7 ms·

> we saw that the mitochondria of the muscle, also known as the energy factories of the cell Ahem, powerhouse of the cell Jokes aside, this is a terrifying

> we saw that the mitochondria of the muscle, also known as the energy factories of the cell *Ahem*, powerhouse of the cell Jokes aside, this is a terrifying stat: "Although the majority of people infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus recover within weeks...around one in eight will get long-COVID. Symptoms in patients with long-COVID...include severe cognitive problems (brain fog), fatigue, exercise intolerance, autonomic dysregulation..."

xerox13ster 3y ago
Even more terrifying considering we can be reinfected multiple times so we might be rolling those odds every time. E: changed "we are" to "we might be"
- frakt0x90 3y ago
  It would be interesting to know if the odds decrease with reinfection. Are there any studies on that?
  - subtra3t 3y ago
    Also if there's a study on how the symptoms change with reinfection that'd be great too. EDIT: I just realised that some people may interpet the comment as saying that long-covid's symptoms are a great thing or something along those lines. I just meant that it would be nice to find such a study. Sorry.
  - olivermuty 3y ago
    A news thing I read today said the trend was opposite. Norwegian article and no reference to whatever publication they based that claim on, but serious newspaper at least. So take the claim with a grain of salt.
  - johnchristopher 3y ago
    https://www.sciencealert.com/every-covid-infection-increases-your-risk-of-long-covid-study-warns https://www.sciencealert.com/every-covid-infection-increases... (just saw this one today, links to studies in the article)
  - lamontcg 3y ago
    There are studies that are supposedly showing that people with multiple reinfections suffer more long covid: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-006-x/2023001/article/00015-eng.htm https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-006-x/2023001/article... But that study itself notes: > People that had their first infection early in the pandemic, though, were also more likely to report multiple COVID-19 infections. For example, in this study the average date of first infection for those with three or more infections was May 2021, compared to September 2021 for those with two infections, and May 2022 for those with one infection. Those infected earlier in the pandemic, before vaccination and the emergence of the Omicron variant were more likely to develop long-term symptoms, but also had more time since their first infection to become infected with COVID-19 again. This is also all self-reported surveys. That means that they're selecting for people who will self-report questionnaires, which is incredibly highly biased. Immunologically it doesn't make a lot of sense to me and there's no theoretical foundations for how this could be happening. If its linked to people with susceptible genetics/biology (something like MHC subtype) then long COVID should stabilize affecting only that population. If it is due to autoimmunity then people who have formed healthy immune responses to COVID shouldn't increasingly be susceptible after the initial immune response is formed. Give it a few more years, and I strongly suspect that better studies come out finding that long COVID risks decrease over time (although they probably never go to zero, but it starts to look more like flu/cold risk of ME/CFS and that antibodies to vaccination/prior infection are actually protective, like one would logically expect).
    - dekhn 3y ago
      I think we need more, better, and longer-term studies before we can adequately conclude that reinfections lead to more long covid. And I think the answer to that question, if it comes with enough accuracy, could influence long-term decisions about how we respond to COVID. Already the progressive subset of my social media is mostly working on the assumption we are seeing a "rapidly rising, ever-worsening reinfections leading to continuously increasing amount of long covid", but that's not what I'm hearing from the medical subset (in person, off the record, not on social media, because they're tired of the whole social media garbage cycle).
      - 3y ago
- dns_snek 3y ago
  Are you sure about that? Couldn't it be a case predisposition, meaning you roll those odds exactly once?
- fsiefken 3y ago
  Yes, but isn't it more like if there is perhaps a factor X you don't belong to the 1/8 risk group that the chances that with subsequent infections you get long covid-19 is smaller (or near zero)? It's likely that this factor exists as lots of people got infected multiple times and not everybody has long covid-19. Is it a matter of rolling those odds every time for everyone or is that only for 1 in 8 people or would they get long covid-19 100% after each infection. Would mRNA vaccines adequately protect this group from long COVID-19?
  - spion 3y ago
    AFAIK, gene links have only been found for persistent cough and shortness of breath, but not other long covid symptoms. Protection from vaccines has ranged (IIRC) from none to about 50% reduction in probability
    - Log_out_ 3y ago
      Could it be a side effect of some treatment, similar to contagan? You take something to reduce side-effects, covi let's it into cells where it poisons the mitochondria?
blindriver 3y ago
There is nothing to be “terrified” about. You are conflating different types of “long covid”. Some covid infections, just like the cold or the flu, cause symptoms longer than the 5-7 days, maybe for 2-3 weeks. That’s long covid. Also remember that long covid symptoms include symptoms like depression and it ends up not being very rigorously defined. Then there is the version that creates long term chronic fatigue symptoms. That is a much smaller percentage of the population, more like 1% or less. The chances of getting that are extremely small and there’s nothing to be terrified about. You can also get CFS from the flu, and other benign diseases. Just from looking at the general population it’s easy to see that 1/8 people are not suffering from long covid. Just like how I know someone who got the vaccine and she ended up being crippled by arthritis from the vaccine, but that is not a common side effect at all otherwise we would have seen that more often in the people around us.
- faitswulff 3y ago
  > Some covid infections, just like the cold or the flu, cause symptoms longer than the 5-7 days That's arguably also terrifying if even common viruses are known to cause long term conditions. Also consider the evidence pointing to a link between viral infection and dementia: https://www.sciencealert.com/a-study-of-500000-medical-records-links-viruses-to-alzheimers-again-and-again https://www.sciencealert.com/a-study-of-500000-medical-recor...
  - timr 3y ago
    When the symptoms are "a lingering cough" (which is what we're talking about most of the time), it's not terrifying. It's just something you ignored before and are not ignoring now. As OP notes, there are certainly some small fraction people with worse outcomes. But the generic "long covid" term has mixed up all sorts of things -- from hospital syndrome (absolutely real! but very rare!) to symptoms that anyone would completely disregard prior to 2020 as "a head cold" (very common!) Also, of course, there's a ton of motivated reasoning surrounding this topic where people are in forums and comment threads attributing every symptom under the sun to Covid, and dredging up bad observational studies to support their claims. The link to dementia likely falls in this bucket. It's not coincidental that most of the people to get seriously ill with Covid were/are old, and that most of the people who get dementia are...old.
m3kw9 3y ago
What about a spectrum of long Covid? Maybe you can be fine but you are actually 80%, not enough to notice but enough to affect your full potential?
nullserver 3y ago
Got exposed to a lot of chemical gas in a home that had a gas leak. Developed all the above symptoms and more. Later diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder. Sjogrens. Best I can figure, I had Sjogrens before, but it was so mild. I didn’t really notice or care. After the exposure, all the symptoms were amped up 50 fold. Also had Factor V Leiden. Which went from not an issue to multiple clots every single week. After about four years, the symptoms dad calmed down to certain degree. Getting Covid was a full relapse for about six months. Of course my wife got the vaccine and her arm swelled up and years later still hasn’t gone back down.
vikingerik 3y ago
It's less terrifying when you make the proper comparison. What proportion of people would self-report brain fog, fatigue, etc, on any given day with nothing to do with Covid? Probably close to one in eight.

