4 ms·

Is it possible that every illness, even the common cold, can have these side effects at some low level of incidence or low intensity? I feel like part of the re

Is it possible that every illness, even the common cold, can have these side effects at some low level of incidence or low intensity? I feel like part of the reason we are speculating or noticing these issues with COVID is that it is so heavily studied and scrutinized, to an extent much greater than a typical seasonal flu or cold.

orwin 5y ago
So I've researched this, because this question was asked like 6 month ago. The short answer is yes, mainly with viral infection. Note though that sometimes it might be symptoms, not the infection itself, that causes damages. But in the case of some viral infections, like the HxNx or SARS-CoV-2, but also varicella, it's the immune response that is too strong and attack the body.
Traubenfuchs 5y ago
Maybe, learn about: „post viral fatigue“
tdrdt 5y ago
It is known viruses can damage nerves. And Corona viruses have been with us for ages.
shoto_io 5y ago
I happened to have a very bad flu back in 2017 or so. I couldn't smell nor taste anything for at least 3-4 months. It slowly came back, first with coffee, then the rest.
WA 5y ago
ME/CFS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_fatigue_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_fatigue_syndrome In a way, I'm glad that Corona lifted the awareness about post-infection issues. The common knowledge usually was "you're sick for a week and then you're fine". I don't have ME/CFS, but my body started to react weird to some harmless common cold infections. My blood pressure drops and remains low, sometimes for weeks. Makes me feel dizzy, makes working out almost impossible. Also, I had some stomach bug several years ago with some side effects lasting for 2 months. Most people don't believe that a "harmless" infection can cause side effects for weeks (and neither did I), but it's a thing.
- bengale 5y ago
  I had a virus a few years back that put me on my arse for about 4 weeks. Docs only said that might blood showed I was fighting a virus and it would pass. But for about 3 years afterwards I remained feeling tired, I used to have heart palpitations multiple times a week, I'd get symptoms like I was ill every 3 or 4 weeks. Was bloody awful tbh. Weirdly the first AZ vaccination stopped it, it put me in bed for a day or two and then when I got up I started noticing I was feeling better than normal, but didn't really believe it was gone away. But it's now been months since the jab and I haven't had a single episode with my heart and my energy is way up. The definitely need to do a little more research into this because my doctors were basically telling me it was just how I was going to be, and it does seem like, however accidentally, there was a solution to be had.
  - andrekandre 5y ago
    exactly the same here! i thought i was gonna just croak at some point, with doctors just saying "i need to de-stress" or "eat better" do you know what virus you had originally that did that to you?
    - bengale 5y ago
      Yeah I was convinced I was dying, I went to the hospital at first because I thought I was having a heart attack. All they said to me from the blood test was that it showed I was fighting a virus, but I don't know how they would have gone about working out which one, they just told me to get some rest. I basically slept for the 4 weeks, lost a load of weight because I had zero appetite, was a crazy time. Afterwards I kept going back about the heart palpitations and they did all sorts of tests and scans but kept basically telling me the same, destress, eat better, get more sleep, etc. When I told them I was tired all the time they told me everyone feels like that. But now it's cleared I can tell there was definitely something abnormal going on.
      - andrekandre 5y ago
        thanks for the reply, its appreciated > All they said to me from the blood test was that it showed I was fighting a virus, but I don't know how they would have gone about working out which one, they just told me to get some rest. for myself, i went and got checked for natural antibodies for covid, thinking it was caused by asymptomatic (or long) covid or something... but the result was negative... maybe ill check for some others (west nile etc) if i had time. > But now it's cleared I can tell there was definitely something abnormal going on. one clue for me that also supports some kind of virus/infection caused autoimmune issue, was that i had a slightly higher temperature for several months and an elevated RF level (indicates overall inflammation) when doing my health checkups... that is, until getting the vaccine: full-stop no joke those issues all disappeared. i know it sounds crazy to some people, but thats my experience... and thanks for sharing yours, its great to be able to exchange notes with someone who may have had the same issue
heavyset_go 5y ago
The Epstein-Barr virus is like this. It's the virus that causes mono.
est31 5y ago
Absolutely. Polio for example does not infect the nervous system in most of the cases, but in a few cases every 100 thousand people it does. And this can cause life long paralysis. Much of the fight to eradicate polio is because of this rare effect. Contrast this to something like rabies, which always affects the nervous system (and always kills you and there is no cure, but vaccination shortly after a bite can avert that outcome).
Frost1x 5y ago
I wouldn't just say possible, I'd say it's highly likely. We have a lot of diseases, infections, and illnesses that most likely have long term side effects but they're also likely small and poorly observed. I've had other illnesses during my life that I'm confident I never fully recovered from (it's not that the condition is horrible, just that I can tell the difference). I think we give human regenerative ability a bit too much credit. Regeneration is amazing in the big scheme of things but we often don't understand relative regenerative ability compared to baseline production and small variance in functional outcomes. When star athletes have an injury that's more macroscopic we do expect it to heal but often the athlete can't or doesn't want to return because its higher risk for future damage and it's likely they won't be able to perform at their prior state. With less 'physical' injuries we expect a difference for some reason. Maybe the law of large numbers comes into play and we assume all the diseases and their damage is fully removed and replaced at cellular levels when we often have no idea if that's really occurring at full scale. Overall, I think this is fine. Medicine doesn't promise full, better than new, recovery so to speak always (at least not from good practitioners). What it does often promise instead is a hope and empirical data of improvement and documented side effects with a lot of probabilities for risk and uncertainty quantification. What I think isn't fine is this notion that recovery is always 'complete.' Its likely, as you point out, we're only observing these sorts of smaller effects with COVID due to the widespread infliction it caused over the population and amount of resources humanity has thrown at it to study it in great detail. I suspect there are many other diseases with negligible fractions of resources for study that have similar unknown consequences.

orwin 5y ago

So I've researched this, because this question was asked like 6 month ago. The short answer is yes, mainly with viral infection. Note though that sometimes it might be symptoms, not the infection itself, that causes damages. But in the case of some viral infections, like the HxNx or SARS-CoV-2, but also varicella, it's the immune response that is too strong and attack the body.

