17 ms·

Covid's damage lingers in the heart

284 points by belltaco 3y ago

superkuh 3y ago
This article is framed in such an odd way. As if the virus that literally uses the ACE2 receptor for cell entry wouldn't have cardiovascular effects or if they were not known and assumed immediately. That's wild. The article itself doesn't even have the letter sequence "ACE2" in it... Of course binding to ACE2 is going to throw the cardiovascular Renin/Angiotensin system all out of wack. Even if the sars-cov-2 virus weren't specifically entering and killing off ACE2 expressing cardiovascular cells.
- afavour 3y ago
  I think it’s an article targeted at laypeople, many of whom consider COVID to be a respiratory disease like the flu. It’s simply spreading awareness of the fact that it’s more complicated than that.
  - wutwutwat 3y ago
    > COVID‑19 is caused by infection with a strain of coronavirus known as 'Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus 2' (SARS-CoV-2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19#Cause https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19#Cause > Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‑CoV‑2)[2] is a strain of coronavirus that causes COVID-19, the respiratory illness responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS-CoV-2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS-CoV-2
    - afavour 3y ago
      I’m not suggesting that COVID isn’t a respiratory disease but that its effects seem to go beyond solely the respiratory system.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - Grubbo 3y ago
        It passes the bloodbrain barrier.
      - mharig 3y ago
        Like influenza.
    - francisofascii 3y ago
      not "just" a respiratory disease
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
- yieldcrv 3y ago
  A lot of obvious things like that were met with source!?!? stop fearmongering!!! thats a preprint!! despite such things clearly needing 3 years to begin existing while there was a need to react in the present. so having a source is nice. thats the odd paradigm of studies, either nobody agrees with it or everyone says “well, duh”
  - mlyle 3y ago
    On the flip-side, we know we're easily fooled and that the scientific method is a barely sufficient set of tools to be fooled a lot less. There was a sea of preprints pointing in different directions, and it was difficult to navigate and know whom to believe. Someone believing something strongly 3 years ago based on a few preprints is hardly vindicated for having great process when published research comes out validating that view now. IMO the only approach is to roll with the punches and to go "ehhhhh, mayyyybe." (And of course use the best weight of information we have now).
    - yieldcrv 3y ago
      > There was a sea of preprints pointing in different directions, and it was difficult to navigate and know whom to believe. right, this was only obvious with particular education instead of relying on the educated, who were saying all sorts of random things in every direction.
      - mlyle 3y ago
        > this was only obvious with particular education instead of relying on the educated, Hindsight bias. We tend to remember our intuitions when we were right, instead of fairly measuring them. Thus, we become convinced we are reliable and experts are not. Damage to other tissues, especially from mild illness, was a possibility that was neither well-supported nor well-refuted in 2020. It was clear there was morbidity risk, but the mechanism was not understood (and is still not well-understood) and the magnitude was also uncertain and confounded.
        3y ago
- croes 3y ago
  Never seen the hashtag #SuddenlyAndUnexpected used to blame every sudden (heart related) death to the Corona vaccines because the virus as such is harmless and just a flu or cold?
  - _ea1k 3y ago
    It is bizarre tbh. I've had people say "why are they only talking about covid heard damage now, after the vaccines?" But we were all talking about this way back in 2020. People just have strange memories and attention windows.
    - wolverine876 3y ago
      > People just have strange memories and attention windows. Indeed, but IMHO the strangeness is in you (and many others): How do you are you still calling this behavior "strange" - as if it's inexplicable - after seeing it right in front of your nose for years (in many areas, not just covid)? Think of it this way: I can predict when this behavior will occur (though not its precise presentation). So can you. What predicts - what strongly correlates with - this behavior of theirs? \ \ \ \ \ \ (Answer, obscured to prevent accidental reading: xreactionaryxpoliticsx.xthexreactionaryxmovementxfabricatesxwhateverxsuitsxtheirxideologicalxgoalsx;xtruthxandxconsequencesx,xincludingxhumanxlifex,xarexdisregarded.xwhenxthexmovementxturnedxagainstxcoronavirusx(toxbexantiliberal)xixhadxnoxdoubtxwhatxwasxcoming).
      - rsynnott 3y ago
        It's probably not surprising that it happens to some extent (like, you get flat earthers and FotLs/SovCits and various other loonies), but more how _common_ it is. It has to be one of this century's most widespread conspiracy theories.
        wolverine876 3y ago
        I'm not talking about random 'loonies', but a large movement that follows the same playbook every time - probably the most influential social force of the day, electing US presidents and other world leaders, oppressing people worldwide, causing mass social change, etc. They follow the same playbook, with the same rhetorical tactics, every time! Look at the reactionary (sometimes called populist) political messaging in country after country - it's like it's written by the same person. > It has to be one of this century's most widespread conspiracy theories. The same group of people believe all sorts of conspiracy theories.
- pdonis 3y ago
  The article does not appear to be claiming that SARS-CoV-2 damages the heart directly. From the article: "Research has since shown that myocytes for the most part escape infection. Instead, SARS-CoV-2 damages the heart indirectly by unleashing inflammatory reactions that affect cardiovascular functioning."
  - isolli 3y ago
    The same is true of pneumonia, I believe.
- bugglebeetle 3y ago
  The popular narrative, including that being pushed by most western governments, is that COVID either never was or is no longer is dangerous, beyond the level of other common respiratory illnesses. This article begins from that (false) framing.
  - AlecSchueler 3y ago
    Is that false? I thought that that was the understanding from the get go, that for most people or was fine but that it was dangerous for certain people with pre-existibg respiratory issues, of whom there were enough that their sudden and widespread hospital admittance put a strain on the health service as a whole, meaning that all sorts of other issues that were normally easily treated became considerably more dangerous due to a lack of staff/facilities. What is the true narrative?
    - francisofascii 3y ago
      The "long Covid" or long term health effects are missing from that narrative. And these can be unrelated to respiratory issues, like the heart issues. And the set who suffer from "long Covid" does not seem to be correlated with those with respiratory pre-existing conditions.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > thought that that was the understanding from the get go There were many get go’s, and one for each variant. I know a healthy person who got the original and then delta variant, the latter which attacked his pancreas and left him with type 1 diabetes. > for most people or was fine but that it was dangerous for certain people with pre-existibg respiratory issues For most people, it’s asymptomatic in the short term. We’ve known it would have novel systemic effects from the “get go,” because it hits a nasty receptor. With the flu, a cytokine storm and non-respiratory cellular damage is a fluke. With Covid, every infection—even the asymptomatic ones—damage the gut, testes, gallbladder and heart (ACE2). We don’t know how that damage manifests in the long run, there hasn’t been a long run. But we know there is damage being accumulated. We just don’t know if it’s benign. (You can’t generally look at a body and tell how many times it’s had the flu. You can with Covid.)
- MightyBuzzard 3y ago
  [dead]
- libraryatnight 3y ago
  It's written this way to hopefully get some information across to people trippin on fox acid.
fullarr 3y ago
Gone in our minds but forever in our hearts <3
- throwaway1777 3y ago
  [flagged]
- euroderf 3y ago
  Quiet cities. Clean air.
RobertRoberts 3y ago
[flagged]
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > this may be a clever way of deflecting the blame from the vaccines causing heart damage My understanding is the effects are different. The vaccine-caused effects manifest in the young and are not understood. We can’t predict it nor even really detect it in autopsy and just see it after the fact as a statistical ghost. The exposure-caused damage is generally studied in the unvaccinated population; it creates measurable damage. (The recurring confounding variable is income and education; the unvaccinated are poorer and less educated, both within the country and globally.)
  - RobertRoberts 3y ago
    Considering the reports of vaccine damage being under reported (or not reported at all) and massive over estimating of deaths and damage caused by covid (exacerbated by government funding influencing reporting) how could we ever test for the differences accurately?
- akprasad 3y ago
  The article states that doctors observed an increased rate of cardiac injuries in COVID-19 patients in early 2020, well before vaccines were available.
  - RobertRoberts 3y ago
    This could be a correlation and anecdotal data.
- gwill 3y ago
  please read the article and use some critical thinking. it goes into detail about how the virus works and lingers as well as goes into data from well before the development of the first covid vaccine.
- 3y ago
swayvil 3y ago
[flagged]
- candiddevmike 3y ago
  Correlation is not causation, if that's what you're implying...
  - swayvil 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - AlecSchueler 3y ago
      But what do you mean then by "covid is sneakier than we think" if not to imply a casual relation?
      - swayvil 3y ago
        Oh, I thought that you thought that I was insinuating that the heart attacks were caused by the vax. Oh yes, I was definitely suggesting that the heart attacks were caused by covid. Covid is notorious for messing with your heart. Right?
garganzol 3y ago
Covid can be viewed as a metabolic disease. Not only because it may directly reduce the amount of oxygen in the blood, but also because it creates tons of inflammation and oxidative stress, and that stress seems to affect cells and their energy producing apparatus (mitochondria), causing damages. Those acquired damages inhibit the production of sufficient amounts of energy (ATP). As a consequence, this creates a fertile ground for other pathologies: neurological, cardiac, gastrointestinal, endocrine, autoimmune. In many ways, post-covid is similar to the effects created by beriberi and pellagra diseases. The worst thing is that the incidence of post-covid is hard to predict as it does not depend on severity of the initial disease. If you had a covid, you should be very attentive to a possible onset of post-viral symptoms.
- ifyoubuildit 3y ago
  > If you had a covid, you should be very attentive to a possible onset of post-viral symptoms. Why? This might cause more harm than good, and if it's something that turns out bad enough, you probably don't need to be particularly attentive to notice it.
  - garganzol 3y ago
    To avoid wasting precious time. If left untreated, post-covid may make person's life miserable, full of pain, suffering, chronic fatigue, and inability to work. There is no standard treatment yet, but things that treat beriberi and pellagra do seem to work for post-covid as well, to some degree.
    - simmanian 3y ago
      what are some good post-covid treatments? I seem to be having symptoms of depression after covid. WebMD says a thiamine-rich diet is good to treat beri beri, but not sure if "eating better" can help me out here.
      - jonReadingNews 3y ago
        Officially? None. See https://x.com/erictopol/status/1689303073494335488 https://x.com/erictopol/status/1689303073494335488
thenerdhead 3y ago
This article feels like it is walking on eggshells of previous controversial topics while also acknowledging the evidence for them. Also this sentence is just strange to me. The whole point of open science is peer review and truth I thought? > An initial rush to respond to the pandemic produced a flood of observational and non-randomized studies in this area, he says, which spread more confusion than illumination. The common "streetlight effect" bias comes to mind: > A policeman sees a drunk man searching for something under a streetlight and asks what the drunk has lost. He says he lost his keys and they both look under the streetlight together. After a few minutes the policeman asks if he is sure he lost them here, and the drunk replies, no, and that he lost them in the park. The policeman asks why he is searching here, and the drunk replies, "this is where the light is". https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect
- jjgreen 3y ago
  Also widely told in Applied Mathematics departments, with the police replaced by an applied mathematician and the drunk replaced by a pure mathematician.
- elcritch 3y ago
  The worst part IMHO was that most of that stuff was backed up by saying “trust the science” and anyone who criticized it was accused of being “anti-science”.
  - acuozzo 3y ago
    No, the worst part is the propaganda which forced the medical community to hastily construct a counter-propaganda campaign. The "trust the science" messaging emerged only in response to a tidal wave of nonsense. Do you really think anyone involved wanted to focus on PR rather than the real problem(s) at hand?
    - nradov 3y ago
      Come on. The medical community was never "forced" to do anything. A small minority of the medical community voluntarily abused their positions of trust to overstate the strength of scientific evidence and advocate for public health policies that were never justified on an evidence-based medicine basis. Those miscreants sacrificed their own credibility for no benefit, and what's worse is they caused public blowback in other areas.
irrational 3y ago
[flagged]
- alienicecream 3y ago
  [flagged]
- DoneWithAllThat 3y ago
  The Covid vaccine does not cause heart disease, and you need to find a better way to spend your time than lying on the internet.
  - Dig1t 3y ago
    I know a 26 year old guy who died of heart failure after getting his. It was a huge shock because he was a really healthy guy.
  - Faaak 3y ago
    the CDC seems to say so: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/myocarditis.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/my... ?
  - calculatte 3y ago
    Whatever it is, it isn't this ONE THING. And that cannot be questioned. Science!
  - SirMaster 3y ago
    I am curious because you seem so confident. But I keep seeing stuff like this that seems to conclude that there is some correlation between the vaccines and heart disease. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9538893/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9538893/
  - orangepurple 3y ago
    Please do not spread these unscientific falsehoods here. We are interested in keeping this a space for civil, courteous, and curious discussion. Whosoever seeks the truth will not proceed by studying the writings of his predecessors and by simply accepting his own good opinion of them. Whosoever studies works of science must, if he wants to find the truth, transform himself into a critic of everything he reads. He must examine tests and explanations with the greatest precision and question them from all angles and aspects. Ehsan Masood, Science and Islam p: 169
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
blindriver 3y ago
[flagged]
- berdon 3y ago
  You’re calling a scientific article unscientific? I think there’s a difference in not liking the direction or application of science and whether something is science or not. Edit: Hm, the article is more of a summary/fluff piece. But I still think your argument is more appropriately disagreeing with the direction of science than it is a lack of the application of science.
  - onthecanposting 3y ago
    What makes something scientific are falsifiable statements supported by careful observation and tests in controlled conditions. Not titles. Not affiliation with institutions. Recognition by the press or government is irrelevant to the truth value of research. I think the whole scientific edifice is or is about to become a bad caricature of the medieval Catholic Church, and is just as in need of a Martin Luther to remind everyone that integrity and a return to principals is long overdue.
    - bugglebeetle 3y ago
      This is a somewhat ironic analogy, as Martin Luther was a deranged anti-Semite who called for the mass dispossession and murder of Jews. So, as about as irrational as the church he criticized. Protestant factions subsequently won a Europe-wide war, so he’s not remembered this way in the popular consciousnesses, but this is exactly the kind of person I would expect to decry the “scientific edifice.”
      - onthecanposting 3y ago
        That your only criteria for judging a historical figure is whether or not he's an unconditional supporter of your favorite ethnic group doesn't come off as very objective.
- 3y ago
gentleman11 3y ago
Sounds like inflammation and blood clots are the problem. Could an anti inflammatory like ibuprofen significantly reduce risk then?
- pookha 3y ago
  Aspirin... https://www.medschool.umaryland.edu/news/2023/aspirin-as-effective-as-blood-thinner-injections-to-prevent-deadly-complications-in-patients-hospitalized-with-bone-fractures.html https://www.medschool.umaryland.edu/news/2023/aspirin-as-eff... https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2790439 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...
- 0xbadcafebee 3y ago
  "If infected lungs are incapable of effectively exchanging oxygen and carbon dioxide, then stressed hearts might suffer damage due to insufficient oxygen." "Among the more common lingering problems — affecting up to one-third of all patients with long COVID — is postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), which causes the heart to beat abnormally fast. [...] in people with POTS, the blood vessels may not constrict appropriately. Instead, the heart rate must rise even more than normal to compensate for the “lazy” blood vessels, says Lee Lewis. Conversely, the parasympathetic nervous system kicks in when the body rests, instructing blood vessels to dilate and instructing the heart to beat more slowly so the blood pressure goes down." "Similar to POTS, if patients remain sedentary for too long, Anagnostopoulos says, they could develop cardiac atrophy; decreased stroke volume, meaning that the heart doesn’t pump enough blood out of the left ventricle during contraction; or compensatory tachycardia, characterized by resting heart rates that exceed 100 beats per minute." A blood thinner or anti-inflammatory isn't going to treat the POTS or sedentary effects, and deprivation of oxygen is going to do longer-term damage to the heart. If you did use an anti-inflammatory, you'd have to use it at a low dose for a long period of time (months), but that's still not addressing the other issues.
- colechristensen 3y ago
  Vitamin D moderates inflammation and has a decent amount of evidence for reducing intensity of covid and other upper respiratory infections. Specifically vitamin D deficiency makes things worse and most people are at least mildly lacking.
michaelrpeskin 3y ago
Yes, the heart really has no capacity for repair. It just simply scars over. That's why things like "transient myocarditis" are scary. The inflammation may be transient, but the damage is long lasting.
- 01100011 3y ago
  This is a big claim, and I'd be interested to hear more. It isn't entirely surprising given that the heart is in constant motion, unlike skeletal muscles which can repair while uncontracted.
  - imchillyb 3y ago
    Not OP, but: > The human heart has only limited self-healing powers and a limited regenerative capacity. A damaged heart muscle and the resulting loss of function can usually not be fully restored. The reason for this is that heart muscle cells in the adult organism have largely lost their ability to divide. > https://www.mpg.de/17679417/heart-regeneration-after-reprogramming-of-cardiac-muscle-cells https://www.mpg.de/17679417/heart-regeneration-after-reprogr...
    - michaelrpeskin 3y ago
      Yes, good find. One description that always resonated with me is the tradeoff between capacity for repair and uncontrolled repair or cancer. Think of two extremes: 1) no capacity for repair: once something is damaged, the cells don't divide and you lost functionality. But there can be no run-away growth or cancer. 2) infinite capacity for repair: damage cells can always be repaired but a bad instruction can cause run away division and growth and become cancerous. So evolution has to figure out where to turn that knob. Do you want to allow repair at a risk of cancer? Generally things that didn't get "injured" evolved to reduce repair capacity. Rarely (ever?) do you hear of heart or eye cancer. Those cells just don't have much repair capacity. But think of skin. That's always getting damaged, so it makes sense for there to be more capacity of repair there at the cost of more cancer. It's all tradeoffs. And it can change over (generational) time. Consider a warring population, if people are getting killed younger before they have the time to get cancer, then that population will end up with more capacity for repair because it makes more sense for survival to repair because cancer never gets involved. And the converse can happen, when long life becomes the norm then the tradeoff change and cancer prevention is more beneficial than total repair capacity. Just painting with broad strokes here, it's not exact, but a trend that does show up between populations.
harrid 3y ago
[flagged]
- r2_pilot 3y ago
  We sure do appreciate your brave "calling out" of "forbidden topics". Your contribution to the intellectual discourse here is invaluable.
  - GistNoesis 3y ago
    I mean it's obvious. Do we really need to spell it out ? The bright eyed cat revealed everything. You just have to follow the mouse.
- standeven 3y ago
  Instead of hinting at it, they should support the forbidden topic with credible evidence. And if the vast majority of credible evidence contradicts the forbidden topic, then maybe it's not forbidden, it's just incorrect and people are tired of seeing it.
  - bitlax 3y ago
    What are you talking about? Statements about this particular vaccine which turned out to be accurate have been removed here for years.
- mint2 3y ago
  I’m not clear what people would be posting about that’s not extremely contrived. This is an article about how bad Covid is for the heart. Are you saying people are still making the anti-vax flawed neophobic claim that vaccines are worse than Covid. If that’s the case, I feel sad for those people suffering from their phobias.
  - GistNoesis 3y ago
    Three letters that shouldn't be there but are. (Hint: they appear in the firstname of physicsgirl).
ekianjo 3y ago
[flagged]
- demondemidi 3y ago
  Tobacco? BPA? Leaded gas? Trollitis?
- belltaco 3y ago
  From April 2020, far before any covid vaccine came out: > An article entitled “Impact of complicated myocardial injury on the clinical outcome of severe or critically ill COVID-19 patients” in CJC by Professor Hesong Zeng and colleagues from Tongji Hospital Affiliated to Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, reported on the impact of evidence of myocardial injury among patients with COVID-19. > Among patients with myocardial injury, hospital mortality was more than three times higher than the normal serum cardiac troponin level. Moreover, the levels of C-reactive protein, average 153.6 ng/L vs. 49.8 ng/L, and N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide, 852.0 ng/L vs. 197.0 ng/L, were significantly higher in patients with myocardial injury. > It appears that prevalence of myocardial injury is high among severe or critically ill COVID-19 patients, who face a significantly higher risk of in-hospital mortality. > Furthermore, the study suggests that it is important to monitor and manage myocardial injury during hospitalization for severe or critically ill COVID-19 patients. > The chest computed tomography (CT) features of patients with heart failure are similar to those with COVID-19. > Therefore, it is a great challenge to make a clear diagnosis early during the global pandemic, as pointed out by Professor Shenghua Zhou and colleagues from Second Xiangya Hospital of Central South University in their article entitled “Comparison of heart failure and COVID-2019 in chest CT features and clinical characteristics.” > For imaging features, both groups had ground-glass opacity and thickening of interlobular septa, but the ratio of central and gradient distribution was higher in patients with heart failure than that in patients with COVID-19 (4/7 vs. 1/12). > It seems enlargement of pulmonary veins, lesion distribution, and morphology are highly important clinical findings to identify the chest CT features between heart failure and COVID-19. Additional research on the prognosis, evaluation, and management of cardiovascular diseases and cardiovascular complications in COVID-19 patients is essential. https://www.acc.org/Latest-in-Cardiology/ten-points-to-remember/2020/04/06/10/37/Initial-COVID-19-Affecting-Cardiac-Patients https://www.acc.org/Latest-in-Cardiology/ten-points-to-remem...
