8 ms·

The big qiestion for me is how many other viruses cause long-covid-like symptoms? I suspect that there are a significant amount of people who have fatigue and d

The big qiestion for me is how many other viruses cause long-covid-like symptoms? I suspect that there are a significant amount of people who have fatigue and depression issues that have actually been infected with a virus and have been misdiagnosed. It's great that there is progress towards better diagnosis.

dekhn 3y ago
It's already well known that there are huge numbers of vague symptoms caused by viral infections, but the topic wasn't nearly at the top of people's minds before COVID. For example, herpes viruses. They are widespread and likely cause any number of health problems that are hard to disentangle.
Llamamoe 3y ago
Nothing nearly as common as Long COVID, but yes, ME/CFS and neurodegeneration seem to be linked to herpesvirus (re)activation, often following another immune or stressor event. I'd guess poor gut microbiomes and sleep disordered breathing caused by poor jaw development and nasal breathing issues to be far more common causes of fatigue and depression. But yeah, science is slowly waking up to the fact that turns out that psychiatric conditions are, after all, caused by physiological factors in way more cases than we used to think.
- londons_explore 3y ago
  Are there any benefits to these herpesvirus and various other viruses? If the downsides outweigh the upsides, why aren't we just eliminating them, as we have done for more deadly viruses like smallpox and polio?
  - mlyle 3y ago
    > If the downsides outweigh the upsides, why aren't we just eliminating them, as we have done for more deadly viruses like smallpox and polio? - We don't have an effective vaccine yet, let alone one that is sterilizing. - More than half of the population has HSV-1. - HSV-1 lies dormant then reactivates and sheds, often asymptomatically. It's unclear how you'd eradicate it, given these facts.
    - Solvency 3y ago
      It's weird how unimaginative this field seems from a distance. What is stopping modern medicine from engineering a competitive virus/bacteria/fungi that lurks about nerve bundles, attacks the herpes virus, and self-deprecates itself after.
      - Workaccount2 3y ago
        Whoever come up with the idea of "God", a grand genius master architect, clearly had no understanding of how unbelievably shitty the engineering of living organisms is. I really cannot emphasize enough how poorly designed our bodies are. A physical manifestation of uncommented, heavily obfuscated, spaghetti code that's only viewable and editable in binary. And every "program" (human) is different and unique. Yes, living things are amazing, but any designer approaching even basic levels competence factors in repairability and serviceability. So all that is to say: It's crazy complex and any single thing is liable to have myriad first order, second order, third order...30th order negative effects.
      - dekhn 3y ago
        Unimaginative? Here's what stopping modern medicine from doing that: 1) we don't know how to make what you describe 2) if we did, we don't know if it would be safe to put in humans 3) the consequences getting this wrong could be very severe 4) getting such a thing approved would be nearly impossible because we have no idea how to evaluate something like this. It's not from lack of imagination- even if you solved the technical difficulties (which are copious), there would still be huge regulatory burdens to overcome (which are even harder to overcome than medical research). With that said, we've already done similar things with lentivirus, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lentiviral_vector_in_gene_therapy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lentiviral_vector_in_gene_ther... but one side effect is cancer, another being complex immune system reactions. Lentivirus are useful because they can invade non-dividing cells, for example nerve cells aren't dividing, which means most viruses won't target them. I worked in this field for a few decades but it was all wasted time. Nobody is going to support you working on a research project like this.
      - nocsi 3y ago
  - npunt 3y ago
    Vaccines for herpesviruses are not easy to make because the virus can evade the immune system by laying dormant in nerves, among other things. It's just a tough family of viruses to pin down. There's a phase 1 EBV vaccine [1] but it'll be a while before we see progress. [1]: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-launches-clinical-trial-epstein-barr-virus-vaccine https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-launches-c...
    - londons_explore 3y ago
      A vaccine doesn't need to stop someone getting infected. It needs to stop that person passing their infection on to others. Thats easier to achieve.
  - naasking 3y ago
    Eliminate them how? They're largely asymptomatic and hide from our immune systems in various ways.
  - Llamamoe 3y ago
    I'm unaware of ANY viral infections having any upsides, possibly excepting whatever's native to our gut microbiome. And herpesviruses are very complicated to fight against.
themitigating 3y ago
Not an expert at all but isn't fatigue connected to depression which itself might not be (or exclusively?) a mental disorder?
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
  Fatigue is a symptom of depression. It is also a symptom of pneumonia. I had COVID, back before it was fashionable (February, 2020). It took me 10 months to feel normal again (the acute symptoms lasted 2 weeks. I hadn’t been that sick in decades). Fatigue figured prominently. While I was experiencing acute symptoms, getting up to go to the bathroom basically finished my day. I thought I had pneumonia, and the really scary stuff stopped, just before I was going to go to hospital. Thank Cthulhu I didn’t go. They would have killed me, and I would have infected a lot of people (as it was, all my family and friends got it. Share, and share alike).
