[HN Gopher] Burden of post-Covid-19 syndrome and implications fo...
___________________________________________________________________
Burden of post-Covid-19 syndrome and implications for healthcare
planning
Author : infodocket
Score : 175 points
Date : 2021-07-13 18:32 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (journals.plos.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (journals.plos.org)
| jacquesm wrote:
| One of those cases here. Symptoms: suddenly out of energy,
| occasionally suddenly being unable to spell, even mild physical
| exercise leaves me floored (and I was pretty fit for my age prior
| to this).
|
| So, 17 months in: it's _still_ not back to where it used to be
| but if you think of it in terms of trends instead of absolutes it
| is definitely still improving. The downs are less far down, the
| fog is lifting and the energy levels are creeping back up. But
| still, you can have down days every now and then. But they are
| getting fewer and further between and the downs are less far
| down. I hope to get it completely behind me one of these days.
|
| When I had COVID I was just one small step away from calling for
| an ambulance but that was rock bottom, after that it got better
| and I will always wonder if I had called them earlier if I could
| have avoided the worst of this (by having some oxygen earlier on
| and maybe avoiding some of the damage). But I figured other
| people had it much worse than I did (and I still believe that was
| the case). March last year was a pretty crazy time.
| taxicabjesus wrote:
| > I will always wonder if I had called them earlier if I could
| have avoided the worst of this (by having some oxygen earlier
| on and maybe avoiding some of the damage).
|
| I think you're quite fortunate you held out and got better on
| your own.
|
| There's some old scientific knowledge that oxygen [O2] in
| excess is toxic. I've submitted links about toxic-O2 here
| before, but these did not get much attention [4][5].
|
| Some modern Fire/EMS first responders are well-aware of toxic
| O2 [0]. My uncle (an MD) knows about toxic O2, but he's not
| aware of the antidote. I was waiting for _someone_ with
| credentials to call out the doctors for their mistaken use of
| oxygen.
|
| I did find an MD's tweet that confirms the old research [1].
| The doctor's tread is about how ventilators are harmful too,
| and how he can kill mice in 3 days with pure oxygen. But the MD
| didn't mention the antidote (5% CO2) that makes O2 non-toxic.
|
| I've put some effort into tweeting about
| #MedicalHyperventilation [2] and SARS-CoV-2 [3], but no one
| consults with a non-credentialed former taxi driver (or his
| real-world persona).
|
| My write-up: _The Folly of Medical Hyperventilation:_
| https://www.taxiwars.org/2021/06/folly-medical-hyperventilat...
|
| I've posted this with my pseudonym because it's sort of
| inconvenient for people to realize we've driven the global
| economy into a wall because our doctors are trained to apply
| pseudo-medicine: "if patient's blood oxygen saturation level is
| low, supplement pure oxygen", and more inconvenient that
| there's an antidote that makes oxygen nontoxic to the lungs and
| the rest of the body.
|
| [0] https://twitter.com/slpearson2/status/997208010328965120
|
| [1]
| https://twitter.com/robertpdickson/status/126525483948485427...
|
| [2] https://twitter.com/TaxiCabJesus/status/1407155149257154563
| [1200] /
| https://twitter.com/TaxiCabJesus/status/1407185919795294212
| [110]
|
| [3] https://twitter.com/TaxiCabJesus/status/1413730850626162691
| [204/5]
|
| [4] Mortality/morbidity: acutely ill adults liberal vs.
| conservative Oxygen Tx(2018) (thelancet.com) -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22993262
|
| [5] Space-cabin Atmospheres: Oxygen toxicity (1964)
| (google.com) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25883728
| kvnn wrote:
| Have you seen this strategy for Long Covid?
| https://covid19criticalcare.com/covid-19-protocols/i-recover...
| jacquesm wrote:
| No, I haven't and reading that I immediately picked out one
| more symptom: reduced appetite. I have lost significant
| weight, and in fact I'm still losing weight (but much more
| slowly now). Down to about 68 Kg, 1,76 meters tall.
| shaicoleman wrote:
| You would probably also want to watch the video about it that
| goes into more detail:
|
| https://youtu.be/ZCYM2HW2Ayw?t=321
| nathias wrote:
| same, and I didn't even have it
| disabled wrote:
| In my early 30s: Pretty sure I had COVID-19 in early March
| 2020. I had shortness of breath for a couple of days and I was
| feverish for about 8 weeks.