sproketboy 3y ago
[dead]
vinay_ys 3y ago
I went to cardiologists for a mild burning sensation in my chest area, post recovery of my first & only covid infection, in early 2022. They dismissed my concerns. A year after recovery, I resumed my routine strenuous exercises, and I noticed I had elevated resting and walking heart-rate and my apple watch would alert me of abnormal heart rates. I went to cardiologists again and they dismissed my concerns again. Both times, they did all the usual battery of tests (Echo, TMT/EKG, cholesterol, blood markers etc) and they all came "normal". They basically told me stop googling things and to throw away my smart watch. Anyway, another thing my watch was telling was that I wasn't getting enough sleep and I focused on fixing that. A few months after that, my resting heart rate started to trend down and has come back to pre-covid levels. I don't know what to make of it all. One expensive doctor explained it to me this way – historically medical community don't have enough data about how post-infection recovery has been in large populations w.r.t heart rates. Only recently, with smart watches etc such data is available. Until that smart wearable data is scientifically studied, analyzed and concluded, the doctors won't change their diagnostics and treatment protocols, for good reason. While I understand that, I felt that their current protocols are for suited for well-advanced and well-presenting cardiac diseases that occur in old people.
- enqk 3y ago
  In my experience (in my non-US country) doctors don't make much use of heart rate for diagnosis at all. We check things with a pulse oximeter when feeling unwell and quite often we see elevated heart basal rates associated with infections, uncorrelated with body temperature. These tends to correlate quite fell with feelings of tiredness/uncomfort. I found it interesting that doctors most of the times feel entirely uninterested with this.
- Lord-Jobo 3y ago
  >One expensive doctor explained it to me this way – historically medical community don't have enough data about how post-infection recovery has been in large populations w.r.t heart rates. Only recently, with smart watches etc such data is available. This is absolutely true and one part of the root problem. The other aspect of this is that most of the heart tracking devices we use live on the wrist and the data is of questionable quality and application. Many cardiologists know this and dismiss the devices and its uses wholesale, but that approach is wrong. The data isnt 'wholesale bad' its just bad at many things (hilariously, particularly bad at the things they advertise on the most). One of the things its GOOD at doing is noting when your heart is behaving differently from your baselines, which is why its generally pretty good at noting AFIB or pre-AFIB characteristics, for example. This level of complexity on the issue, coupled with the relative lack of understanding with post-infection behavior/detailed immunoresponse, is definitely leading to some less than ideal approaches to patient care. and obviously the nature of COVID, being the first generally uniform viral infection of the entire population since 1918, being a huge wrench. source: I am not a doctor in any way, my dad has a 30 year history of complex heart problems and i get to speak with his specialists a lot. like, 12 of them by this point. I work in tech and play with many types of health tracker devices regularly so it comes up in conversation.
kindatrue 3y ago
Huh, so covid is more serious than a cold? Good thing we're adding more Purell stations everywhere /s lol jk no one even refills them anymore
- Garvi 3y ago
  > Huh, so covid is more serious than a cold? So you're saying that all those scientific studies that prove you wrong with 0 that prove you right actually prove that the vast majority of scientists, pharmacists and medical doctors are "in on it"? You should work more on critical thinking, but I'm not expecting anything but personal insults from a person like this. I actually know a guy that was on respirators and a medical induced coma for 2 weeks because of covid. Age 45, morbidly overweight. They saved his life. Still doesn't believe in covid and talks shit about doctors. Fits his personality tho as he once killed a guy because of a minor drunken disagreement (hit him in the face, the fall and trauma to the head did the rest, spent years in jail).
theNJR 3y ago
Got my second bout of COVID two weeks ago and my resting heart rate has been about 10BMP higher ever since (normal 55, now 65+). I only missed two days of workouts, but had much lower volume for over a week. A quick google search shows this isn't that uncommon and it's one of those 'wait and see' situations. Frustrating and I wonder if there's a longterm consequence. Strangely, the first time I got COVID it had no impact on RHR. Second time I was hit much harder and couldn't leave bed for a full day, something that has never happened to me.
s1gnp0st 3y ago
I've long feared that while different factions were bickering about the vaccines, the truth might be that the vaccines and covid both risk the kinds of tissue damage associated with the protein spike in some subset of the population. Medicine doesn't have perfect answers.
- drewrv 3y ago
  A plane could crash and a car could crash. One method of travel is still safer than the other.
  - wpasc 3y ago
    Lol this metaphor perplexes me. I don't have strong COVID opinions, but I'm really confused by this metaphor, is the plane crash full on COVID? Planes are safer overall of course, but if you introduce the Bayesian prior of given: you have been in a crash, which vehicle would you rather be in, car or plane? I'd probably say car. I got my COVID shot and largely agree that while the vaccine may have some risks, seemingly getting raw COVID w/o vaccines is probably worse. but i don't even care about that in this context, your metaphor has 100% taken me off work task :)
    - reso 3y ago
      I'm pretty sure the plane is "living life vaccinated" and the car is "living life unvaccinated". They both have risks but one is riskier than the other per unit time/distance.
  - s1gnp0st 3y ago
    I do not think that's an insightful metaphor for the situation, nor do I think you made any effort to understand the nuance I was trying to convey. It may very well be that this particular vaccine caused new health problems in some (likely small, but non-negligible) part of the population, and that the trade-offs involved still weigh heavily in favor of vaccination. Absent mindless "if you aren't with us, you're with the terrorists" thinking, one might hope that the negative health impacts would be investigated and mitigated to further improve the vaccine technology.
paxys 3y ago
Nothing that a little Ivermectin can't fix I'm sure. At least that's what everyone on HN told me at the peak of covid.
- plagiarist 3y ago
  They are still here beyond the peak to remind us that the vaccine has a 100% mortality rate, lockdowns (and the elderly) are worthless, and also that coronavirus is a "gain of function" bioweapon funded directly by Dr. Fauci.
yetanotherloss 3y ago
We're just now really getting studies propagating into medical knowledge of a lot of this. I have covid-related tinnitus and despite the huge uptick in people reporting these symptoms post infection it took until this year to find a doctor that had specific interest in the subject. Heart damage has been a known likely problem for a while, hopefully we're on the cusp of better diagnosis and treatment protocols.
halfjoking 3y ago
[flagged]
- Firmwarrior 3y ago
  It was the wildest thing. This bold new vaccine tech was 100% safe and 100% effective, and ready to go at the perfect time when we needed an excuse to reopen the economy
- michaelrpeskin 3y ago
  And now there's this new article showing an actual mechanism (or at least more direct than just populational studies). https://bpspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/bph.16262 https://bpspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/bph....
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- standeven 3y ago
  HN believes it because it's true. Your link (to a twitter post) says nothing to the contrary. "People infected with COVID-19 before receiving a vaccine were 11 times more at risk for developing myocarditis within 28 days of testing positive for the virus. But that risk was cut in half if a person was infected after receiving at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine." https://www.heart.org/en/news/2022/08/22/covid-19-infection-poses-higher-risk-for-myocarditis-than-vaccines https://www.heart.org/en/news/2022/08/22/covid-19-infection-... "Risk of incident myocarditis is more than seven times higher in persons who were infected with the SARS-CoV-2 than in those who received the COVID-19 vaccines" https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcvm.2022.951314/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcvm.2022.95131... "The incidences of myopericarditis after mRNA COVID-19 vaccination among adolescents aged 12–17 years were very rare; they were not higher than other important reference incidences." https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X23006102 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X2...
  - halfjoking 3y ago
denvaar 3y ago
I ended up with pulmonary embolism as a young (early 30s), healthy guy. Still not sure what caused it, but the doctor thought it may be COVID. The strange thing is that I never tested positive or had symptoms, though my spouse had it just before that happened. I have noticed an uptick in people having all sorts of "out of the blue" health problems shortly after COVID. It's hard to know what's related and what's not, because, while I'm sure there are many lasting effects we don't understand yet, it's always easy to just chalk up the bad things to being due to COVID.
peteyPete 3y ago
I find it quite tiresome to read so many people be instantly doubtful when more progress is made in understanding Covid and long-covid, resorting to medical gaslighting as a defence mechanism to feeling inadequate or just not understanding what patients are suffering through. One would think we'd be in a medical age where we stop jumping to psychological conclusions as a way to explain everything and get sick people to retreat into their sad corners. Reality is, its not all that new, is not solely attributable to Covid and there should/could have been much more research conducted a long time ago that would/could have laid way more ground work instead of researchers coming out with articles years after the fact that just reverberate what many have known all along. Post-Acute Sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC) overlaps other post viral fatigue syndromes associated with other infections. SARS 2003 also left many with a storm of symptoms that almost perfectly aligned with Long-covid. The infection itself may stem from a different virus or one related, so the onset of the infection, the aggressiveness of the virus, how quickly it peaks and how the immune system reacts, may be different, but many of the sequelas overlap. Many viral infection impact the body differently but devolve into pneumonia for example. So the connection between viral illnesses and ME/CFS and/or POTS may not be a specific protein, or specific interactions, but the shock to bodies, the response to a viral illness followed by secondary infections. The strain put on the immune system, the inflammation, the cytokine storm, etc. Myalgic encephalomyelitis, also called chronic fatigue syndrome, or ME/CFS for short, has been affecting people for a long time. It has been triggered in people after viral infections. POTS risk factors as noted by Hopkins medicine (https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/postural-orthostatic-tachycardia-syndrome-pots#:~:text=POTS%20Risk%20Factors https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseas...) "may begin after an apparent or confirmed viral illness, but it can also appear following surgery and other health events." ME/CFS + POTS (very often comorbid) like chronic illnesses have been cropping up for a long time. Due to the array of symptoms experienced by everyone, its made it hard to differentiate between the combination of potential symptoms and individual symptoms in isolation and the fact that there's no single test to diagnose ME/CFS. The diagnostic requirements for POTS are much simpler and clear, although a cure is also elusive. There has also been a severe lack of knowledge within the medical community, as these aren't resolved illnesses, so patients have been brushed under the rug, misdiagnosed and prescribed treatments which have often been counter productive and even harmful in many events. The complexity of it all and lack of explanations or solutions for patients has frustrated doctors. Lets go back a look at multiple flu epidemics and their long term outcomes. In "Historical Insight into Infections and Disorders Associated