> we saw that the mitochondria of the muscle, also known as the energy factories of the cell *Ahem*, powerhouse of the cell Jokes aside, this is a terrifying

xerox13ster 3y ago

Even more terrifying considering we can be reinfected multiple times so we might be rolling those odds every time. E: changed "we are" to "we might be"

frakt0x90 3y ago
It would be interesting to know if the odds decrease with reinfection. Are there any studies on that?
- subtra3t 3y ago
  Also if there's a study on how the symptoms change with reinfection that'd be great too. EDIT: I just realised that some people may interpet the comment as saying that long-covid's symptoms are a great thing or something along those lines. I just meant that it would be nice to find such a study. Sorry.
- olivermuty 3y ago
  A news thing I read today said the trend was opposite. Norwegian article and no reference to whatever publication they based that claim on, but serious newspaper at least. So take the claim with a grain of salt.
- johnchristopher 3y ago
  https://www.sciencealert.com/every-covid-infection-increases-your-risk-of-long-covid-study-warns https://www.sciencealert.com/every-covid-infection-increases... (just saw this one today, links to studies in the article)
- lamontcg 3y ago
  There are studies that are supposedly showing that people with multiple reinfections suffer more long covid: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-006-x/2023001/article/00015-eng.htm https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-006-x/2023001/article... But that study itself notes: > People that had their first infection early in the pandemic, though, were also more likely to report multiple COVID-19 infections. For example, in this study the average date of first infection for those with three or more infections was May 2021, compared to September 2021 for those with two infections, and May 2022 for those with one infection. Those infected earlier in the pandemic, before vaccination and the emergence of the Omicron variant were more likely to develop long-term symptoms, but also had more time since their first infection to become infected with COVID-19 again. This is also all self-reported surveys. That means that they're selecting for people who will self-report questionnaires, which is incredibly highly biased. Immunologically it doesn't make a lot of sense to me and there's no theoretical foundations for how this could be happening. If its linked to people with susceptible genetics/biology (something like MHC subtype) then long COVID should stabilize affecting only that population. If it is due to autoimmunity then people who have formed healthy immune responses to COVID shouldn't increasingly be susceptible after the initial immune response is formed. Give it a few more years, and I strongly suspect that better studies come out finding that long COVID risks decrease over time (although they probably never go to zero, but it starts to look more like flu/cold risk of ME/CFS and that antibodies to vaccination/prior infection are actually protective, like one would logically expect).
  - dekhn 3y ago
    I think we need more, better, and longer-term studies before we can adequately conclude that reinfections lead to more long covid. And I think the answer to that question, if it comes with enough accuracy, could influence long-term decisions about how we respond to COVID. Already the progressive subset of my social media is mostly working on the assumption we are seeing a "rapidly rising, ever-worsening reinfections leading to continuously increasing amount of long covid", but that's not what I'm hearing from the medical subset (in person, off the record, not on social media, because they're tired of the whole social media garbage cycle).
    - 3y ago
dns_snek 3y ago
Are you sure about that? Couldn't it be a case predisposition, meaning you roll those odds exactly once?
fsiefken 3y ago
Yes, but isn't it more like if there is perhaps a factor X you don't belong to the 1/8 risk group that the chances that with subsequent infections you get long covid-19 is smaller (or near zero)? It's likely that this factor exists as lots of people got infected multiple times and not everybody has long covid-19. Is it a matter of rolling those odds every time for everyone or is that only for 1 in 8 people or would they get long covid-19 100% after each infection. Would mRNA vaccines adequately protect this group from long COVID-19?
- spion 3y ago
  AFAIK, gene links have only been found for persistent cough and shortness of breath, but not other long covid symptoms. Protection from vaccines has ranged (IIRC) from none to about 50% reduction in probability
  - Log_out_ 3y ago
    Could it be a side effect of some treatment, similar to contagan? You take something to reduce side-effects, covi let's it into cells where it poisons the mitochondria?

