7 ms·

75% of Covid ‘long haulers’ free of symptoms in 12 months: McMaster study

50 points by mmphosis 4y ago

ag315 4y ago
Any updates on Havana syndrome and chronic Lyme's while we're at it?
ljf 4y ago
Excellent to hear - in my wife's experience most of her main symptoms did go in the first year, but the tiredness and fog persisted far longer. Its been nearly 3 years now, and she still isn't where she was before in terms of fitness or where she'd like to be, but continues to improve. Really hope anyone else struggling with long covid sees improvements.
- n1b0m 4y ago
  Long covid seems to affect women more too. Have there been any studies on why that is?
  - ljf 4y ago
    Yes there have been studies, and no it doesn't affect more women than men. It may be that women are more vocal in looking for help and support with the illness. But no studies have actually shown that this affects more women.
- nicoburns 4y ago
  > in my wife's experience most of her main symptoms did go in the first year, but the tiredness and fog persisted far longer. Its been nearly 3 years now, and she still isn't where she was before in terms of fitness or where she'd like to be, but continues to improve. That's been my experience too. I've also adjusted my lifestyle to compensate. I try not to do non-necessary activities too many days in a row anymore. Every now and then I get cocky about it and try to "push through" the tiredness/fatigue and I get a rude reminder about why I haven't been doing that.
puffoflogic 4y ago
[flagged]
throwaway1777 4y ago
Long covid seems to be based on unfalsifiable symptoms like brain fog and fatigue. There aren’t really any scientific tests to determine how much fogginess or fatigue a person is feeling are there? So how does such a disease get researched and studied?
- nicoburns 4y ago
  Yeah, it's the same problem that Chronic Fatigue sufferers have had for years. Many people clearly do have a problem, but it's hard to quantify, and nobody really knows what causes it.
- zahrc 4y ago
  Patients account, medical history and differential diagnosis. The same way you diagnose chronic fatigue syndrome. As someone with personal experience, *chronic* fatigue is difficult to measure, especially if it’s getting gradually worse, but routine tests like blood tests and ECG; especially under physical stress can measure degradation or improvements. I personally cannot do my work commute without being absolutely knackered for hours, and sweating like hell - since I had covid.
- Broken_Hippo 4y ago
  Ok, there aren't tests. That doesn't mean there aren't ways to assess this, though: Fatigue plagues many diseases, especially chronic diseases and especially auto-immune disorders. Memory issues are similar, especially brain fog. We do have some measure of what is "normal" for most folks, and questions we can ask to assess this sort of thing. You ask things about getting through the work day, how far one can walk without taking a break or nap, if they can get housework done, if a shower means that a nap is soon to come. You ask about cooking, whether or not they are forgetting everyday stuff that the rest of us don't have much issue with, and other such things. It isn't like folks are complaining about being a little tired, but rather more like the sort of fatigue that means you have to take a break while chopping onions and you might have to recover after taking a shower. You might not get your housework done even if that's all you have to do.
- dadjoker 4y ago
  And the vast majority of "long COVID" sufferers are white females with pre-existing anxiety issues. Psychological issues are a very large contributing factor to "long COVID" https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/09/depression-anxiety-may-escalate-chances-of-long-covid-says-study/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/09/depression-an...
croes 4y ago
If you turn the title around like the original heading it sounds not quite so positive. 25% of Long COVID patients have symptoms longer than 12 month. Given the risk of getting Long COVID, between 5% and 15%, that's a lot of people.
- r00fus 4y ago
  Well some folks I know feared longCOVID meant lifetime disabilities for a majority of those diagnosed. So 80% (estimated) to 25% probably reassures those people. 25% is not trivial so I'm still wearing masks at stores/events/etc and doing flex WFH.
- d0mine 4y ago
  The actual title: "25 per cent of COVID patients become ‘long haulers’ after 12 months" the difference "25% of [all] COVID patients" vs. "25% of long COVID patients."
  - croes 4y ago
    So it's worse than I thought and OP's title is plain wrong, because it's not 75% of the Long-COVID patients but only 75% of everyone with symptoms.
MisterBastahrd 4y ago
