe).

by gxqoz 6y ago

JulianMorrison 6y ago

It looks like there's an overlap with post-viral syndromes and chronic fatigue syndrome, pointing to a common etiology under the hood.

sprkwd 6y ago
It would be nice if this helped research in to chronic fatigue conditions.
- JulianMorrison 6y ago
  I strongly suspect it will.
gnabgib 6y ago
There is some overlap and some similarities.. if long covid doesn't end perhaps it'll even be considered M.E[0]. Myalgic Encephalomyelitis sufferers have been ignored by mainstream medicine, maybe this will bring change. [0]: https://valerieeliotsmith.com/2021/02/19/a-short-post-on-long-covid-media-exposure/ https://valerieeliotsmith.com/2021/02/19/a-short-post-on-lon...

howinteresting 6y ago

Or maybe, people have been dealing with post-viral syndromes for a long time, our society is completely unequipped to understand and deal with them, and they see post-COVID syndrome as finally a chance to address this. But taking that perspective requires correcting for the systematic underweighting of the testimonial evidence of patients of chronic illnesses. Less trendiness, more empathy, please.

galangalalgol 6y ago
A lot of post viral stuff seems to be autoimmune, and we don't treat autoimmune well. Chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia weren't even recognized as real things not that long ago. Others like RA or Hashi's we suppress the immune system and/or rely entirely on simple tests to determine medication levels instead of relying on patient testamony and testing instead for over medication symptoms. These feedback loops are amazingly complex and looking at a few numbers doesn't cut it. In addition we know diet and environmental triggers are a thing from many studies, but doctors don't say "eat more greens" anymore, they say lets do a test now take this pill.
- noir_lord 6y ago
  I have chrohn's and the treatment for that is high dose steroids or chopping sections out. Fortunately I'm on the mild end of the spectrum and flairs are infrequent but it'd be nice if we had something better to treat auto-immune disorders. To control my chrohns I changed my diet by removing foods, keeping track of general well being for a few weeks then gradually introducing them to see what happened til I found a routine that worked, it's bland most of the time but I'll take the win - basically a Mediterranean diet which is fine. There is however a bunch of things in the pipeline including things like targetted biologics to selectively target the immune system that are exciting.
  - galangalalgol 6y ago
    Do you have any good wisdom on how you got diagnosed and what diets? I've always had GI issues and I have found some triggers like mushrooms, blackberries and cauliflower which poimt towards SIBO but my GI doc says there is no SIBO treatment or diet, and sometimes I have problems even on fodmaps. I did AIP diet with my wife who has Hashi's and I think that might have helped a little but not sure. Everything my GI prescribes just makes it worse. I can't eat sweet potatoes anymore after he put me on a round of fluconozole.
    - noir_lord 6y ago

atoav 6y ago

I know anecdotes are not evidence, but I knwo two personally. Both had covid and no troubles breathing before they had it. Afterwards not so much. I am not a medical professional, but I know these people and how their bodies functioned beforehand. The way they are now is certainly not a hard-to-diagnose chronic syndrome that is unreleated to them catching the damn thing.

mlyle 6y ago
He said: "Not to say there aren't a lot of people with clear-cut long covid syndromes." But, also, you'll find people with long COVID who are finally paying attention to other symptoms and ascribing them to the C-19 infection.
- watwut 6y ago
  The long haulers I know have long symptoms that would be impossible to ignore previously too. The doctors won't care about tiny symptoms either.
  - mlyle 6y ago
    Some of the things that cause concern are studies finding depression, fatigue, brain fog, etc. But if you screened any population of lower health you'd find a fair number of instances of these... and historical baselines are probably not valid because we've had a weird year. So-- the exact incidence of some of the milder end of long COVID is hard to pin down.
    - watwut 6y ago
      The fatigue here is not vaguely feeling fatigue. It is "I can't work full time as before and need to take nap twice a day fatigue. Same with brain fog and depression. Vaguely noticeable symptoms are basically ignored.
      - mlyle 6y ago

nonameiguess 6y ago

Just to add to the post-viral syndrome chorus, this happened to me when I was 20. I caught what seemed like a pretty normal flu, but it eventually morphed into bronchitis and then pneumonia because I was an idiot who thought he was immortal and continued going out clubbing and staying out late with friends and it was four months before I finally saw a doctor and took the advice to rest and get blasted with high dose antibiotics. I was down for about two additional months after that, in which I caught another flu twice, and could barely get out of bed for a while. And then I proceeded to have complications from colds and flus that evolved to bronchitis or pneumonia every single flu season for the next 8 years. It took nearly a decade to really recover from that. I see no reason to think any sufficiently bad respiratory infection with high enough viral load wouldn't do the same thing, especially to people much less healthy than 20 year-old me, a two-time state champion cross country runner in high school.

clairity 6y ago
yes, what we're seeing is the frenzy around covid latching onto any and all related phenomena and pulling them into it's orbit. it's reasonable to study those phenomena for their relationship to a particular infection, but not to conclude that relationship based on merely studying it, as is happening here. post-infection complications are not uncommon, although specifics certainly vary. i'd also had a long tail of recovery from a flu->bronchitis->pneumonia cascade a few years ago (on the order of many months, not years).
stretchwithme 6y ago
I had persistent lung congestion for weeks. I did some research online and found this thing called a salt inhaler. That cleared it up in a couple of days. Salt has a way of pulling infections out of tissues.
- sithadmin 6y ago
  I'm not a physician, but intentionally inhaling salt particles into the respiratory tract to 'pull infections out of tissues' strikes me as an extremely bad idea.

splithalf 6y ago

One unexpected long covid symptom: writing buggy code. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/03/buffer-overruns-license-violations-and-bad-code-freebsd-13s-close-call/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/03/buffer-overruns-lice...

brundolf 6y ago
The virus has hopped from humans to computers
djmips 6y ago
Interesting article, the whole landlord part was out of place but it does seem like he was unmotivated because those faults are not even tricky.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

genericone 6y ago

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong... but I don't think it's just trendy, its also profitable. Insurance claims with "covid" noted are, in my rational opinion, processed a lot more liberally, quickly, and without deeply looking at the details of the claim. The claimant could probably even charge insurance more for the same service if covid is noted in the claim notes. The political/social powder-keg of denying a covid related insurance claim is not one that a health insurance corporation would probably be willing to take, at least for another year or 2.

Florin_Andrei 6y ago

> I've seen some pushback that a lot of hard-to-diagnose chronic syndromes are now being deemed "long covid." My assumption is that at least some of this is happening as it's the trendiest disease of the moment. The "pushbacks" you see on social media are essentially the output of a random sentence generator. Covid is not real, covid escaped from a lab, covid is a conspiracy, etc. etc. Be careful with that stuff. You are what you read (and believe).