|
| Afterwards, I have severe fatigue. I also experienced bouts,
| off an on for like a week or two at a time, where I could not
| physically get warm, and I was freezing to death, no matter
| what I did.
|
| I also have severe dysautonomia (autonomic nervous system
| dysfunction) which I had prior to probably having COVID-19,
| which got worse. However, it is much improved now. People who
| got dysautonomia from COVID-19, by the way, can expect for it
| to significantly improve, or go away. Just focus on resting. It
| is a brutal disease, trust me, but you can get through it.
|
| I also had cognitive issues, with respect to memory, which has
| improved significantly.
|
| My best tip: Get a Garmin watch, that has the "Body Battery"
| function. It's a literal lifesaver. Do not let the "Body
| Battery" ever go under a 20 (out of 100) score, ever. You will
| pay a huge price if you do. Use the "Body Battery" to gauge if
| you can exert yourself or you need to rest. (It also determines
| if you got a good night's rest.) By the way, it works based on
| heart rate variability, and is quite accurate.
|
| Here is a good Physical Therapy presentation on the current
| situation:
| https://www.albertahealthservices.ca/assets/info/hpsp/if-hps...
|
| Other tips: This is the ultimate site on fatigue. Unfortunately
| it is in Norwegian, so you have to use Google Translate for the
| website (and the PDF documents--which are great):
| https://www.kognitiv.no/psykisk-helse/ulike-lidelser/utmatte...
|
| It is based on the book "Energityvene" which is called Energy
| Thieves. Unfortunately there is not an English version.
|
| I hope this helps.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| Which Garmin watch model do you have ?
| aortega wrote:
| The Garmin instinct have that function and works great.
| There are way cheaper options like the Fitbit charge, it
| also has a body-battery and is very accurate.
|
| BTW I never had covid but if my body battery gets below 20,
| I also feel like shit. That's the point I guess.
| disabled wrote:
| Thank you for the recommendation, which is thoughtful.
| One thing that you may want to keep in mind: Garmin has
| to follow GDPR, while FitBit (Google) does not.
|
| You may not want Google (e.g. YouTube) serving you ads
| when it knows you are in a very low body battery state,
| for example.
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| Here's a list of supported watches:
|
| https://support.garmin.com/en-
| US/?faq=VOFJAsiXut9K19k1qEn5W5
|
| By coincidence I was looking to buy a Garmin smart watch!
| disabled wrote:
| I have a Garmin Fenix 6 Pro, which I had before I got sick
| with COVID-19. However, it is spendy (expensive).
|
| I did a search and Body Battery is available on cheaper
| models like the Garmin Vivosmart 4 ($129 USD). I put into
| DuckDuckGo and verified:
|
| "Garmin" AND "vivosmart" AND "body battery"
|
| Link to Garmin Vivosmart 4: https://buy.garmin.com/en-
| US/US/p/605739
|
| Proof:
| https://www8.garmin.com/manuals/webhelp/vivosmart4/EN-
| US/GUI...
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| You were tested and diagnosed with Covid in January 2020?
| eganist wrote:
| > You were tested and diagnosed with Covid in January 2020?
|
| 17 months ago would be mid february 2020.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| Sorry you're correct - Feb 13, 2020.
| jacquesm wrote:
| No, I had it in early March, pretty much textbook, called the
| local doctor who said don't bother testing (it was quite
| obvious) but isolate from family, which we did as good as we
| could. There were a couple of _really_ bad nights, and after
| that it got better bit by bit and after three weeks I was
| able to get up again and work a bit. From there it was a long
| slog to get back to 'normal'.
| usaphp wrote:
| So you were never tested for covid? How do you know if it
| was covid ?
| [deleted]
| jacquesm wrote:
| Because I'm not a complete idiot.
|
| - pandemic in progress: check
|
| - risky lifestyle: check (as in very frequent air travel
| for work)
|
| - symptoms: O2 level drop, fluid in lungs, persistent
| cough, extreme tiredness, dizzyness, loss of smell/taste
| check all of these, and the rest, fortunately not. Later
| on: crazy beating heart for no particular reason, losing
| weight steadily but more slowly now.