I wish. Still have chronic fatigue, and still can't smell or taste certain things, which is incredibly annoying. I have to use scent-free detergent because my lack of ability to smell certain things means that other sensitivities are are heightened. For example, I used to love the smell of Dreft in my laundry. I used to buy Tide pods to use. I gag when attempting to unload my washing machine while using up the rest of the Tide. I have the unscented detergent ready and waiting.
- verdenti 4y ago
  [dead]
slg 4y ago
OP mangled the headline from the article. The article says 25% of Covid patients still have symptoms after 12 months. While the headline OP uses flips the percentage and implies that the 75% of people who are symptom free were people who previously had long Covid and recovered in less than 12 months. The end result is that OP's headline sounds more positive than the article.
pavon 4y ago
This submission uses a different headline from the article (unless the article is A/Bing it), and is subtly misleading. Saying that 75% of long haulers are free of symptoms after a year, implies that you are looking at only the subset of patients who developed long-term symptoms to begin with. However, the study is showing that 75% of all COVID cases are free of symptoms after 12 months, meaning 25% of people have long-haul cases. That is worse news that the rewritten headline would suggest.
- xboxnolifes 4y ago
  1 in 4 also seems really high. In my sphere, I know a few dozen people who have gotten COVID. Yet, I know of maybe 3 people who have had symptoms exceed a few weeks, all of which lasted many months. Though, the 3 I know of because they have/had the obvious lack of taste. Maybe more don't notice that also have other issues.
heywhatupboys 4y ago
Arguments for the existence of "long covid" are the same ones used by vaccine deniers 10 years ago. "I got vaccinated" ... "later something happened" . Just replace vaccinated with covid. This anti scientific bull needs to stop. People get sick from various diseases, and people get covid some time in their life. Everything bad following it does NOT imply it was due to covid. 90 % have had it or something. Some are bound to have a bad time later on no matter what.
- mjhay 4y ago
  Long covid is real enough to take seriously (in the literature and self-reporting even in this thread). Similar long-term symptoms can be caused by other viral diseases as well. Vaccination greatly reduces the risk of developing long covid, so how is its existence an anti-vaxx argument?
- vkou 4y ago
  You have your negatives confused. When someone catches COVID, loses their sense of smell, or ability to think without brain fog, and it doesn't come back within a year, that's not 'later something happened'. Yours is the unscientific position. We don't need to be able to explain a phenomena to observe it happening in a novel, unprecedented way to millions of people, that just happens to be correlated with them catching a novel, serious disease.
  - heywhatupboys 4y ago
    Sometimes there are complications after being vaccinated too. That does not mean that all adverse effects you experience at any point later in life is the cause of it. Long term debilitating diseases happen to people very single day, and since there is quite a high percent chance of a person catching corona in that day as well, you end up with thousands of "unexplained long covid" which are, in reality, just two bads of different coins
    - vkou 4y ago
      > That does not mean that all adverse effects you experience at any point later in life is the cause of it Correct. But that's not the situation that people have with long COVID. The situation that they do have is that they test positive for COVID, they get regular COVID symptoms (loss of smell, brain fog, fatigue), that then don't go away after three weeks. > Long term debilitating diseases happen to people very single day, and since there is quite a high percent chance of a person catching corona in that day as well Except that it's not a high chance that on any particular day/week/month you're going to catch COVID, and an even lower chance that you're going to catch a completely unrelated, rare, hitherto unknown disease that has all the same symptoms, but is not COVID. The intersection of these odds is even lower. The rate at which people have long COVID symptoms has dramatically gone up since the start of the pandemic. You have an incredibly high hill that you have to climb to convince us that no, those symptoms are actually caused by some unkown unrelated mysterious thing that just happened to have affected all these people in the same week/month that they caught COVID. If we release a bunch of tigers into the woods, and people going into the woods start mysteriously dissapearing, with the occasional discovery of a mutilated body covered in tiger shit, Occam's razor leads me to believe that the tigers probably have something to do with it. It's possible that there's another explanation, but you're going to have to do a lot of work to convince us of it. 'It could have been something else' doesn't meet that bar.