with Neurological and Psychiatric Sequelae Similar to Long COVID" https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33633106/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33633106/ they mention "Historically, the common symptom of altered cognition has been reported during earlier pandemics, which include the influenza pandemics of 1889 and 1892 (Russian flu), the Spanish flu pandemic (1918-1919), encephalitis lethargica, diphtheria, and myalgic encephalomyelitis (chronic fatigue syndrome or post-viral fatigue syndrome)." In "Lessons from the 1918/1919 Influenza Pandemic" https://www.colorado.edu/asmagazine/2020/04/09/lessons-19181919-influenza-pandemic https://www.colorado.edu/asmagazine/2020/04/09/lessons-19181..., "Dr. G. Holliday wrote to the British Medical Journal on August 17, 1918, that “mental symptoms were frequent” in the cases he saw; Samuel West informed readers of The Lancet in Feb. 1, 1919, that “the depression which follows influenza is so constant that it ought to be regarded as part of the disease.” The medical correspondent for The Times, having contracted the illness himself, advised readers that “the most distressing symptom was a swift loss of mental capacity and then inability to think coherently.” “All forms of hysteria have been observed after influenza,” reported Thomson and Thomson in 1919,” such as hysterical convulsions and the so-called hystero-epilectic attacks.” “Post-influenzal neurasthenia is very familiar,” they noted, “post-influenzal psychoses” “frequently observed and reported.” They cited a study that asserted that influenza, “of all the infectious diseases . . . is the most likely to be followed by mental disorder.” Note "Post-influenzal neurasthenia", or "an ill-defined medical condition characterized by lassitude, fatigue, headache, and irritability, associated chiefly with emotional disturbance.". In today's medicine, doctors are required to rule all known and understood causes of all your symptoms before coming to the conclusion that you suffer from ME/CFS. Thats if you're lucky to get a doctor who's heard of this and if your doctor had the patience to follow you through all these non conclusive diagnostic tests, all while not defaulting to the simple and all to common medical gaslighting which usually involve telling you its all in your head. Since after all, you're complaining of too many things wrong at once, everything seems inconclusive, so you sound a bit off, and mental capacity is most often affected, brain fog being a very common overlapping symptom between all these post viral conditions, and you're easy to dismiss. Combine brain fog, uncontrollable fatigue, POTS like symptoms, and patients are more often than not just seen as headcases, hysterical, and a waste of time. If you read stories of patients who are now diagnosed with ME/CFS / POTS, many have been ill for decades, spent years and years if not decades seeking answers, most of them no longer living among the masses but chronically ill and barely meeting their basic needs day to day, the majority unable to even work. They're referred to now as "millions missing", and they've been too ill to fight, to ill to be seen, too ill to be recognized. Its not until there's pandemics or large groups affected by some viral strain that the media starts talking about a rise in deaths or illnesses that some fringe articles will dig deeper and mention how a subset of people seem to just "stay sick" etc, often without relating the similarity between outcomes after other viral illnesses. With Covid having been so impactful and so much money being invested in research, its being talked about quite a bit more now, finally. That being said, it was clear before this even left China that what was to follow would be just as bad as the virus itself. Some people already had "long-covid", or post-viral fatigue, or one of the many names that seem to all want to describe these illnesses, and what would seem to be this fresh discovery of "long-covid" and all these mysteries left all previous sufferers dumb founded since they had been brushed under the rug and medically gaslit for decades. Its almost like the medical community runs out of time trying to figure it out and eventually moves on and when it comes up again, they slap another title on it and start all over again, often without taking into account every previous instance that could be used as a starting point. Obviously every virus, often every strain, can infect differently and have a different set of primary symptoms, but it should be clear by now that post viral and often chronic conditions, especially after flu like infections, seem to have a definite overlap. I remember watching clips and amateur news coming out of China in early to mid January 2020 and thinking to myself OMG, I hope this doesn't spread across the globe. The aftermath is going to be worse than the virus itself. Only reason I instantly thought this is my partner contracted SARS in 2003 and after barely surviving, having spent 2 weeks in the ICU, went on to develop a host of issues including stroke, ME/CFS, POTS, and brain fog to just name the main overlapping ones. Having dealt with this for two decades, having exhausted all options available in current medicine, the impact of long-covid or post viral illness has been devastating. It has stripped so many of their lives, it has left so many as dysfunctional shells of their former selves, unable to work or contribute in meaningful ways in their lives, not due to lack of desire or willpower, but a body and mind that won't follow. I've seen first hand the struggle of seeing someone fight with everything they have to just be themselves, a person who did what they had to in order to overcome whatever life through at them, but now, the harder they fight, the harder they fall as their bodies reminds them after any amount of effort, exercise, or too much brain work, that they are ill, and they crash, almost as a punishment for even trying to fight, exacerbating many of their symptoms for days, weeks, even months. The long lasting effects of this will not only be those who were lost, but those who now depend on the system and their loved ones, while requiring more medical attention. When its one person, its one thing, when its a percentage of your population, regardless of the whole digit representing that subset, the costs are huge. You're talking about a whole percentage of your population who essentially becomes a disabled retiree at whatever age they get ill. Those costs pile up over a lifetime, as does the collective loss of productivity within society. While society will adapt and readjust, it doesn't change anything for the millions upon millions who spend the rest of their lives desperately seeking answers, cures, any simple advancement that will give them a piece of their old lives back. alright.. done typing, thanks for coming to my Ted talk.
spandextwins 3y ago
Need more impartial AI to assist doctors and lawyers. They're just people. Overworked. But in most cases overpaid.
randomopining 3y ago
Fucoidan (from seaweed) is the solution to any Covid aftereffects for much of the population. It directly solves these endothelial issues. Amazing stuff.
t0bia_s 3y ago
Article completely ignore fact that vaccines do harm heart too. There are many studies on this topic. --- Risks of myocarditis, pericarditis, and cardiac arrhythmias associated with COVID-19 vaccination or SARS-CoV-2 infectionhttps://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01630-0#Aff1 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01630-0#Aff1 Vaccine-Associated Myo/Pericarditis in Adolescents: A Stratified Risk-Benefit Analysis https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eci.13759 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eci.13759 Persistent Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Imaging Finfings in a Cohort of Adolescents with Post-Coronavirus Disease 2019 mRNA Vaccine Myopericarditis https://www.jpeds.com/article/S0022-3476(22)00282-7/fulltext https://www.jpeds.com/article/S0022-3476(22)00282-7/fulltext Epidemiology of Acute Myocarditis/Pericarditis in Hong Kong Adolescents Following Comirnaty Vaccination https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34849657/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34849657/ Age and sex-specific risks of myokarditis and pericarditis following Covid-19 messenger RNA vaccines https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9233673/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9233673/ Goddard K.et al: Risk of myokarditis and pericarditis following BT162b2 and mRNA-1273 COVID-19 vaccination, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9273527/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9273527/ Bardosh K.et al: COVID-19 Vaccine Boosters for Young Adults: A Risk-Benefit Assessment and Five Ethical Arguments against Mandates at Universities https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4206070 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4206070 Oster M.E. et al: Myocarditis Cases Reported After mRNA-Based COVID-19 Vaccination in the US From December 2020 to August 2021 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2788346 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2788346 Lai F.T. et al: Carditis After COVID-19 Vaccination With a Messenger RNA Vaccine and an Inactivated Virus Vaccine https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/full/10.7326/M21-3700?rfr_da https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/full/10.7326/M21-3700?rfr_da... Massari M. et al: Postmarketing active surveillance of myokarditis and pericarditis following vaccination with COVID-19 mRNA vaccines in persons aged 12 to 39 years in Italy: A multi-database, self-controlled case series study https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34849657/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34849657/ SARS-CoV-2 Vaccination and Myocarditis in a Nordic Cohort Study of 23 Million Residents https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamacardiology/fullarticle/ https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamacardiology/fullarticle/... A Case of Vaccine-Induced Thrombocytopenic Thrombosis Manifesting as Cerebral Venous Thrombosis and Intracerebral Bleed https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9894637/ https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9894637/ Protection and waning of natural and hybrid COVID-19 immunity https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.04.21267114v https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.04.21267114v... Acute Inflammatory Diseases of the Central Nervous System After SARS-CoV-2 Vaccination https://nn.neurology.org/content/10/1/e200063.abstract https://nn.neurology.org/content/10/1/e200063.abstract A Comparison of Cases of Autoimmune Hepatitis After Vaccination Against COVID-19 https://journals.lww.com/acgcr/Fulltext/2023/01000/It_Can_t_ https://journals.lww.com/acgcr/Fulltext/2023/01000/It_Can_t_... Cerebral venous sinus thrombosis after COVID-19 vaccination: a case report and literature review https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9853928/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9853928/ COVID-19 vaccine surveillance report Week 42 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/ https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... Physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD... Increases in COVID-19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries and 2947 counties in the United States https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-021-00808-7 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-021-00808-7 Pooled number of deaths by age group https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ COVID-19 Cases and Hospitalizations by COVID-19 Vaccination Status and Previous COVID-19 Diagnosis https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104e1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104e1.htm To Evaluate the Safety, Tolerability, and Immunogenicity of BNT162b2 Against COVID-19 in Healthy Pregnant Women 18 Years of Age and Older https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04754594 https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04754594 Apparent risks of postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome diagnoses after COVID-19 vaccination and SARS-Cov-2 Infection https://www.nature.com/articles/s44161-022-00177-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s44161-022-00177-8 Surveillance of COVID-19 vaccine safety among elderly persons aged 65 years and older https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36496287/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36496287/ Cardiovascular Manifestation of the BNT162b2 mRNA COVID-19 Vaccine in Adolescents https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36006288/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36006288/

