4 ms·

Long Covid is debilitating 65M people. Where is the urgency to treat it?

28 points by gardenfelder 3y ago

gardenfelder 3y ago
>In a world where most pandemic safety protocols have evaporated, where is the sense of urgency to treat, or at the very least support, people with long COVID?
- version_five 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - Llamamoe 3y ago
    Just as a thought experiment, what would you have done if a pandemic of a highly contagious, extremely severe new illness with uncertain symptoms from which over a third of of people don't seem to recover as was the case with the early variants, and nobody seemed to care? Because that's where we were at for several months even with lockdowns, travel restrictions, and mandatory masking.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
sylware 3y ago
Look at what is happening to youtube physics girl. scary...
- Llamamoe 3y ago
  She is very much so an extreme case, though I'd argue that any loss of ability to participate in and enjoy life is tragic. I have a friend who "only" became unable to work and restricted in daily life by both physical and mental fatigue for two years, and she's been close to taking her own life over that.
- gardenfelder 3y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/@physicsgirl https://www.youtube.com/@physicsgirl
- clove 3y ago
  QRD?
Llamamoe 3y ago
In the same place where the urgency to treat every other chronic illness: Nowhere. As a society we're so used to treating efficacy as a virtue that we view most fatigue-related disability as a psychological and moral failure of the person, and its care fully reflects this. This is not unique to long COVID. It's time to face the fact that healthcare is deeply broken. It's great at reducing symptom burden with meds, and solving physically obvious issues with surgery, but completely incurious and helpless to remedy the causes of chronic illness, often even when science identifying them has existed for decades (such as sleep disordered breathing(apnea and UARS), at their root caused by underdeveloped jaws). I know many chronically ill people. The standard is for them to spend years, even decades being treated dismissively and sent to the psychologists for "depression" before they even receive a diagnosis, and then for nothing, or too little, to be done to treat it.
porkbeer 3y ago
So is 'long covid' the lingering effects of infection, or a lingering infection? People seem to be conflating both. I also see tons of hypochondriacs claiming they have it, likely making actual identification and treatment worse. Add to that the confounding variable of possible vax interactions and you can see the tinfoil hats begin to glisten in the morning light.

28 points by gardenfelder 3y ago

>In a world where most pandemic safety protocols have evaporated, where is the sense of urgency to treat, or at the very least support, people with long COVID?

version_five 3y ago
[flagged]
- Llamamoe 3y ago
  Just as a thought experiment, what would you have done if a pandemic of a highly contagious, extremely severe new illness with uncertain symptoms from which over a third of of people don't seem to recover as was the case with the early variants, and nobody seemed to care? Because that's where we were at for several months even with lockdowns, travel restrictions, and mandatory masking.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]

sylware 3y ago

Look at what is happening to youtube physics girl. scary...

Llamamoe 3y ago
She is very much so an extreme case, though I'd argue that any loss of ability to participate in and enjoy life is tragic. I have a friend who "only" became unable to work and restricted in daily life by both physical and mental fatigue for two years, and she's been close to taking her own life over that.
gardenfelder 3y ago
https://www.youtube.com/@physicsgirl https://www.youtube.com/@physicsgirl
clove 3y ago
QRD?

Llamamoe 3y ago

In the same place where the urgency to treat every other chronic illness: Nowhere. As a society we're so used to treating efficacy as a virtue that we view most fatigue-related disability as a psychological and moral failure of the person, and its care fully reflects this. This is not unique to long COVID. It's time to face the fact that healthcare is deeply broken. It's great at reducing symptom burden with meds, and solving physically obvious issues with surgery, but completely incurious and helpless to remedy the causes of chronic illness, often even when science identifying them has existed for decades (such as sleep disordered breathing(apnea and UARS), at their root caused by underdeveloped jaws). I know many chronically ill people. The standard is for them to spend years, even decades being treated dismissively and sent to the psychologists for "depression" before they even receive a diagnosis, and then for nothing, or too little, to be done to treat it.

porkbeer 3y ago

So is 'long covid' the lingering effects of infection, or a lingering infection? People seem to be conflating both. I also see tons of hypochondriacs claiming they have it, likely making actual identification and treatment worse. Add to that the confounding variable of possible vax interactions and you can see the tinfoil hats begin to glisten in the morning light.