11235813213455 4y ago
Is it possible that this was just a nocebo effect?
mrfox321 4y ago
The honest headline: Let's define "long haulers" as those exhibiting system after Y months. The percentage of long haulers is 0.25 <= X <= 1. We need to replace 0.75 with 0 <= 1 - (X / 0.25) <= 0.75
spicymaki 4y ago
> 75% of Covid ‘long haulers’ free of symptoms in 12 months: McMaster study The submission headline is misleading. It is 25% of COVID patients are long haulers not 75% of long haulers are free of symptoms in 12 months.
- mmphosis 4y ago
  Sorry, I couldn't resist. I usually try to put the title in verbatim, but I've been reading https://old.reddit.com/r/UpliftingNews/ https://old.reddit.com/r/UpliftingNews/ lately!
fundad 4y ago
1 IN 4 CHANCE OF CHRONIC ILLNESS!
LarryMullins 4y ago
Most of "long covid" is psychosomatic. The more you promote the concept of "long covid" as legitimate, the more people suffer.
- ljf 4y ago
  What is this assertion based on?
  - LarryMullins 4y ago
    Based on every single claimed case of "long covid" among my friends, family and acquaintances coming from people I already knew to be paranoid hypochondriac nutjobs. Most of them terminally-anxious white women, who've also claimed to have chronic lyme disease, gluten insensitivity, fibromyalgia, and a variety of other trendy self-diagnosed ailments that they stop talking about a few years later when they get bored and diagnose themselves with something new. Pretending this shit is real only makes it worse for them. They earnestly do suffer, but not for the reasons they claim; it's a sort of mental illness they suffer from.
    - ljf 4y ago
      Ok, so no medical study then or other peer reviewed paper. If you could back this up with any fact then I'd be interested in discussing. As this is just your ill-informed opinion, then I've no interest in talking more.
      - LarryMullins 4y ago
        Fine with me, but know this: If you keep promoting this as real, then you are culpable in their suffering.
        ljf 4y ago
        I am watching my wife recover from this. Before long covid she was lifting 50kg at the gym and working out 5 days a week, she's been a fashion pr organising massive events, she's done more than most people and has a strong drive to live and enjoy life. After getting covid she was 'flu' ill for about 2 weeks then got worse. Along side losing her sense of smell (back before that was a known symptom), her heart rate and blood pressure spiked. About a year later she was diagnosed with POTS and myocarditis. She's been lucky that after another 6 or so months, and numerous tests showing her heart issues, that it slowly got better. Her blood pressure still drops, and her heart rate can still spike occasionally. Despite all this all she wants is to get better and to enjoy life and our kids again. She can work again now (though she's had to move into a new career) but is shattered easily. She'd love to workout but even light exercise can leave her wiped out for a day or two. She's building back up slowly, but for someone who did so much, it is a real pain. So please realise that most people with long covid have no interest in sitting and suffering. All they want is to be better. Not being believed and stupid comments like yours do more damage than you can imagine. (note that after SARs infections people had similar responses - so long covid should not be considered novel).
vgt 4y ago
There's a good chance COVID trigger an autoimmune disease in me, and from what i gathered this autoimmune disease is on the rise last couple of years.
- fundad 4y ago
  Next thing we are going to hear is CEO's blaming these autoimmune diseases on people being at their desks too much.
randomopining 4y ago
You need to rest and take certain supplements to heal the endothelial system, allow the body to clear any remnants of the virus, and then damper down the immune excitation. Pycnogenol, nattokinase, grape seed extract, vit d/c, b vits, etc.
orwin 4y ago
I losing the sense of smell was the weirdest experiment of my life so far.
- asteroidbelt 4y ago
  Hey Orwin, I've found why Chad Loder was banned: https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1611107762775228420 https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1611107762775228420 (Sorry for offtopic here, original thread is closed, and I don't have your other contacts.)
  - orwin 4y ago
    So, he basically gave tips on how to use molotov cocktails, and responded "You're goddamn right I am" to someone who accused him of supporting criminals. Ok, so this is politic, and had nothing to do with the reporting of twitter data being available on the dark web. Not sure which is worse.