  - dcwardell 3y ago
    > They would have killed me I'm curious about this. Could you share more? Is there evidence that hospitalization with COVID worsened the outcome? As background, my father was hospitalized with COVID and passed away.
    - ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
      In the early days, they jammed you onto a respirator. Apparently, this was the worst thing you could do.
      - themitigating 3y ago
        Was this known at the time? If not, was it the best choice given the information then? You say that as if there is a just one doctor running one hospital in the entire world. I'm also aware the CDC gives advice but was this part of it?
        3y ago
minsight 3y ago
There is much more information about Long Covid than the general public is aware of. The assumption that it is merely a wide range of vaguely defined symptoms isn't valid. More details: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-022-00846-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-022-00846-2
- Animats 3y ago
  This. There's more understanding now, and less ambiguity. Long COVID is an inflammation disease, and can be seen in MRI scans of heart, lungs, and brain. Recovery seems to be in the first year or not at all. “As soon as it’s 12 months, it plateaus,” says study co-author Tala Ballouz, an epidemiologist at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. “You have a higher chance of recovery during the first year, and after one year it really becomes more of a chronic condition.”[1] The incidence is estimated at 10–30% of non-hospitalized cases, 50–70% of hospitalized cases, and 10–12% of vaccinated cases. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02121-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02121-7 [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02121-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02121-7
  - dent9876543 3y ago
    > 10–30% of non-hospitalized cases Since roughly everyone should be expected to become infected, doesn't this mean that 10-30% of the population would have had, or should expect to get, Long COVID? That just doesn't tally with what you see out in the world.
    - Scramblejams 3y ago
      You probably won't notice most of 'em. The term Long Covid (shortened here to "LC") covers an array of symptoms and severities. For example, depending on who's defining the duration, if after infection you feel light fatigue for 3 months and it then goes away, you've had LC. Most people I interact with have no idea I've been experiencing LC for a year. I know what it's done to my stamina, but they usually don't.
gerbilly 3y ago
Lots, like the common flu for example. Just google 'post viral fatigue syndrome.' Acute onset ME/CFS is also frequently linked to a viral infection. I think there is a lot of overlap with burnout too. Basically when you are in a chronic state of stress from work or other factors, a viral infection can be the straw which breaks the camel's back, which can provoke a burnout.
- londons_explore 3y ago
  I think it's time for a 'war on viruses'. Pick the top 10 viruses by human impact (both initial infection and suspected ongoing health degradation). Make mRNA vaccines for each, and spray them from a plane over major cities. Repeat every month as new variants start to spread. Consider it a 'nationwide immune system'. Would there be ethics problems - surely yes. But if it can be shown to save lives, can we ethically not do this?
  - jeromegv 3y ago
    Seeing how the Covid vaccine is measurably saving lives and how the republicans managed to make it a political issue and a matter of “personal choice”, you can be sure there are no chances of that happening. The period of doing things for the greater good and mandating vaccine is just over Ex: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/04/how-covid-made-it-nearly-impossible-to-pass-new-vaccine-rules-00100073 https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/04/how-covid-made-it-n...
    - spookthesunset 3y ago
      Why is deciding what goes into your body a political issue?
      - gerbilly 3y ago
        I have to laugh at this 'not in my body' argument when a lot of people making it are putting all sorts of stuff in their bodies which are very questionable: sucking down sugary drinks all day, eating junk and processed foods, even taking street drugs (who knows what in that). Let's cut to the heart of it, this 'not in my body' argument is just a rationalisation for an oppositional personality trait. Hey, I hate being told what to do, but I don't push it to the point where I refuse to do something which benefits me.
mikrotikker 3y ago
I got a friend who had leptosporosis, on top of depression. 12 years later he still suffers chronic fatigue. His only recourse after doctors were clueless was a naturopath. Now high dose of vitamins and never ever stopping is the only way he can stay moving. I'm talking like 100hr weeks doing beekeeping moving beehives around the country, dragging tonnes of beehives using 4wd and trailers, winching up 4wd tracks etc and in the off season wheeling and dealing vehicles. If he takes a holiday his immune takes a dive and he gets sick as a dog.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

dekhn 3y ago

It's already well known that there are huge numbers of vague symptoms caused by viral infections, but the topic wasn't nearly at the top of people's minds before COVID. For example, herpes viruses. They are widespread and likely cause any number of health problems that are hard to disentangle.