blindriver 3y ago

There is nothing to be “terrified” about. You are conflating different types of “long covid”. Some covid infections, just like the cold or the flu, cause symptoms longer than the 5-7 days, maybe for 2-3 weeks. That’s long covid. Also remember that long covid symptoms include symptoms like depression and it ends up not being very rigorously defined. Then there is the version that creates long term chronic fatigue symptoms. That is a much smaller percentage of the population, more like 1% or less. The chances of getting that are extremely small and there’s nothing to be terrified about. You can also get CFS from the flu, and other benign diseases. Just from looking at the general population it’s easy to see that 1/8 people are not suffering from long covid. Just like how I know someone who got the vaccine and she ended up being crippled by arthritis from the vaccine, but that is not a common side effect at all otherwise we would have seen that more often in the people around us.

faitswulff 3y ago
> Some covid infections, just like the cold or the flu, cause symptoms longer than the 5-7 days That's arguably also terrifying if even common viruses are known to cause long term conditions. Also consider the evidence pointing to a link between viral infection and dementia: https://www.sciencealert.com/a-study-of-500000-medical-records-links-viruses-to-alzheimers-again-and-again https://www.sciencealert.com/a-study-of-500000-medical-recor...
- timr 3y ago
  When the symptoms are "a lingering cough" (which is what we're talking about most of the time), it's not terrifying. It's just something you ignored before and are not ignoring now. As OP notes, there are certainly some small fraction people with worse outcomes. But the generic "long covid" term has mixed up all sorts of things -- from hospital syndrome (absolutely real! but very rare!) to symptoms that anyone would completely disregard prior to 2020 as "a head cold" (very common!) Also, of course, there's a ton of motivated reasoning surrounding this topic where people are in forums and comment threads attributing every symptom under the sun to Covid, and dredging up bad observational studies to support their claims. The link to dementia likely falls in this bucket. It's not coincidental that most of the people to get seriously ill with Covid were/are old, and that most of the people who get dementia are...old.

m3kw9 3y ago

What about a spectrum of long Covid? Maybe you can be fine but you are actually 80%, not enough to notice but enough to affect your full potential?

nullserver 3y ago

Got exposed to a lot of chemical gas in a home that had a gas leak. Developed all the above symptoms and more. Later diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder. Sjogrens. Best I can figure, I had Sjogrens before, but it was so mild. I didn’t really notice or care. After the exposure, all the symptoms were amped up 50 fold. Also had Factor V Leiden. Which went from not an issue to multiple clots every single week. After about four years, the symptoms dad calmed down to certain degree. Getting Covid was a full relapse for about six months. Of course my wife got the vaccine and her arm swelled up and years later still hasn’t gone back down.

vikingerik 3y ago

It's less terrifying when you make the proper comparison. What proportion of people would self-report brain fog, fatigue, etc, on any given day with nothing to do with Covid? Probably close to one in eight.