Traubenfuchs 5y ago

Maybe, learn about: „post viral fatigue“

tdrdt 5y ago

It is known viruses can damage nerves. And Corona viruses have been with us for ages.

shoto_io 5y ago

I happened to have a very bad flu back in 2017 or so. I couldn't smell nor taste anything for at least 3-4 months. It slowly came back, first with coffee, then the rest.

WA 5y ago

ME/CFS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_fatigue_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_fatigue_syndrome In a way, I'm glad that Corona lifted the awareness about post-infection issues. The common knowledge usually was "you're sick for a week and then you're fine". I don't have ME/CFS, but my body started to react weird to some harmless common cold infections. My blood pressure drops and remains low, sometimes for weeks. Makes me feel dizzy, makes working out almost impossible. Also, I had some stomach bug several years ago with some side effects lasting for 2 months. Most people don't believe that a "harmless" infection can cause side effects for weeks (and neither did I), but it's a thing.

bengale 5y ago
I had a virus a few years back that put me on my arse for about 4 weeks. Docs only said that might blood showed I was fighting a virus and it would pass. But for about 3 years afterwards I remained feeling tired, I used to have heart palpitations multiple times a week, I'd get symptoms like I was ill every 3 or 4 weeks. Was bloody awful tbh. Weirdly the first AZ vaccination stopped it, it put me in bed for a day or two and then when I got up I started noticing I was feeling better than normal, but didn't really believe it was gone away. But it's now been months since the jab and I haven't had a single episode with my heart and my energy is way up. The definitely need to do a little more research into this because my doctors were basically telling me it was just how I was going to be, and it does seem like, however accidentally, there was a solution to be had.
- andrekandre 5y ago
  exactly the same here! i thought i was gonna just croak at some point, with doctors just saying "i need to de-stress" or "eat better" do you know what virus you had originally that did that to you?
  - bengale 5y ago
    Yeah I was convinced I was dying, I went to the hospital at first because I thought I was having a heart attack. All they said to me from the blood test was that it showed I was fighting a virus, but I don't know how they would have gone about working out which one, they just told me to get some rest. I basically slept for the 4 weeks, lost a load of weight because I had zero appetite, was a crazy time. Afterwards I kept going back about the heart palpitations and they did all sorts of tests and scans but kept basically telling me the same, destress, eat better, get more sleep, etc. When I told them I was tired all the time they told me everyone feels like that. But now it's cleared I can tell there was definitely something abnormal going on.
    - andrekandre 5y ago
      thanks for the reply, its appreciated > All they said to me from the blood test was that it showed I was fighting a virus, but I don't know how they would have gone about working out which one, they just told me to get some rest. for myself, i went and got checked for natural antibodies for covid, thinking it was caused by asymptomatic (or long) covid or something... but the result was negative... maybe ill check for some others (west nile etc) if i had time. > But now it's cleared I can tell there was definitely something abnormal going on. one clue for me that also supports some kind of virus/infection caused autoimmune issue, was that i had a slightly higher temperature for several months and an elevated RF level (indicates overall inflammation) when doing my health checkups... that is, until getting the vaccine: full-stop no joke those issues all disappeared. i know it sounds crazy to some people, but thats my experience... and thanks for sharing yours, its great to be able to exchange notes with someone who may have had the same issue

heavyset_go 5y ago

The Epstein-Barr virus is like this. It's the virus that causes mono.

est31 5y ago

Absolutely. Polio for example does not infect the nervous system in most of the cases, but in a few cases every 100 thousand people it does. And this can cause life long paralysis. Much of the fight to eradicate polio is because of this rare effect. Contrast this to something like rabies, which always affects the nervous system (and always kills you and there is no cure, but vaccination shortly after a bite can avert that outcome).

Frost1x 5y ago

I wouldn't just say possible, I'd say it's highly likely. We have a lot of diseases, infections, and illnesses that most likely have long term side effects but they're also likely small and poorly observed. I've had other illnesses during my life that I'm confident I never fully recovered from (it's not that the condition is horrible, just that I can tell the difference). I think we give human regenerative ability a bit too much credit. Regeneration is amazing in the big scheme of things but we often don't understand relative regenerative ability compared to baseline production and small variance in functional outcomes. When star athletes have an injury that's more macroscopic we do expect it to heal but often the athlete can't or doesn't want to return because its higher risk for future damage and it's likely they won't be able to perform at their prior state. With less 'physical' injuries we expect a difference for some reason. Maybe the law of large numbers comes into play and we assume all the diseases and their damage is fully removed and replaced at cellular levels when we often have no idea if that's really occurring at full scale. Overall, I think this is fine. Medicine doesn't promise full, better than new, recovery so to speak always (at least not from good practitioners). What it does often promise instead is a hope and empirical data of improvement and documented side effects with a lot of probabilities for risk and uncertainty quantification. What I think isn't fine is this notion that recovery is always 'complete.' Its likely, as you point out, we're only observing these sorts of smaller effects with COVID due to the widespread infliction it caused over the population and amount of resources humanity has thrown at it to study it in great detail. I suspect there are many other diseases with negligible fractions of resources for study that have similar unknown consequences.