Llamamoe 3y ago

Nothing nearly as common as Long COVID, but yes, ME/CFS and neurodegeneration seem to be linked to herpesvirus (re)activation, often following another immune or stressor event. I'd guess poor gut microbiomes and sleep disordered breathing caused by poor jaw development and nasal breathing issues to be far more common causes of fatigue and depression. But yeah, science is slowly waking up to the fact that turns out that psychiatric conditions are, after all, caused by physiological factors in way more cases than we used to think.

londons_explore 3y ago
Are there any benefits to these herpesvirus and various other viruses? If the downsides outweigh the upsides, why aren't we just eliminating them, as we have done for more deadly viruses like smallpox and polio?
- mlyle 3y ago
  > If the downsides outweigh the upsides, why aren't we just eliminating them, as we have done for more deadly viruses like smallpox and polio? - We don't have an effective vaccine yet, let alone one that is sterilizing. - More than half of the population has HSV-1. - HSV-1 lies dormant then reactivates and sheds, often asymptomatically. It's unclear how you'd eradicate it, given these facts.
  - Solvency 3y ago
    It's weird how unimaginative this field seems from a distance. What is stopping modern medicine from engineering a competitive virus/bacteria/fungi that lurks about nerve bundles, attacks the herpes virus, and self-deprecates itself after.
    - Workaccount2 3y ago
      Whoever come up with the idea of "God", a grand genius master architect, clearly had no understanding of how unbelievably shitty the engineering of living organisms is. I really cannot emphasize enough how poorly designed our bodies are. A physical manifestation of uncommented, heavily obfuscated, spaghetti code that's only viewable and editable in binary. And every "program" (human) is different and unique. Yes, living things are amazing, but any designer approaching even basic levels competence factors in repairability and serviceability. So all that is to say: It's crazy complex and any single thing is liable to have myriad first order, second order, third order...30th order negative effects.
    - dekhn 3y ago
      Unimaginative? Here's what stopping modern medicine from doing that: 1) we don't know how to make what you describe 2) if we did, we don't know if it would be safe to put in humans 3) the consequences getting this wrong could be very severe 4) getting such a thing approved would be nearly impossible because we have no idea how to evaluate something like this. It's not from lack of imagination- even if you solved the technical difficulties (which are copious), there would still be huge regulatory burdens to overcome (which are even harder to overcome than medical research). With that said, we've already done similar things with lentivirus, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lentiviral_vector_in_gene_therapy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lentiviral_vector_in_gene_ther... but one side effect is cancer, another being complex immune system reactions. Lentivirus are useful because they can invade non-dividing cells, for example nerve cells aren't dividing, which means most viruses won't target them. I worked in this field for a few decades but it was all wasted time. Nobody is going to support you working on a research project like this.
    - nocsi 3y ago
- npunt 3y ago
  Vaccines for herpesviruses are not easy to make because the virus can evade the immune system by laying dormant in nerves, among other things. It's just a tough family of viruses to pin down. There's a phase 1 EBV vaccine [1] but it'll be a while before we see progress. [1]: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-launches-clinical-trial-epstein-barr-virus-vaccine https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-launches-c...
  - londons_explore 3y ago
    A vaccine doesn't need to stop someone getting infected. It needs to stop that person passing their infection on to others. Thats easier to achieve.
- naasking 3y ago
  Eliminate them how? They're largely asymptomatic and hide from our immune systems in various ways.
- Llamamoe 3y ago
  I'm unaware of ANY viral infections having any upsides, possibly excepting whatever's native to our gut microbiome. And herpesviruses are very complicated to fight against.

themitigating 3y ago

Not an expert at all but isn't fatigue connected to depression which itself might not be (or exclusively?) a mental disorder?

ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
Fatigue is a symptom of depression. It is also a symptom of pneumonia. I had COVID, back before it was fashionable (February, 2020). It took me 10 months to feel normal again (the acute symptoms lasted 2 weeks. I hadn’t been that sick in decades). Fatigue figured prominently. While I was experiencing acute symptoms, getting up to go to the bathroom basically finished my day. I thought I had pneumonia, and the really scary stuff stopped, just before I was going to go to hospital. Thank Cthulhu I didn’t go. They would have killed me, and I would have infected a lot of people (as it was, all my family and friends got it. Share, and share alike).
- dcwardell 3y ago
  > They would have killed me I'm curious about this. Could you share more? Is there evidence that hospitalization with COVID worsened the outcome? As background, my father was hospitalized with COVID and passed away.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
    In the early days, they jammed you onto a respirator. Apparently, this was the worst thing you could do.
    - themitigating 3y ago
      Was this known at the time? If not, was it the best choice given the information then? You say that as if there is a just one doctor running one hospital in the entire world. I'm also aware the CDC gives advice but was this part of it?
      - 3y ago

minsight 3y ago

There is much more information about Long Covid than the general public is aware of. The assumption that it is merely a wide range of vaguely defined symptoms isn't valid. More details: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-022-00846-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-022-00846-2

Animats 3y ago
This. There's more understanding now, and less ambiguity. Long COVID is an inflammation disease, and can be seen in MRI scans of heart, lungs, and brain. Recovery seems to be in the first year or not at all. “As soon as it’s 12 months, it plateaus,” says study co-author Tala Ballouz, an epidemiologist at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. “You have a higher chance of recovery during the first year, and after one year it really becomes more of a chronic condition.”[1] The incidence is estimated at 10–30% of non-hospitalized cases, 50–70% of hospitalized cases, and 10–12% of vaccinated cases. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02121-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02121-7 [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02121-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02121-7
- dent9876543 3y ago
  > 10–30% of non-hospitalized cases Since roughly everyone should be expected to become infected, doesn't this mean that 10-30% of the population would have had, or should expect to get, Long COVID? That just doesn't tally with what you see out in the world.
  - Scramblejams 3y ago
    You probably won't notice most of 'em. The term Long Covid (shortened here to "LC") covers an array of symptoms and severities. For example, depending on who's defining the duration, if after infection you feel light fatigue for 3 months and it then goes away, you've had LC. Most people I interact with have no idea I've been experiencing LC for a year. I know what it's done to my stamina, but they usually don't.

gerbilly 3y ago

Lots, like the common flu for example. Just google 'post viral fatigue syndrome.' Acute onset ME/CFS is also frequently linked to a viral infection. I think there is a lot of overlap with burnout too. Basically when you are in a chronic state of stress from work or other factors, a viral infection can be the straw which breaks the camel's back, which can provoke a burnout.

londons_explore 3y ago
I think it's time for a 'war on viruses'. Pick the top 10 viruses by human impact (both initial infection and suspected ongoing health degradation). Make mRNA vaccines for each, and spray them from a plane over major cities. Repeat every month as new variants start to spread. Consider it a 'nationwide immune system'. Would there be ethics problems - surely yes. But if it can be shown to save lives, can we ethically not do this?
- jeromegv 3y ago
  Seeing how the Covid vaccine is measurably saving lives and how the republicans managed to make it a political issue and a matter of “personal choice”, you can be sure there are no chances of that happening. The period of doing things for the greater good and mandating vaccine is just over Ex: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/04/how-covid-made-it-nearly-impossible-to-pass-new-vaccine-rules-00100073 https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/04/how-covid-made-it-n...
  - spookthesunset 3y ago
    Why is deciding what goes into your body a political issue?
    - gerbilly 3y ago
      I have to laugh at this 'not in my body' argument when a lot of people making it are putting all sorts of stuff in their bodies which are very questionable: sucking down sugary drinks all day, eating junk and processed foods, even taking street drugs (who knows what in that). Let's cut to the heart of it, this 'not in my body' argument is just a rationalisation for an oppositional personality trait. Hey, I hate being told what to do, but I don't push it to the point where I refuse to do something which benefits me.

mikrotikker 3y ago

I got a friend who had leptosporosis, on top of depression. 12 years later he still suffers chronic fatigue. His only recourse after doctors were clueless was a naturopath. Now high dose of vitamins and never ever stopping is the only way he can stay moving. I'm talking like 100hr weeks doing beekeeping moving beehives around the country, dragging tonnes of beehives using 4wd and trailers, winching up 4wd tracks etc and in the off season wheeling and dealing vehicles. If he takes a holiday his immune takes a dive and he gets sick as a dog.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]