|
| Decision not to test was made by qualified medic, who
| said that they needed the tests for those cases where
| there was some degree of doubt, which in my case there
| really wasn't, besides that there was an extreme shortage
| of tests at that time. And to call an ambulance straight
| away, and not my house doctor in case things got worse
| than they were at that moment.
|
| Keep in mind that there are vast numbers of people that
| have gotten COVID that did not get tested and that
| therefore do not show up in the various statistics.
| Especially in the beginning the health care system was
| totally overwhelmed and care went to those who needed it
| most, and either wasn't administered to those who might
| have benefited from it and many who simply didn't make
| it.
| the-dude wrote:
| In previous Corona discussions on HN I saw multiple
| comments from people who were convinced they had COVID,
| tested after the fact, but the tests ( some tested
| multiple times ) came back negative.
| clairity wrote:
| > "Because I'm not a complete idiot."
|
| yah, it's the partial idiots who are hard to discern.
| complete idiots are the easiest to dismiss out of hand.
|
| many infections have long lasting effects. you'd need to
| systematically rule them out/in via testing to be as
| certain as you claim to be.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Right, well let's just say that coincidentally I had a
| viral infection that has the exact same symptoms as
| COVID, has the same long term effects as are reported in
| many cases of COVID and which coincidentally happened to
| be timed to match the first wave of that particular
| pandemic, but according to you it wasn't COVID when it
| wasn't confirmed as such with a test.
|
| Consider the alternative: you would have to come up with
| some kind of viral agent that did the same thing but
| wasn't COVID.
|
| Which to me seems to be a far more outrageous claim than
| the one that I was simply one of many. The test does not
| make the disease, it is merely positive confirmation, but
| I've yet to hear of some surprise viral disease that ran
| in parallel to this, isn't COVID but matches the symptoms
| so well.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > let's just say that coincidentally I had a viral
| infection that has the exact same symptoms as COVID, has
| the same long term effects as are reported in many cases
| of COVID and which coincidentally happened to be timed to
| match the first wave of that particular pandemic
|
| That happened to a lot of people. The first wave in March
| wasn't very big compared to later months.
|
| You mentioned the flu season didn't happen in a different
| post, but that was much later, as was most masking.
|
| > Which to me seems to be a far more outrageous claim
| than the one that I was simply one of many.
|
| That's a terrible way to analyze this. You were "one of
| many" either way.
|
| > but I've yet to hear of some surprise viral disease
| that ran in parallel to this, isn't COVID but matches the
| symptoms so well.
|
| The symptoms aren't all that unique for a severe illness
| that messes up your lungs. There's no 'surprise' involved
| in other possible causes.
| clairity wrote:
| that's being overly invested in the idea that it's covid
| rather than realizing that infections of all kinds have
| long-lasting effects. individually and societally, that
| leads to a distortion of attention and resources to the
| wrong things. i.e., partial idiocy, the worst kind, and
| unfortunately rampant.
|
| there is a real opportunity now for medical science to
| look comparatively at infectious diseases and attack them
| systematically and cohesively rather than myopically.
| hopefully we don't squander that.
| saalweachter wrote:
| I mean, I'm not even sure I would bother with a T-cell
| test in your case. The only meaningful difference in your
| future life would be to have the results to give people
| on the internet, which doesn't seem worth getting two
| tubes of blood drawn.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Precisely. If there is a benefit to _me_ I 'll get
| tested. Even the medic I talked to was pretty clear:
| don't bother, save the test for someone who really needs
| it. Which at that time could have saved a life for
| someone that needed to have an operation and required a
| COVID test prior to admission.
| felixbraun wrote:
| You could check for T-cells at some point -- if you had
| Covid, they are measurable even after many months. In
| contrast, IgG titers show up in only ~80% and decline
| steadily. Excellent recent paper:
|
| > Here, we investigated SARS-CoV-2 antibody and T cell
| responses in matched samples of COVID-19 convalescent
| individuals up to 6 months after infection. Longitudinal
| analysis revealed decreasing and stable spike- and
| nucleocapsid-specific antibody responses, respectively.
| In contrast, functional T cell responses remained robust,
| and even increased, in both frequency and intensity.