284 points by belltaco 3y ago

This article is framed in such an odd way. As if the virus that literally uses the ACE2 receptor for cell entry wouldn't have cardiovascular effects or if they were not known and assumed immediately. That's wild. The article itself doesn't even have the letter sequence "ACE2" in it... Of course binding to ACE2 is going to throw the cardiovascular Renin/Angiotensin system all out of wack. Even if the sars-cov-2 virus weren't specifically entering and killing off ACE2 expressing cardiovascular cells.

afavour 3y ago
I think it’s an article targeted at laypeople, many of whom consider COVID to be a respiratory disease like the flu. It’s simply spreading awareness of the fact that it’s more complicated than that.
- wutwutwat 3y ago
  > COVID‑19 is caused by infection with a strain of coronavirus known as 'Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus 2' (SARS-CoV-2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19#Cause https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19#Cause > Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‑CoV‑2)[2] is a strain of coronavirus that causes COVID-19, the respiratory illness responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS-CoV-2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS-CoV-2
  - afavour 3y ago
    I’m not suggesting that COVID isn’t a respiratory disease but that its effects seem to go beyond solely the respiratory system.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - Grubbo 3y ago
      It passes the bloodbrain barrier.
    - mharig 3y ago
      Like influenza.
  - francisofascii 3y ago
    not "just" a respiratory disease
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
yieldcrv 3y ago
A lot of obvious things like that were met with source!?!? stop fearmongering!!! thats a preprint!! despite such things clearly needing 3 years to begin existing while there was a need to react in the present. so having a source is nice. thats the odd paradigm of studies, either nobody agrees with it or everyone says “well, duh”
- mlyle 3y ago
  On the flip-side, we know we're easily fooled and that the scientific method is a barely sufficient set of tools to be fooled a lot less. There was a sea of preprints pointing in different directions, and it was difficult to navigate and know whom to believe. Someone believing something strongly 3 years ago based on a few preprints is hardly vindicated for having great process when published research comes out validating that view now. IMO the only approach is to roll with the punches and to go "ehhhhh, mayyyybe." (And of course use the best weight of information we have now).
  - yieldcrv 3y ago
    > There was a sea of preprints pointing in different directions, and it was difficult to navigate and know whom to believe. right, this was only obvious with particular education instead of relying on the educated, who were saying all sorts of random things in every direction.
    - mlyle 3y ago
      > this was only obvious with particular education instead of relying on the educated, Hindsight bias. We tend to remember our intuitions when we were right, instead of fairly measuring them. Thus, we become convinced we are reliable and experts are not. Damage to other tissues, especially from mild illness, was a possibility that was neither well-supported nor well-refuted in 2020. It was clear there was morbidity risk, but the mechanism was not understood (and is still not well-understood) and the magnitude was also uncertain and confounded.
      - 3y ago
croes 3y ago
Never seen the hashtag #SuddenlyAndUnexpected used to blame every sudden (heart related) death to the Corona vaccines because the virus as such is harmless and just a flu or cold?
- _ea1k 3y ago
  It is bizarre tbh. I've had people say "why are they only talking about covid heard damage now, after the vaccines?" But we were all talking about this way back in 2020. People just have strange memories and attention windows.
  - wolverine876 3y ago
    > People just have strange memories and attention windows. Indeed, but IMHO the strangeness is in you (and many others): How do you are you still calling this behavior "strange" - as if it's inexplicable - after seeing it right in front of your nose for years (in many areas, not just covid)? Think of it this way: I can predict when this behavior will occur (though not its precise presentation). So can you. What predicts - what strongly correlates with - this behavior of theirs? \ \ \ \ \ \ (Answer, obscured to prevent accidental reading: xreactionaryxpoliticsx.xthexreactionaryxmovementxfabricatesxwhateverxsuitsxtheirxideologicalxgoalsx;xtruthxandxconsequencesx,xincludingxhumanxlifex,xarexdisregarded.xwhenxthexmovementxturnedxagainstxcoronavirusx(toxbexantiliberal)xixhadxnoxdoubtxwhatxwasxcoming).
    - rsynnott 3y ago
      It's probably not surprising that it happens to some extent (like, you get flat earthers and FotLs/SovCits and various other loonies), but more how _common_ it is. It has to be one of this century's most widespread conspiracy theories.
      - wolverine876 3y ago
        I'm not talking about random 'loonies', but a large movement that follows the same playbook every time - probably the most influential social force of the day, electing US presidents and other world leaders, oppressing people worldwide, causing mass social change, etc. They follow the same playbook, with the same rhetorical tactics, every time! Look at the reactionary (sometimes called populist) political messaging in country after country - it's like it's written by the same person. > It has to be one of this century's most widespread conspiracy theories. The same group of people believe all sorts of conspiracy theories.
pdonis 3y ago
The article does not appear to be claiming that SARS-CoV-2 damages the heart directly. From the article: "Research has since shown that myocytes for the most part escape infection. Instead, SARS-CoV-2 damages the heart indirectly by unleashing inflammatory reactions that affect cardiovascular functioning."
- isolli 3y ago
  The same is true of pneumonia, I believe.
bugglebeetle 3y ago
The popular narrative, including that being pushed by most western governments, is that COVID either never was or is no longer is dangerous, beyond the level of other common respiratory illnesses. This article begins from that (false) framing.
- AlecSchueler 3y ago
  Is that false? I thought that that was the understanding from the get go, that for most people or was fine but that it was dangerous for certain people with pre-existibg respiratory issues, of whom there were enough that their sudden and widespread hospital admittance put a strain on the health service as a whole, meaning that all sorts of other issues that were normally easily treated became considerably more dangerous due to a lack of staff/facilities. What is the true narrative?
  - francisofascii 3y ago
    The "long Covid" or long term health effects are missing from that narrative. And these can be unrelated to respiratory issues, like the heart issues. And the set who suffer from "long Covid" does not seem to be correlated with those with respiratory pre-existing conditions.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > thought that that was the understanding from the get go There were many get go’s, and one for each variant. I know a healthy person who got the original and then delta variant, the latter which attacked his pancreas and left him with type 1 diabetes. > for most people or was fine but that it was dangerous for certain people with pre-existibg respiratory issues For most people, it’s asymptomatic in the short term. We’ve known it would have novel systemic effects from the “get go,” because it hits a nasty receptor. With the flu, a cytokine storm and non-respiratory cellular damage is a fluke. With Covid, every infection—even the asymptomatic ones—damage the gut, testes, gallbladder and heart (ACE2). We don’t know how that damage manifests in the long run, there hasn’t been a long run. But we know there is damage being accumulated. We just don’t know if it’s benign. (You can’t generally look at a body and tell how many times it’s had the flu. You can with Covid.)
MightyBuzzard 3y ago
[dead]
libraryatnight 3y ago
It's written this way to hopefully get some information across to people trippin on fox acid.

fullarr 3y ago

Gone in our minds but forever in our hearts <3

throwaway1777 3y ago
[flagged]
euroderf 3y ago
Quiet cities. Clean air.

RobertRoberts 3y ago

[flagged]

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> this may be a clever way of deflecting the blame from the vaccines causing heart damage My understanding is the effects are different. The vaccine-caused effects manifest in the young and are not understood. We can’t predict it nor even really detect it in autopsy and just see it after the fact as a statistical ghost. The exposure-caused damage is generally studied in the unvaccinated population; it creates measurable damage. (The recurring confounding variable is income and education; the unvaccinated are poorer and less educated, both within the country and globally.)
- RobertRoberts 3y ago
  Considering the reports of vaccine damage being under reported (or not reported at all) and massive over estimating of deaths and damage caused by covid (exacerbated by government funding influencing reporting) how could we ever test for the differences accurately?
akprasad 3y ago
The article states that doctors observed an increased rate of cardiac injuries in COVID-19 patients in early 2020, well before vaccines were available.
- RobertRoberts 3y ago
  This could be a correlation and anecdotal data.
gwill 3y ago
please read the article and use some critical thinking. it goes into detail about how the virus works and lingers as well as goes into data from well before the development of the first covid vaccine.
3y ago

swayvil 3y ago

[flagged]

candiddevmike 3y ago
Correlation is not causation, if that's what you're implying...
- swayvil 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - AlecSchueler 3y ago
    But what do you mean then by "covid is sneakier than we think" if not to imply a casual relation?
    - swayvil 3y ago
      Oh, I thought that you thought that I was insinuating that the heart attacks were caused by the vax. Oh yes, I was definitely suggesting that the heart attacks were caused by covid. Covid is notorious for messing with your heart. Right?

garganzol 3y ago

Covid can be viewed as a metabolic disease. Not only because it may directly reduce the amount of oxygen in the blood, but also because it creates tons of inflammation and oxidative stress, and that stress seems to affect cells and their energy producing apparatus (mitochondria), causing damages. Those acquired damages inhibit the production of sufficient amounts of energy (ATP). As a consequence, this creates a fertile ground for other pathologies: neurological, cardiac, gastrointestinal, endocrine, autoimmune. In many ways, post-covid is similar to the effects created by beriberi and pellagra diseases. The worst thing is that the incidence of post-covid is hard to predict as it does not depend on severity of the initial disease. If you had a covid, you should be very attentive to a possible onset of post-viral symptoms.