50 points by mmphosis 4y ago

Any updates on Havana syndrome and chronic Lyme's while we're at it?

ljf 4y ago

Excellent to hear - in my wife's experience most of her main symptoms did go in the first year, but the tiredness and fog persisted far longer. Its been nearly 3 years now, and she still isn't where she was before in terms of fitness or where she'd like to be, but continues to improve. Really hope anyone else struggling with long covid sees improvements.

n1b0m 4y ago
Long covid seems to affect women more too. Have there been any studies on why that is?
- ljf 4y ago
  Yes there have been studies, and no it doesn't affect more women than men. It may be that women are more vocal in looking for help and support with the illness. But no studies have actually shown that this affects more women.
nicoburns 4y ago
> in my wife's experience most of her main symptoms did go in the first year, but the tiredness and fog persisted far longer. Its been nearly 3 years now, and she still isn't where she was before in terms of fitness or where she'd like to be, but continues to improve. That's been my experience too. I've also adjusted my lifestyle to compensate. I try not to do non-necessary activities too many days in a row anymore. Every now and then I get cocky about it and try to "push through" the tiredness/fatigue and I get a rude reminder about why I haven't been doing that.

puffoflogic 4y ago

[flagged]

throwaway1777 4y ago

Long covid seems to be based on unfalsifiable symptoms like brain fog and fatigue. There aren’t really any scientific tests to determine how much fogginess or fatigue a person is feeling are there? So how does such a disease get researched and studied?

nicoburns 4y ago
Yeah, it's the same problem that Chronic Fatigue sufferers have had for years. Many people clearly do have a problem, but it's hard to quantify, and nobody really knows what causes it.
zahrc 4y ago
Patients account, medical history and differential diagnosis. The same way you diagnose chronic fatigue syndrome. As someone with personal experience, *chronic* fatigue is difficult to measure, especially if it’s getting gradually worse, but routine tests like blood tests and ECG; especially under physical stress can measure degradation or improvements. I personally cannot do my work commute without being absolutely knackered for hours, and sweating like hell - since I had covid.
Broken_Hippo 4y ago
Ok, there aren't tests. That doesn't mean there aren't ways to assess this, though: Fatigue plagues many diseases, especially chronic diseases and especially auto-immune disorders. Memory issues are similar, especially brain fog. We do have some measure of what is "normal" for most folks, and questions we can ask to assess this sort of thing. You ask things about getting through the work day, how far one can walk without taking a break or nap, if they can get housework done, if a shower means that a nap is soon to come. You ask about cooking, whether or not they are forgetting everyday stuff that the rest of us don't have much issue with, and other such things. It isn't like folks are complaining about being a little tired, but rather more like the sort of fatigue that means you have to take a break while chopping onions and you might have to recover after taking a shower. You might not get your housework done even if that's all you have to do.
dadjoker 4y ago
And the vast majority of "long COVID" sufferers are white females with pre-existing anxiety issues. Psychological issues are a very large contributing factor to "long COVID" https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/09/depression-anxiety-may-escalate-chances-of-long-covid-says-study/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/09/depression-an...

croes 4y ago

If you turn the title around like the original heading it sounds not quite so positive. 25% of Long COVID patients have symptoms longer than 12 month. Given the risk of getting Long COVID, between 5% and 15%, that's a lot of people.

r00fus 4y ago
Well some folks I know feared longCOVID meant lifetime disabilities for a majority of those diagnosed. So 80% (estimated) to 25% probably reassures those people. 25% is not trivial so I'm still wearing masks at stores/events/etc and doing flex WFH.
d0mine 4y ago
The actual title: "25 per cent of COVID patients become ‘long haulers’ after 12 months" the difference "25% of [all] COVID patients" vs. "25% of long COVID patients."
- croes 4y ago
  So it's worse than I thought and OP's title is plain wrong, because it's not 75% of the Long-COVID patients but only 75% of everyone with symptoms.