|
| https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/13/590/eabf7517
| jacquesm wrote:
| Thank you, if there is any benefit to having that level
| of certainty (and not to satisfy internet naysayers) then
| I may still do this, but I have received my shot (Jansen)
| because there are still some immunological benefits from
| that and it helps in a regulatory sense as well (lots of
| doors are closed to people that have not been
| vaccinated).
|
| What matters to me is that I got through it, still live
| pretty carefully even now because I don't want a re-run
| if I can avoid it and I would advise anybody that hasn't
| had it yet and/or has not been vaccinated to go and get
| that done as soon as you can. This is no walk in the
| park, I used to be pretty fit for my age, and the last
| year has been a complete wipe-out. Avoid if you can.
| lamontcg wrote:
| You might consider it if insurance puts up a fight but
| there's no utility in getting a T-cell test just to try
| to win arguments on the Internet.
| Amezarak wrote:
| I don't think GP was suggesting you were dumb, just
| trying to point out there's a lot of widespread
| respiratory illnesses with exactly the same symptoms that
| are endemic - not to say Covid isn't more severe at a
| population level, but that you can't really say with any
| kind of certainty based only on those symptoms that
| someone has Covid. A few years ago I had exactly these
| symptoms, plus a high fever, but in my case, it was
| probably the flu. it was awful - I didn't really get over
| it for several months.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, but the flu season in 2020 pretty much didn't happen
| and COVID did. So in your case the even money would be on
| it not being COVID 'a few years ago' but if it had
| happened in March up to today of 2020/2021 then probably
| it would be.
|
| GP is playing silly games and I'm a bit tired of those
| given my rather personal engagement with this particular
| virus, and frankly, if it is some other kind of virus
| then it hardly matters now, does it?
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| > Yes, but the flu season in 2020 pretty much didn't
| happen
|
| Not arguing the rest of your claims, but that's
| objectively not true. Based upon current estimates it was
| actually worse than average[1] and its season was cut
| short in April due to the COVID efforts[2].
|
| [1] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html [2] h
| ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%932020_United_Sta
| te...
| bb2018 wrote:
| I do wonder if this is proportional to your
| symptoms/proportional to other ailments.
|
| For instance, is someone with Covid (who was on the verge of
| needing oxygen) more likely to have long term symptoms than
| someone the same age who got the flu/pneumonia (and was also on
| the verge of needing oxygen).
|
| In other words - is there something unique about Covid? Or is
| that any disease that sets you back has serious long-term
| consequences, and Covid is just statistically much more likely
| to do that than the flu, for example.
| dennis_jeeves wrote:
| >In other words - is there something unique about Covid?
|
| No is my guess, based on anecdotes, experience and
| observation.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Good question, and one that I would like to have the answer
| to too. I also wonder what the effects are on longer term
| immunity, apparently there is some evidence that if you had a
| more serious case that your immunity will be longer lasting
| but I have yet to find something that is conclusive.
| dangom wrote:
| The SARS-CoV-2 virus binds to a specific receptor (ACE2) that
| is expressed in a multitude of different cells in our bodies,
| most curiously the endothelial cells that line up your
| vessels. Some hypothesis suggest that the disruption of the
| systems associated with ACE2 is what causes downstream
| effects that lead to symptoms of COVID. By virtue of
| infecting blood vessels, the virus can cause them to stop
| functioning properly, and thus impair the supply of oxygen to
| otherwise healthy tissue. These hypoxic microlesions, which
| have been found even in the brain of patient populations,
| could in turn be responsible for some of the sequelae that
| the infection leaves behind after the end of acute period of
| the disease.
|
| The extent to which damage is caused, and the extent to which
| the body can recover will evidently dictate the period of
| convalescence. Because symptoms vary wildly from case to
| case, pinpointing general routes of treatment or estimating
| the duration of recovery is a highly complex problem.