ifyoubuildit 3y ago
> If you had a covid, you should be very attentive to a possible onset of post-viral symptoms. Why? This might cause more harm than good, and if it's something that turns out bad enough, you probably don't need to be particularly attentive to notice it.
- garganzol 3y ago
  To avoid wasting precious time. If left untreated, post-covid may make person's life miserable, full of pain, suffering, chronic fatigue, and inability to work. There is no standard treatment yet, but things that treat beriberi and pellagra do seem to work for post-covid as well, to some degree.
  - simmanian 3y ago
    what are some good post-covid treatments? I seem to be having symptoms of depression after covid. WebMD says a thiamine-rich diet is good to treat beri beri, but not sure if "eating better" can help me out here.
    - jonReadingNews 3y ago
      Officially? None. See https://x.com/erictopol/status/1689303073494335488 https://x.com/erictopol/status/1689303073494335488

thenerdhead 3y ago

This article feels like it is walking on eggshells of previous controversial topics while also acknowledging the evidence for them. Also this sentence is just strange to me. The whole point of open science is peer review and truth I thought? > An initial rush to respond to the pandemic produced a flood of observational and non-randomized studies in this area, he says, which spread more confusion than illumination. The common "streetlight effect" bias comes to mind: > A policeman sees a drunk man searching for something under a streetlight and asks what the drunk has lost. He says he lost his keys and they both look under the streetlight together. After a few minutes the policeman asks if he is sure he lost them here, and the drunk replies, no, and that he lost them in the park. The policeman asks why he is searching here, and the drunk replies, "this is where the light is". https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect

jjgreen 3y ago
Also widely told in Applied Mathematics departments, with the police replaced by an applied mathematician and the drunk replaced by a pure mathematician.
elcritch 3y ago
The worst part IMHO was that most of that stuff was backed up by saying “trust the science” and anyone who criticized it was accused of being “anti-science”.
- acuozzo 3y ago
  No, the worst part is the propaganda which forced the medical community to hastily construct a counter-propaganda campaign. The "trust the science" messaging emerged only in response to a tidal wave of nonsense. Do you really think anyone involved wanted to focus on PR rather than the real problem(s) at hand?
  - nradov 3y ago
    Come on. The medical community was never "forced" to do anything. A small minority of the medical community voluntarily abused their positions of trust to overstate the strength of scientific evidence and advocate for public health policies that were never justified on an evidence-based medicine basis. Those miscreants sacrificed their own credibility for no benefit, and what's worse is they caused public blowback in other areas.

irrational 3y ago

[flagged]

alienicecream 3y ago
[flagged]
DoneWithAllThat 3y ago
The Covid vaccine does not cause heart disease, and you need to find a better way to spend your time than lying on the internet.
- Dig1t 3y ago
  I know a 26 year old guy who died of heart failure after getting his. It was a huge shock because he was a really healthy guy.
- Faaak 3y ago
  the CDC seems to say so: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/myocarditis.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/my... ?
- calculatte 3y ago
  Whatever it is, it isn't this ONE THING. And that cannot be questioned. Science!
- SirMaster 3y ago
  I am curious because you seem so confident. But I keep seeing stuff like this that seems to conclude that there is some correlation between the vaccines and heart disease. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9538893/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9538893/
- orangepurple 3y ago
  Please do not spread these unscientific falsehoods here. We are interested in keeping this a space for civil, courteous, and curious discussion. Whosoever seeks the truth will not proceed by studying the writings of his predecessors and by simply accepting his own good opinion of them. Whosoever studies works of science must, if he wants to find the truth, transform himself into a critic of everything he reads. He must examine tests and explanations with the greatest precision and question them from all angles and aspects. Ehsan Masood, Science and Islam p: 169

deleted 3y ago

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blindriver 3y ago

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berdon 3y ago
You’re calling a scientific article unscientific? I think there’s a difference in not liking the direction or application of science and whether something is science or not. Edit: Hm, the article is more of a summary/fluff piece. But I still think your argument is more appropriately disagreeing with the direction of science than it is a lack of the application of science.
- onthecanposting 3y ago
  What makes something scientific are falsifiable statements supported by careful observation and tests in controlled conditions. Not titles. Not affiliation with institutions. Recognition by the press or government is irrelevant to the truth value of research. I think the whole scientific edifice is or is about to become a bad caricature of the medieval Catholic Church, and is just as in need of a Martin Luther to remind everyone that integrity and a return to principals is long overdue.
  - bugglebeetle 3y ago
    This is a somewhat ironic analogy, as Martin Luther was a deranged anti-Semite who called for the mass dispossession and murder of Jews. So, as about as irrational as the church he criticized. Protestant factions subsequently won a Europe-wide war, so he’s not remembered this way in the popular consciousnesses, but this is exactly the kind of person I would expect to decry the “scientific edifice.”
    - onthecanposting 3y ago
      That your only criteria for judging a historical figure is whether or not he's an unconditional supporter of your favorite ethnic group doesn't come off as very objective.
3y ago

gentleman11 3y ago

Sounds like inflammation and blood clots are the problem. Could an anti inflammatory like ibuprofen significantly reduce risk then?

pookha 3y ago
Aspirin... https://www.medschool.umaryland.edu/news/2023/aspirin-as-effective-as-blood-thinner-injections-to-prevent-deadly-complications-in-patients-hospitalized-with-bone-fractures.html https://www.medschool.umaryland.edu/news/2023/aspirin-as-eff... https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2790439 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...
0xbadcafebee 3y ago
"If infected lungs are incapable of effectively exchanging oxygen and carbon dioxide, then stressed hearts might suffer damage due to insufficient oxygen." "Among the more common lingering problems — affecting up to one-third of all patients with long COVID — is postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), which causes the heart to beat abnormally fast. [...] in people with POTS, the blood vessels may not constrict appropriately. Instead, the heart rate must rise even more than normal to compensate for the “lazy” blood vessels, says Lee Lewis. Conversely, the parasympathetic nervous system kicks in when the body rests, instructing blood vessels to dilate and instructing the heart to beat more slowly so the blood pressure goes down." "Similar to POTS, if patients remain sedentary for too long, Anagnostopoulos says, they could develop cardiac atrophy; decreased stroke volume, meaning that the heart doesn’t pump enough blood out of the left ventricle during contraction; or compensatory tachycardia, characterized by resting heart rates that exceed 100 beats per minute." A blood thinner or anti-inflammatory isn't going to treat the POTS or sedentary effects, and deprivation of oxygen is going to do longer-term damage to the heart. If you did use an anti-inflammatory, you'd have to use it at a low dose for a long period of time (months), but that's still not addressing the other issues.
colechristensen 3y ago
Vitamin D moderates inflammation and has a decent amount of evidence for reducing intensity of covid and other upper respiratory infections. Specifically vitamin D deficiency makes things worse and most people are at least mildly lacking.

michaelrpeskin 3y ago

Yes, the heart really has no capacity for repair. It just simply scars over. That's why things like "transient myocarditis" are scary. The inflammation may be transient, but the damage is long lasting.

01100011 3y ago
This is a big claim, and I'd be interested to hear more. It isn't entirely surprising given that the heart is in constant motion, unlike skeletal muscles which can repair while uncontracted.
- imchillyb 3y ago
  Not OP, but: > The human heart has only limited self-healing powers and a limited regenerative capacity. A damaged heart muscle and the resulting loss of function can usually not be fully restored. The reason for this is that heart muscle cells in the adult organism have largely lost their ability to divide. > https://www.mpg.de/17679417/heart-regeneration-after-reprogramming-of-cardiac-muscle-cells https://www.mpg.de/17679417/heart-regeneration-after-reprogr...
  - michaelrpeskin 3y ago
    Yes, good find. One description that always resonated with me is the tradeoff between capacity for repair and uncontrolled repair or cancer. Think of two extremes: 1) no capacity for repair: once something is damaged, the cells don't divide and you lost functionality. But there can be no run-away growth or cancer. 2) infinite capacity for repair: damage cells can always be repaired but a bad instruction can cause run away division and growth and become cancerous. So evolution has to figure out where to turn that knob. Do you want to allow repair at a risk of cancer? Generally things that didn't get "injured" evolved to reduce repair capacity. Rarely (ever?) do you hear of heart or eye cancer. Those cells just don't have much repair capacity. But think of skin. That's always getting damaged, so it makes sense for there to be more capacity of repair there at the cost of more cancer. It's all tradeoffs. And it can change over (generational) time. Consider a warring population, if people are getting killed younger before they have the time to get cancer, then that population will end up with more capacity for repair because it makes more sense for survival to repair because cancer never gets involved. And the converse can happen, when long life becomes the norm then the tradeoff change and cancer prevention is more beneficial than total repair capacity. Just painting with broad strokes here, it's not exact, but a trend that does show up between populations.

harrid 3y ago

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r2_pilot 3y ago
We sure do appreciate your brave "calling out" of "forbidden topics". Your contribution to the intellectual discourse here is invaluable.
- GistNoesis 3y ago
  I mean it's obvious. Do we really need to spell it out ? The bright eyed cat revealed everything. You just have to follow the mouse.
standeven 3y ago
Instead of hinting at it, they should support the forbidden topic with credible evidence. And if the vast majority of credible evidence contradicts the forbidden topic, then maybe it's not forbidden, it's just incorrect and people are tired of seeing it.
- bitlax 3y ago
  What are you talking about? Statements about this particular vaccine which turned out to be accurate have been removed here for years.
mint2 3y ago
I’m not clear what people would be posting about that’s not extremely contrived. This is an article about how bad Covid is for the heart. Are you saying people are still making the anti-vax flawed neophobic claim that vaccines are worse than Covid. If that’s the case, I feel sad for those people suffering from their phobias.
- GistNoesis 3y ago
  Three letters that shouldn't be there but are. (Hint: they appear in the firstname of physicsgirl).

ekianjo 3y ago

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demondemidi 3y ago
Tobacco? BPA? Leaded gas? Trollitis?
belltaco 3y ago
From April 2020, far before any covid vaccine came out: > An article entitled “Impact of complicated myocardial injury on the clinical outcome of severe or critically ill COVID-19 patients” in CJC by Professor Hesong Zeng and colleagues from Tongji Hospital Affiliated to Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, reported on the impact of evidence of myocardial injury among patients with COVID-19. > Among patients with myocardial injury, hospital mortality was more than three times higher than the normal serum cardiac troponin level. Moreover, the levels of C-reactive protein, average 153.6 ng/L vs. 49.8 ng/L, and N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide, 852.0 ng/L vs. 197.0 ng/L, were significantly higher in patients with myocardial injury. > It appears that prevalence of myocardial injury is high among severe or critically ill COVID-19 patients, who face a significantly higher risk of in-hospital mortality. > Furthermore, the study suggests that it is important to monitor and manage myocardial injury during hospitalization for severe or critically ill COVID-19 patients. > The chest computed tomography (CT) features of patients with heart failure are similar to those with COVID-19. > Therefore, it is a great challenge to make a clear diagnosis early during the global pandemic, as pointed out by Professor Shenghua Zhou and colleagues from Second Xiangya Hospital of Central South University in their article entitled “Comparison of heart failure and COVID-2019 in chest CT features and clinical characteristics.” > For imaging features, both groups had ground-glass opacity and thickening of interlobular septa, but the ratio of central and gradient distribution was higher in patients with heart failure than that in patients with COVID-19 (4/7 vs. 1/12). > It seems enlargement of pulmonary veins, lesion distribution, and morphology are highly important clinical findings to identify the chest CT features between heart failure and COVID-19. Additional research on the prognosis, evaluation, and management of cardiovascular diseases and cardiovascular complications in COVID-19 patients is essential. https://www.acc.org/Latest-in-Cardiology/ten-points-to-remember/2020/04/06/10/37/Initial-COVID-19-Affecting-Cardiac-Patients https://www.acc.org/Latest-in-Cardiology/ten-points-to-remem...

