3 ms·

From personal experience, the symptoms being described by all of the posts on this thread overlap substantially with depression and anxiety. It's notable that t

by timr 5y ago

From personal experience, the symptoms being described by all of the posts on this thread overlap substantially with depression and anxiety. It's notable that the GP went to the hospital and was diagnosed with a possible panic attack. Panic attacks frequently cause your heart to race, skip, etc. Depression causes "brain fog" and fatigue, body aches, etc. So far, ~all of the reports of "long covid" are anecdotal and post hoc. Which is not to say that they aren't real, but that there's no way of knowing what is causes by the virus, and what is caused by a year in which a significant portion of the population was isolated from contact and systematically terrified. I've personally had "brain fog", insomnia, fatigue and distraction for the last year, and never had Covid. It's been a difficult, depressing, scary year, and a lot of people have these symptoms.

dragontamer 5y ago
Oh, I know when I was depressed (also as a teenager, but a few years after that). That was a different time and I can talk about that if you like. But what hit me back then was definitely not depression and/or anxiety. It was some mysterious illness that took me out for a week (kinda typical), but then made me unable to "breath normally" for literally months. It was innately a physical condition: unable to breath, unable to sleep well, unable to feel physically good for months at a time. A mental depression is... different. I know because I've been through both. In particular, depression doesn't have chronic multi-month breathing issues normally associated with it. ------------- I only bring it up because the timeframes line up. SARS hit in 2003, roughly the time of my mysterious illness (though I never went to the doctor for it back then. I only knew about SARS because of COVID19 studies today). Given that SARS and COVID19 have many similarities, I really do wonder if the experience I felt back then is anything like what people with long-COVID19 feel today.
- timr 5y ago
  > But what hit me back then was definitely not depression and/or anxiety. It was some mysterious illness that took me out for a week (kinda typical), but then made me unable to "breath normally" for literally months. It was innately a physical condition: unable to breath, unable to sleep well, unable to feel physically good for months at a time. Sure. Pneumonia can easily cause that. It takes a long time to recover from it, even if you're young. Fundamentally, "covid" is pneumonia caused by a particular virus, so it's not surprising that people (esp. people who had serious cases) might have similar kinds of lingering symptoms.
satysin 5y ago
All valid points. However as someone who was diagnosed with C-PTSD back in 2009 and spent 4 months in hospital for treatment of panic disorder, depression and anxiety this is different to what I experienced back then. It is a near constant discomfort in my chest. I am wondering if it is perhaps costochondritis or something similar to it? Perhaps costochondritis and anxiety that is making the whole thing worse? I wish I had answers. Hopefully I will next week.
cycomanic 5y ago
You're wrong that long covid evidence is anecdotal. It is a clinical diagnosis though (i.e. it's diagnosed based on symptoms). I think you also severely underestimate the effect this had on people, and symptoms are not generally compatible with depression. Patients often show reduced lung capacity of 60%. The brain fog is also often much more severe than just not being able concentrate a bit, people can't do simple calculations, can't follow conversations, can't read more than a page in a book, immediately forget things they just talked about. Many people become completely unable to perform their usual tasks.
- timr 5y ago
  > You're wrong that long covid evidence is anecdotal. Fine, convince me. Provide a citation from a study where: 1) the results are NOT gathered by survey from a self-selected population 2) the study is pre-registered, with endpoints determined in advance 3) the study is prospective, longitudinal and randomized 4) there is a control group 5) the participants are verified to actually have Covid 6) a significant effect is shown on the pre-registered endpoints and I'll take your claims seriously. The only current study that I'm currently aware of that remotely comes close to this standard of evidence (but doesn't meet all of them) is this one: a controlled, retrospective study of 250,000 kids, which found that kids without covid had roughly equivalent long-term symptoms to kids who did have covid. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.05.21256649v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.05.21256649v... I bring up this study only to underscore the point: essentially all current "long covid" data is self reported and uncontrolled, and when you start to be rigorous, the claims of severity rapidly diminish. Here's a relevant editorial in Nature: "Studies of long COVID thus far—nearly all from high-income countries—have been difficult to interpret or compare, not only because of the lack of a consistent case definition but also because of systematic selection bias of cases, often without appropriate controls....Meanwhile, community-based studies have raised questions about the representativeness of cases compared with the general population, especially those using online recruitment, with many studies relying on self-reported symptoms and without laboratory-confirmed diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Selection bias becomes even more pronounced when people are recruited through online support groups, where very high rates of often nonspecific long-term symptoms have been reported, even in children." https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01402-w https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01402-w > Patients often show reduced lung capacity of 60% Citation required. See above for standards of evidence. > The brain fog is also often much more severe than just not being able concentrate a bit, people can't do simple calculations, can't follow conversations, can't read more than a page in a book, immediately forget things they just talked about. Citation required. See above for standards of evidence. > Many people become completely unable to perform their usual tasks. Citation required. See above for standards of evidence.

