4 ms·

I've seen people claim that the vaccines ultimately cured their long covid. My suspicion is that a significant portion of long covid cases (and I'd be willing t

I've seen people claim that the vaccines ultimately cured their long covid. My suspicion is that a significant portion of long covid cases (and I'd be willing to bet a majority) are better described as anxiety disorders. I say that as someone with a large amount of personal knowledge on the subject of anxiety gained over a lifetime. Including lots of bowel issues.

wayfinder 3y ago
Well I could reasonably bike up one specific very steep hill near my place without downshifting much until I got covid. Then it took me more then half a year to get back to that point. It was a very slow recovery but most importantly, it could be quantitatively measured first from how far until I had to disembark my bike to walk up the rest of the hill to eventually the lowest gear I had to to shift into to get to the top without ever disembarking. I’ve never had any other flu-like sickness cause me to be weak for so long.
- beagle3 3y ago
  I didn’t either, but a friend did take almost a year to completely recover what was (likely) the flu. One should remember that the flu has been around forever, so the flus you are comparing to were probably the 10th exposure - recovering from a new illness - and not being a small child - may take much longer.
Izkata 3y ago
If I remember right, something like 60% of people who claim to have long covid have never tested positive for covid. It could be they never got a test, or it was just too long to still be positive, but whatever the exact number was it was a really high percentage so I'm also leaning towards a large amount of it being psychosomatic or having some other cause.
perbu 3y ago
This is very typical. If you know a lot of about anxiety, you'll have an anxiety bias and will try to explain everything as anxiety. Psychologists will also perceive LC to be psychological. Immunologists tend to think it is immune related, gastrologs think it is gut-related, etc. Out of all these it's quite simple to dismiss the psychological explanations of LC. There are obvious physical changes found in various tissue and blood in LC patients. Changes that we can be reasonably certain aren't caused by mental issues.

wayfinder 3y ago

Well I could reasonably bike up one specific very steep hill near my place without downshifting much until I got covid. Then it took me more then half a year to get back to that point. It was a very slow recovery but most importantly, it could be quantitatively measured first from how far until I had to disembark my bike to walk up the rest of the hill to eventually the lowest gear I had to to shift into to get to the top without ever disembarking. I’ve never had any other flu-like sickness cause me to be weak for so long.

beagle3 3y ago
I didn’t either, but a friend did take almost a year to completely recover what was (likely) the flu. One should remember that the flu has been around forever, so the flus you are comparing to were probably the 10th exposure - recovering from a new illness - and not being a small child - may take much longer.

Izkata 3y ago

If I remember right, something like 60% of people who claim to have long covid have never tested positive for covid. It could be they never got a test, or it was just too long to still be positive, but whatever the exact number was it was a really high percentage so I'm also leaning towards a large amount of it being psychosomatic or having some other cause.

perbu 3y ago

This is very typical. If you know a lot of about anxiety, you'll have an anxiety bias and will try to explain everything as anxiety. Psychologists will also perceive LC to be psychological. Immunologists tend to think it is immune related, gastrologs think it is gut-related, etc. Out of all these it's quite simple to dismiss the psychological explanations of LC. There are obvious physical changes found in various tissue and blood in LC patients. Changes that we can be reasonably certain aren't caused by mental issues.