sproketboy 3y ago

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vinay_ys 3y ago

I went to cardiologists for a mild burning sensation in my chest area, post recovery of my first & only covid infection, in early 2022. They dismissed my concerns. A year after recovery, I resumed my routine strenuous exercises, and I noticed I had elevated resting and walking heart-rate and my apple watch would alert me of abnormal heart rates. I went to cardiologists again and they dismissed my concerns again. Both times, they did all the usual battery of tests (Echo, TMT/EKG, cholesterol, blood markers etc) and they all came "normal". They basically told me stop googling things and to throw away my smart watch. Anyway, another thing my watch was telling was that I wasn't getting enough sleep and I focused on fixing that. A few months after that, my resting heart rate started to trend down and has come back to pre-covid levels. I don't know what to make of it all. One expensive doctor explained it to me this way – historically medical community don't have enough data about how post-infection recovery has been in large populations w.r.t heart rates. Only recently, with smart watches etc such data is available. Until that smart wearable data is scientifically studied, analyzed and concluded, the doctors won't change their diagnostics and treatment protocols, for good reason. While I understand that, I felt that their current protocols are for suited for well-advanced and well-presenting cardiac diseases that occur in old people.

enqk 3y ago
In my experience (in my non-US country) doctors don't make much use of heart rate for diagnosis at all. We check things with a pulse oximeter when feeling unwell and quite often we see elevated heart basal rates associated with infections, uncorrelated with body temperature. These tends to correlate quite fell with feelings of tiredness/uncomfort. I found it interesting that doctors most of the times feel entirely uninterested with this.
Lord-Jobo 3y ago
>One expensive doctor explained it to me this way – historically medical community don't have enough data about how post-infection recovery has been in large populations w.r.t heart rates. Only recently, with smart watches etc such data is available. This is absolutely true and one part of the root problem. The other aspect of this is that most of the heart tracking devices we use live on the wrist and the data is of questionable quality and application. Many cardiologists know this and dismiss the devices and its uses wholesale, but that approach is wrong. The data isnt 'wholesale bad' its just bad at many things (hilariously, particularly bad at the things they advertise on the most). One of the things its GOOD at doing is noting when your heart is behaving differently from your baselines, which is why its generally pretty good at noting AFIB or pre-AFIB characteristics, for example. This level of complexity on the issue, coupled with the relative lack of understanding with post-infection behavior/detailed immunoresponse, is definitely leading to some less than ideal approaches to patient care. and obviously the nature of COVID, being the first generally uniform viral infection of the entire population since 1918, being a huge wrench. source: I am not a doctor in any way, my dad has a 30 year history of complex heart problems and i get to speak with his specialists a lot. like, 12 of them by this point. I work in tech and play with many types of health tracker devices regularly so it comes up in conversation.

kindatrue 3y ago

Huh, so covid is more serious than a cold? Good thing we're adding more Purell stations everywhere /s lol jk no one even refills them anymore

Garvi 3y ago
> Huh, so covid is more serious than a cold? So you're saying that all those scientific studies that prove you wrong with 0 that prove you right actually prove that the vast majority of scientists, pharmacists and medical doctors are "in on it"? You should work more on critical thinking, but I'm not expecting anything but personal insults from a person like this. I actually know a guy that was on respirators and a medical induced coma for 2 weeks because of covid. Age 45, morbidly overweight. They saved his life. Still doesn't believe in covid and talks shit about doctors. Fits his personality tho as he once killed a guy because of a minor drunken disagreement (hit him in the face, the fall and trauma to the head did the rest, spent years in jail).

theNJR 3y ago

Got my second bout of COVID two weeks ago and my resting heart rate has been about 10BMP higher ever since (normal 55, now 65+). I only missed two days of workouts, but had much lower volume for over a week. A quick google search shows this isn't that uncommon and it's one of those 'wait and see' situations. Frustrating and I wonder if there's a longterm consequence. Strangely, the first time I got COVID it had no impact on RHR. Second time I was hit much harder and couldn't leave bed for a full day, something that has never happened to me.

s1gnp0st 3y ago

I've long feared that while different factions were bickering about the vaccines, the truth might be that the vaccines and covid both risk the kinds of tissue damage associated with the protein spike in some subset of the population. Medicine doesn't have perfect answers.

drewrv 3y ago
A plane could crash and a car could crash. One method of travel is still safer than the other.
- wpasc 3y ago
  Lol this metaphor perplexes me. I don't have strong COVID opinions, but I'm really confused by this metaphor, is the plane crash full on COVID? Planes are safer overall of course, but if you introduce the Bayesian prior of given: you have been in a crash, which vehicle would you rather be in, car or plane? I'd probably say car. I got my COVID shot and largely agree that while the vaccine may have some risks, seemingly getting raw COVID w/o vaccines is probably worse. but i don't even care about that in this context, your metaphor has 100% taken me off work task :)
  - reso 3y ago
    I'm pretty sure the plane is "living life vaccinated" and the car is "living life unvaccinated". They both have risks but one is riskier than the other per unit time/distance.
- s1gnp0st 3y ago
  I do not think that's an insightful metaphor for the situation, nor do I think you made any effort to understand the nuance I was trying to convey. It may very well be that this particular vaccine caused new health problems in some (likely small, but non-negligible) part of the population, and that the trade-offs involved still weigh heavily in favor of vaccination. Absent mindless "if you aren't with us, you're with the terrorists" thinking, one might hope that the negative health impacts would be investigated and mitigated to further improve the vaccine technology.

paxys 3y ago

Nothing that a little Ivermectin can't fix I'm sure. At least that's what everyone on HN told me at the peak of covid.

plagiarist 3y ago
They are still here beyond the peak to remind us that the vaccine has a 100% mortality rate, lockdowns (and the elderly) are worthless, and also that coronavirus is a "gain of function" bioweapon funded directly by Dr. Fauci.

yetanotherloss 3y ago

We're just now really getting studies propagating into medical knowledge of a lot of this. I have covid-related tinnitus and despite the huge uptick in people reporting these symptoms post infection it took until this year to find a doctor that had specific interest in the subject. Heart damage has been a known likely problem for a while, hopefully we're on the cusp of better diagnosis and treatment protocols.

halfjoking 3y ago

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Firmwarrior 3y ago
It was the wildest thing. This bold new vaccine tech was 100% safe and 100% effective, and ready to go at the perfect time when we needed an excuse to reopen the economy
michaelrpeskin 3y ago
And now there's this new article showing an actual mechanism (or at least more direct than just populational studies). https://bpspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/bph.16262 https://bpspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/bph....
deleted 3y ago
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standeven 3y ago
HN believes it because it's true. Your link (to a twitter post) says nothing to the contrary. "People infected with COVID-19 before receiving a vaccine were 11 times more at risk for developing myocarditis within 28 days of testing positive for the virus. But that risk was cut in half if a person was infected after receiving at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine." https://www.heart.org/en/news/2022/08/22/covid-19-infection-poses-higher-risk-for-myocarditis-than-vaccines https://www.heart.org/en/news/2022/08/22/covid-19-infection-... "Risk of incident myocarditis is more than seven times higher in persons who were infected with the SARS-CoV-2 than in those who received the COVID-19 vaccines" https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcvm.2022.951314/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcvm.2022.95131... "The incidences of myopericarditis after mRNA COVID-19 vaccination among adolescents aged 12–17 years were very rare; they were not higher than other important reference incidences." https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X23006102 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X2...
- halfjoking 3y ago

denvaar 3y ago

I ended up with pulmonary embolism as a young (early 30s), healthy guy. Still not sure what caused it, but the doctor thought it may be COVID. The strange thing is that I never tested positive or had symptoms, though my spouse had it just before that happened. I have noticed an uptick in people having all sorts of "out of the blue" health problems shortly after COVID. It's hard to know what's related and what's not, because, while I'm sure there are many lasting effects we don't understand yet, it's always easy to just chalk up the bad things to being due to COVID.