by timr 5y ago

dragontamer 5y ago

Oh, I know when I was depressed (also as a teenager, but a few years after that). That was a different time and I can talk about that if you like. But what hit me back then was definitely not depression and/or anxiety. It was some mysterious illness that took me out for a week (kinda typical), but then made me unable to "breath normally" for literally months. It was innately a physical condition: unable to breath, unable to sleep well, unable to feel physically good for months at a time. A mental depression is... different. I know because I've been through both. In particular, depression doesn't have chronic multi-month breathing issues normally associated with it. ------------- I only bring it up because the timeframes line up. SARS hit in 2003, roughly the time of my mysterious illness (though I never went to the doctor for it back then. I only knew about SARS because of COVID19 studies today). Given that SARS and COVID19 have many similarities, I really do wonder if the experience I felt back then is anything like what people with long-COVID19 feel today.

timr 5y ago
> But what hit me back then was definitely not depression and/or anxiety. It was some mysterious illness that took me out for a week (kinda typical), but then made me unable to "breath normally" for literally months. It was innately a physical condition: unable to breath, unable to sleep well, unable to feel physically good for months at a time. Sure. Pneumonia can easily cause that. It takes a long time to recover from it, even if you're young. Fundamentally, "covid" is pneumonia caused by a particular virus, so it's not surprising that people (esp. people who had serious cases) might have similar kinds of lingering symptoms.

satysin 5y ago

All valid points. However as someone who was diagnosed with C-PTSD back in 2009 and spent 4 months in hospital for treatment of panic disorder, depression and anxiety this is different to what I experienced back then. It is a near constant discomfort in my chest. I am wondering if it is perhaps costochondritis or something similar to it? Perhaps costochondritis and anxiety that is making the whole thing worse? I wish I had answers. Hopefully I will next week.

cycomanic 5y ago

You're wrong that long covid evidence is anecdotal. It is a clinical diagnosis though (i.e. it's diagnosed based on symptoms). I think you also severely underestimate the effect this had on people, and symptoms are not generally compatible with depression. Patients often show reduced lung capacity of 60%. The brain fog is also often much more severe than just not being able concentrate a bit, people can't do simple calculations, can't follow conversations, can't read more than a page in a book, immediately forget things they just talked about. Many people become completely unable to perform their usual tasks.

timr 5y ago
> You're wrong that long covid evidence is anecdotal. Fine, convince me. Provide a citation from a study where: 1) the results are NOT gathered by survey from a self-selected population 2) the study is pre-registered, with endpoints determined in advance 3) the study is prospective, longitudinal and randomized 4) there is a control group 5) the participants are verified to actually have Covid 6) a significant effect is shown on the pre-registered endpoints and I'll take your claims seriously. The only current study that I'm currently aware of that remotely comes close to this standard of evidence (but doesn't meet all of them) is this one: a controlled, retrospective study of 250,000 kids, which found that kids without covid had roughly equivalent long-term symptoms to kids who did have covid. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.05.21256649v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.05.21256649v... I bring up this study only to underscore the point: essentially all current "long covid" data is self reported and uncontrolled, and when you start to be rigorous, the claims of severity rapidly diminish. Here's a relevant editorial in Nature: "Studies of long COVID thus far—nearly all from high-income countries—have been difficult to interpret or compare, not only because of the lack of a consistent case definition but also because of systematic selection bias of cases, often without appropriate controls....Meanwhile, community-based studies have raised questions about the representativeness of cases compared with the general population, especially those using online recruitment, with many studies relying on self-reported symptoms and without laboratory-confirmed diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Selection bias becomes even more pronounced when people are recruited through online support groups, where very high rates of often nonspecific long-term symptoms have been reported, even in children." https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01402-w https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01402-w > Patients often show reduced lung capacity of 60% Citation required. See above for standards of evidence. > The brain fog is also often much more severe than just not being able concentrate a bit, people can't do simple calculations, can't follow conversations, can't read more than a page in a book, immediately forget things they just talked about. Citation required. See above for standards of evidence. > Many people become completely unable to perform their usual tasks. Citation required. See above for standards of evidence.