MisterBastahrd 4y ago

I wish. Still have chronic fatigue, and still can't smell or taste certain things, which is incredibly annoying. I have to use scent-free detergent because my lack of ability to smell certain things means that other sensitivities are are heightened. For example, I used to love the smell of Dreft in my laundry. I used to buy Tide pods to use. I gag when attempting to unload my washing machine while using up the rest of the Tide. I have the unscented detergent ready and waiting.

verdenti 4y ago
[dead]

slg 4y ago

OP mangled the headline from the article. The article says 25% of Covid patients still have symptoms after 12 months. While the headline OP uses flips the percentage and implies that the 75% of people who are symptom free were people who previously had long Covid and recovered in less than 12 months. The end result is that OP's headline sounds more positive than the article.

pavon 4y ago

This submission uses a different headline from the article (unless the article is A/Bing it), and is subtly misleading. Saying that 75% of long haulers are free of symptoms after a year, implies that you are looking at only the subset of patients who developed long-term symptoms to begin with. However, the study is showing that 75% of all COVID cases are free of symptoms after 12 months, meaning 25% of people have long-haul cases. That is worse news that the rewritten headline would suggest.

xboxnolifes 4y ago
1 in 4 also seems really high. In my sphere, I know a few dozen people who have gotten COVID. Yet, I know of maybe 3 people who have had symptoms exceed a few weeks, all of which lasted many months. Though, the 3 I know of because they have/had the obvious lack of taste. Maybe more don't notice that also have other issues.

heywhatupboys 4y ago

Arguments for the existence of "long covid" are the same ones used by vaccine deniers 10 years ago. "I got vaccinated" ... "later something happened" . Just replace vaccinated with covid. This anti scientific bull needs to stop. People get sick from various diseases, and people get covid some time in their life. Everything bad following it does NOT imply it was due to covid. 90 % have had it or something. Some are bound to have a bad time later on no matter what.

mjhay 4y ago
Long covid is real enough to take seriously (in the literature and self-reporting even in this thread). Similar long-term symptoms can be caused by other viral diseases as well. Vaccination greatly reduces the risk of developing long covid, so how is its existence an anti-vaxx argument?
vkou 4y ago
You have your negatives confused. When someone catches COVID, loses their sense of smell, or ability to think without brain fog, and it doesn't come back within a year, that's not 'later something happened'. Yours is the unscientific position. We don't need to be able to explain a phenomena to observe it happening in a novel, unprecedented way to millions of people, that just happens to be correlated with them catching a novel, serious disease.
- heywhatupboys 4y ago
  Sometimes there are complications after being vaccinated too. That does not mean that all adverse effects you experience at any point later in life is the cause of it. Long term debilitating diseases happen to people very single day, and since there is quite a high percent chance of a person catching corona in that day as well, you end up with thousands of "unexplained long covid" which are, in reality, just two bads of different coins
  - vkou 4y ago
    > That does not mean that all adverse effects you experience at any point later in life is the cause of it Correct. But that's not the situation that people have with long COVID. The situation that they do have is that they test positive for COVID, they get regular COVID symptoms (loss of smell, brain fog, fatigue), that then don't go away after three weeks. > Long term debilitating diseases happen to people very single day, and since there is quite a high percent chance of a person catching corona in that day as well Except that it's not a high chance that on any particular day/week/month you're going to catch COVID, and an even lower chance that you're going to catch a completely unrelated, rare, hitherto unknown disease that has all the same symptoms, but is not COVID. The intersection of these odds is even lower. The rate at which people have long COVID symptoms has dramatically gone up since the start of the pandemic. You have an incredibly high hill that you have to climb to convince us that no, those symptoms are actually caused by some unkown unrelated mysterious thing that just happened to have affected all these people in the same week/month that they caught COVID. If we release a bunch of tigers into the woods, and people going into the woods start mysteriously dissapearing, with the occasional discovery of a mutilated body covered in tiger shit, Occam's razor leads me to believe that the tigers probably have something to do with it. It's possible that there's another explanation, but you're going to have to do a lot of work to convince us of it. 'It could have been something else' doesn't meet that bar.