peteyPete 3y ago

I find it quite tiresome to read so many people be instantly doubtful when more progress is made in understanding Covid and long-covid, resorting to medical gaslighting as a defence mechanism to feeling inadequate or just not understanding what patients are suffering through. One would think we'd be in a medical age where we stop jumping to psychological conclusions as a way to explain everything and get sick people to retreat into their sad corners. Reality is, its not all that new, is not solely attributable to Covid and there should/could have been much more research conducted a long time ago that would/could have laid way more ground work instead of researchers coming out with articles years after the fact that just reverberate what many have known all along. Post-Acute Sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC) overlaps other post viral fatigue syndromes associated with other infections. SARS 2003 also left many with a storm of symptoms that almost perfectly aligned with Long-covid. The infection itself may stem from a different virus or one related, so the onset of the infection, the aggressiveness of the virus, how quickly it peaks and how the immune system reacts, may be different, but many of the sequelas overlap. Many viral infection impact the body differently but devolve into pneumonia for example. So the connection between viral illnesses and ME/CFS and/or POTS may not be a specific protein, or specific interactions, but the shock to bodies, the response to a viral illness followed by secondary infections. The strain put on the immune system, the inflammation, the cytokine storm, etc. Myalgic encephalomyelitis, also called chronic fatigue syndrome, or ME/CFS for short, has been affecting people for a long time. It has been triggered in people after viral infections. POTS risk factors as noted by Hopkins medicine (https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/postural-orthostatic-tachycardia-syndrome-pots#:~:text=POTS%20Risk%20Factors https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseas...) "may begin after an apparent or confirmed viral illness, but it can also appear following surgery and other health events." ME/CFS + POTS (very often comorbid) like chronic illnesses have been cropping up for a long time. Due to the array of symptoms experienced by everyone, its made it hard to differentiate between the combination of potential symptoms and individual symptoms in isolation and the fact that there's no single test to diagnose ME/CFS. The diagnostic requirements for POTS are much simpler and clear, although a cure is also elusive. There has also been a severe lack of knowledge within the medical community, as these aren't resolved illnesses, so patients have been brushed under the rug, misdiagnosed and prescribed treatments which have often been counter productive and even harmful in many events. The complexity of it all and lack of explanations or solutions for patients has frustrated doctors. Lets go back a look at multiple flu epidemics and their long term outcomes. In "Historical Insight into Infections and Disorders Associated with Neurological and Psychiatric Sequelae Similar to Long COVID" https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33633106/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33633106/ they mention "Historically, the common symptom of altered cognition has been reported during earlier pandemics, which include the influenza pandemics of 1889 and 1892 (Russian flu), the Spanish flu pandemic (1918-1919), encephalitis lethargica, diphtheria, and myalgic encephalomyelitis (chronic fatigue syndrome or post-viral fatigue syndrome)." In "Lessons from the 1918/1919 Influenza Pandemic" https://www.colorado.edu/asmagazine/2020/04/09/lessons-19181919-influenza-pandemic https://www.colorado.edu/asmagazine/2020/04/09/lessons-19181..., "Dr. G. Holliday wrote to the British Medical Journal on August 17, 1918, that “mental symptoms were frequent” in the cases he saw; Samuel West informed readers of The Lancet in Feb. 1, 1919, that “the depression which follows influenza is so constant that it ought to be regarded as part of the disease.” The medical correspondent for The Times, having contracted the illness himself, advised readers that “the most distressing symptom was a swift loss of mental capacity and then inability to think coherently.” “All forms of hysteria have been observed after influenza,” reported Thomson and Thomson in 1919,” such as hysterical convulsions and the so-called hystero-epilectic attacks.” “Post-influenzal neurasthenia is very familiar,” they noted, “post-influenzal psychoses” “frequently observed and reported.” They cited a study that asserted that influenza, “of all the infectious diseases . . . is the most likely to be followed by mental disorder.” Note "Post-influenzal neurasthenia", or "an ill-defined medical condition characterized by lassitude, fatigue, headache, and irritability, associated chiefly with emotional disturbance.". In today's medicine, doctors are required to rule all known and understood causes of all your symptoms before coming to the conclusion that you suffer from ME/CFS. Thats if you're lucky to get a doctor who's heard of this and if your doctor had the patience to follow you through all these non conclusive diagnostic tests, all while not defaulting to the simple and all to common medical gaslighting which usually involve telling you its all in your head. Since after all, you're complaining of too many things wrong at once, everything seems inconclusive, so you sound a bit off, and mental capacity is most often affected, brain fog being a very common overlapping symptom between all these post viral conditions, and you're easy to dismiss. Combine brain fog, uncontrollable fatigue, POTS like symptoms, and patients are more often than not just seen as headcases, hysterical, and a waste of time. If you read stories of patients who are now diagnosed with ME/CFS / POTS, many have been ill for decades, spent years and years if not decades seeking answers, most of them no longer living among the masses but chronically ill and barely meeting their basic needs day to day, the majority unable to even work. They're referred to now as "millions missing", and they've been too ill to fight, to ill to be seen, too ill to be recognized. Its not until there's pandemics or large groups affected by some viral strain that the media starts talking about a rise in deaths or illnesses that some fringe articles will dig deeper and mention how a subset of people seem to just "stay sick" etc, often without relating the similarity between outcomes after other viral illnesses. With Covid having been so impactful and so much money being invested in research, its being talked about quite a bit more now, finally. That being said, it was clear before this even left China that what was to follow would be just as bad as the virus itself. Some people already had "long-covid", or post-viral fatigue, or one of the many names that seem to all want to describe these illnesses, and what would seem to be this fresh discovery of "long-covid" and all these mysteries left all previous sufferers dumb founded since they had been brushed under the rug and medically gaslit for decades. Its almost like the medical community runs out of time trying to figure it out and eventually moves on and when it comes up again, they slap another title on it and start all over again, often without taking into account every previous instance that could be used as a starting point. Obviously every virus, often every strain, can infect differently and have a different set of primary symptoms, but it should be clear by now that post viral and often chronic conditions, especially after flu like infections, seem to have a definite overlap. I remember watching clips and amateur news coming out of China in early to mid January 2020 and thinking to myself OMG, I hope this doesn't spread across the globe. The aftermath is going to be worse than the virus itself. Only reason I instantly thought this is my partner contracted SARS in 2003 and after barely surviving, having spent 2 weeks in the ICU, went on to develop a host of issues including stroke, ME/CFS, POTS, and brain fog to just name the main overlapping ones. Having dealt with this for two decades, having exhausted all options available in current medicine, the impact of long-covid or post viral illness has been devastating. It has stripped so many of their lives, it has left so many as dysfunctional shells of their former selves, unable to work or contribute in meaningful ways in their lives, not due to lack of desire or willpower, but a body and mind that won't follow. I've seen first hand the struggle of seeing someone fight with everything they have to just be themselves, a person who did what they had to in order to overcome whatever life through at them, but now, the harder they fight, the harder they fall as their bodies reminds them after any amount of effort, exercise, or too much brain work, that they are ill, and they crash, almost as a punishment for even trying to fight, exacerbating many of their symptoms for days, weeks, even months. The long lasting effects of this will not only be those who were lost, but those who now depend on the system and their loved ones, while requiring more medical attention. When its one person, its one thing, when its a percentage of your population, regardless of the whole digit representing that subset, the costs are huge. You're talking about a whole percentage of your population who essentially becomes a disabled retiree at whatever age they get ill. Those costs pile up over a lifetime, as does the collective loss of productivity within society. While society will adapt and readjust, it doesn't change anything for the millions upon millions who spend the rest of their lives desperately seeking answers, cures, any simple advancement that will give them a piece of their old lives back. alright.. done typing, thanks for coming to my Ted talk.

spandextwins 3y ago

Need more impartial AI to assist doctors and lawyers. They're just people. Overworked. But in most cases overpaid.

randomopining 3y ago

Fucoidan (from seaweed) is the solution to any Covid aftereffects for much of the population. It directly solves these endothelial issues. Amazing stuff.

t0bia_s 3y ago

Article completely ignore fact that vaccines do harm heart too. There are many studies on this topic. --- Risks of myocarditis, pericarditis, and cardiac arrhythmias associated with COVID-19 vaccination or SARS-CoV-2 infectionhttps://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01630-0#Aff1 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01630-0#Aff1 Vaccine-Associated Myo/Pericarditis in Adolescents: A Stratified Risk-Benefit Analysis https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eci.13759 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eci.13759 Persistent Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Imaging Finfings in a Cohort of Adolescents with Post-Coronavirus Disease 2019 mRNA Vaccine Myopericarditis https://www.jpeds.com/article/S0022-3476(22)00282-7/fulltext https://www.jpeds.com/article/S0022-3476(22)00282-7/fulltext Epidemiology of Acute Myocarditis/Pericarditis in Hong Kong Adolescents Following Comirnaty Vaccination https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34849657/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34849657/ Age and sex-specific risks of myokarditis and pericarditis following Covid-19 messenger RNA vaccines https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9233673/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9233673/ Goddard K.et al: Risk of myokarditis and pericarditis following BT162b2 and mRNA-1273 COVID-19 vaccination, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9273527/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9273527/ Bardosh K.et al: COVID-19 Vaccine Boosters for Young Adults: A Risk-Benefit Assessment and Five Ethical Arguments against Mandates at Universities https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4206070 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4206070 Oster M.E. et al: Myocarditis Cases Reported After mRNA-Based COVID-19 Vaccination in the US From December 2020 to August 2021 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2788346 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2788346 Lai F.T. et al: Carditis After COVID-19 Vaccination With a Messenger RNA Vaccine and an Inactivated Virus Vaccine https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/full/10.7326/M21-3700?rfr_da https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/full/10.7326/M21-3700?rfr_da... Massari M. et al: Postmarketing active surveillance of myokarditis and pericarditis following vaccination with COVID-19 mRNA vaccines in persons aged 12 to 39 years in Italy: A multi-database, self-controlled case series study https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34849657/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34849657/ SARS-CoV-2 Vaccination and Myocarditis in a Nordic Cohort Study of 23 Million Residents https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamacardiology/fullarticle/ https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamacardiology/fullarticle/... A Case of Vaccine-Induced Thrombocytopenic Thrombosis Manifesting as Cerebral Venous Thrombosis and Intracerebral Bleed https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9894637/ https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9894637/ Protection and waning of natural and hybrid COVID-19 immunity https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.04.21267114v https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.04.21267114v... Acute Inflammatory Diseases of the Central Nervous System After SARS-CoV-2 Vaccination https://nn.neurology.org/content/10/1/e200063.abstract https://nn.neurology.org/content/10/1/e200063.abstract A Comparison of Cases of Autoimmune Hepatitis After Vaccination Against COVID-19 https://journals.lww.com/acgcr/Fulltext/2023/01000/It_Can_t_ https://journals.lww.com/acgcr/Fulltext/2023/01000/It_Can_t_... Cerebral venous sinus thrombosis after COVID-19 vaccination: a case report and literature review https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9853928/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9853928/ COVID-19 vaccine surveillance report Week 42 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/ https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... Physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD... Increases in COVID-19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries and 2947 counties in the United States https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-021-00808-7 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-021-00808-7 Pooled number of deaths by age group https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ COVID-19 Cases and Hospitalizations by COVID-19 Vaccination Status and Previous COVID-19 Diagnosis https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104e1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104e1.htm To Evaluate the Safety, Tolerability, and Immunogenicity of BNT162b2 Against COVID-19 in Healthy Pregnant Women 18 Years of Age and Older https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04754594 https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04754594 Apparent risks of postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome diagnoses after COVID-19 vaccination and SARS-Cov-2 Infection https://www.nature.com/articles/s44161-022-00177-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s44161-022-00177-8 Surveillance of COVID-19 vaccine safety among elderly persons aged 65 years and older https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36496287/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36496287/ Cardiovascular Manifestation of the BNT162b2 mRNA COVID-19 Vaccine in Adolescents https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36006288/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36006288/