11235813213455 4y ago

Is it possible that this was just a nocebo effect?

mrfox321 4y ago

The honest headline: Let's define "long haulers" as those exhibiting system after Y months. The percentage of long haulers is 0.25 <= X <= 1. We need to replace 0.75 with 0 <= 1 - (X / 0.25) <= 0.75

spicymaki 4y ago

> 75% of Covid ‘long haulers’ free of symptoms in 12 months: McMaster study The submission headline is misleading. It is 25% of COVID patients are long haulers not 75% of long haulers are free of symptoms in 12 months.

mmphosis 4y ago
Sorry, I couldn't resist. I usually try to put the title in verbatim, but I've been reading https://old.reddit.com/r/UpliftingNews/ https://old.reddit.com/r/UpliftingNews/ lately!

fundad 4y ago

1 IN 4 CHANCE OF CHRONIC ILLNESS!

LarryMullins 4y ago

Most of "long covid" is psychosomatic. The more you promote the concept of "long covid" as legitimate, the more people suffer.

ljf 4y ago
What is this assertion based on?
- LarryMullins 4y ago
  Based on every single claimed case of "long covid" among my friends, family and acquaintances coming from people I already knew to be paranoid hypochondriac nutjobs. Most of them terminally-anxious white women, who've also claimed to have chronic lyme disease, gluten insensitivity, fibromyalgia, and a variety of other trendy self-diagnosed ailments that they stop talking about a few years later when they get bored and diagnose themselves with something new. Pretending this shit is real only makes it worse for them. They earnestly do suffer, but not for the reasons they claim; it's a sort of mental illness they suffer from.
  - ljf 4y ago
    Ok, so no medical study then or other peer reviewed paper. If you could back this up with any fact then I'd be interested in discussing. As this is just your ill-informed opinion, then I've no interest in talking more.
    - LarryMullins 4y ago
      Fine with me, but know this: If you keep promoting this as real, then you are culpable in their suffering.
      - ljf 4y ago
        I am watching my wife recover from this. Before long covid she was lifting 50kg at the gym and working out 5 days a week, she's been a fashion pr organising massive events, she's done more than most people and has a strong drive to live and enjoy life. After getting covid she was 'flu' ill for about 2 weeks then got worse. Along side losing her sense of smell (back before that was a known symptom), her heart rate and blood pressure spiked. About a year later she was diagnosed with POTS and myocarditis. She's been lucky that after another 6 or so months, and numerous tests showing her heart issues, that it slowly got better. Her blood pressure still drops, and her heart rate can still spike occasionally. Despite all this all she wants is to get better and to enjoy life and our kids again. She can work again now (though she's had to move into a new career) but is shattered easily. She'd love to workout but even light exercise can leave her wiped out for a day or two. She's building back up slowly, but for someone who did so much, it is a real pain. So please realise that most people with long covid have no interest in sitting and suffering. All they want is to be better. Not being believed and stupid comments like yours do more damage than you can imagine. (note that after SARs infections people had similar responses - so long covid should not be considered novel).

vgt 4y ago

There's a good chance COVID trigger an autoimmune disease in me, and from what i gathered this autoimmune disease is on the rise last couple of years.

fundad 4y ago
Next thing we are going to hear is CEO's blaming these autoimmune diseases on people being at their desks too much.

randomopining 4y ago

You need to rest and take certain supplements to heal the endothelial system, allow the body to clear any remnants of the virus, and then damper down the immune excitation. Pycnogenol, nattokinase, grape seed extract, vit d/c, b vits, etc.

orwin 4y ago

I losing the sense of smell was the weirdest experiment of my life so far.

asteroidbelt 4y ago
Hey Orwin, I've found why Chad Loder was banned: https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1611107762775228420 https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1611107762775228420 (Sorry for offtopic here, original thread is closed, and I don't have your other contacts.)
- orwin 4y ago
  So, he basically gave tips on how to use molotov cocktails, and responded "You're goddamn right I am" to someone who accused him of supporting criminals. Ok, so this is politic, and had nothing to do with the reporting of twitter data being available on the dark web. Not sure which is worse.