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| For me varicella-zoster was the causative agent. I had a lot
| of trouble being taken seriously by friends/some medical
| staff after I said that I had serious issues after a bad
| infection with it, because of most people believe it to be a
| relatively benign disease. I think it's the case that most
| viruses will cause chronic disease in a small subset of
| people.
|
| > "If Covid didn't cause chronic symptoms to occur in some
| people," PolyBio Research Foundation microbiologist Amy Proal
| told Vox, "it would be the only virus that didn't do that."
|
| > Even with growing awareness about long Covid, patients with
| chronic "medically unexplained" symptoms -- that don't
| correspond to problematic blood tests or imaging -- are still
| too often minimized and dismissed by health professionals.
| It's a frustrating blind spot in health care, but one that
| can't be as easily ignored with so many new patients entering
| this category, said Megan Hosey, assistant professor at the
| Johns Hopkins Department of Physical Medicine and
| Rehabilitation.
|
| https://www.vox.com/22298751/long-term-side-effects-
| covid-19...
| TaupeRanger wrote:
| It's frustrating but it's not a blind spot - we simply have
| no way to help these patients. You have brain fog and
| occasionally your heart feels like it's beating out of your
| chest for no discernable reason? Sorry, there's nothing we
| can do...try exercising and getting good sleep, we guess?
| Jefro118 wrote:
| I believe one difference with Covid is that people often have
| issues across multiple organs (I believe this is because the
| virus binds to ACE2 receptors which are present over the
| body, not an expert though) whereas with flu/pnemuonia I
| think it's more likely to be just generic fatigue and lung
| capacity as longer term effects.
|
| I think the sheer range of long lasting symptoms is quite
| unique to Covid, although other diseases like Ebola or
| Smallpox would leave more severe damage.
| justwanttolearn wrote:
| I am so sorry to hear, I hope you feel back to normal soon!
| What are you doing to manage your symptoms right now? Are you
| exercising, taking vitamins, prescribed drugs, seeing a
| therapist, etc?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Exercising mostly, cycle as much as I can. Vitamins, drugs or
| therapists I haven't needed so far other than what is in my
| normal (pretty healthy) food.
| mygoodaccount wrote:
| Another one here (Woman, 24 y.o.). Contracted COVID, had a
| terrible three-weeks of infection. Nine months later, I am
| having weekly heart palpitations, I'm constantly fatigued and
| fogged in the mind and my lung capacity is half what it used to
| be - I now require an inhaler to go on my runs. I know several
| women my age experiencing far worse.
|
| Long COVID should not be ignored.
| lambdaba wrote:
| I hope this is taken the right way, but have you tried
| "vitamins" (broadly speaking)? Some I have seen with specific
| effects: Niacin, Black Seed Oil (Nigella Sativa), Magnesium
| megadoses, etc. etc. Don't dismiss these as "quack
| medicines", I've recovered from severe chronic illness thanks
| to some of these... I could expand if people ask, but really
| it's quite easy, especially for the HN crowd, to level-up
| rapidly on healing yourself or at least giving yourself the
| best chance to do so.
|
| The greatest concentrator of such info on the whole internet,
| is, as far as I can tell, https://twitter.com/grimhood -
| follow him and get a feel for the info he's spreading, he has
| very valuable information on all sorts of healing protocols.
|
| Lastly, one that will no doubt be most controversial, but
| also has promising anecdotes: Ivermectin.
|
| [edit] here come the downvotes, for those that do, note that
| downvotes, at least on HN, are not meant to express
| disagreement, they are meant for content that is
| objectionable for other reasons.
| abz10 wrote:
| Megadose B3 2000mg per day does seem to be commonly
| effective. The theory is NAD+. Gives me a headache so an
| aspirin is needed as well but was one of the first
| treatments that pulled me out of fatigue.
| lambdaba wrote:
| Thank you. Yes Niacin (vitamin B3) megadoses are
| seemingly very effective for a wide range of ailments.
| avgDev wrote:
| I just want to add a bit to this. While there is a lot of
| snake oil supplements, there is a also quite a bit research
| on some supplements helping.
|
| I'm speaking from personal experience here. I suffer from a
| mild case of Erythromelalgia. During typing my fingers and
| hands would get red and feel warm. My case is most likely
| secondary caused by some nerve damage from a medication I
| took. There is a doctor who had severe case of it and has
| done some research on using magnesium/ala and it made his
| condition 95% better and he was able to return back to
| work. I have been following his protocol for about a month
| now, and it has made an incredible difference.
|
| Anyone who is suffering from an annoying illness, that is
| not aggressive and require immediate treatment, should try
| research possible supplements and diets. Clean/healthy diet
| is always good.
| sebmellen wrote:
| I am not sure what I think of your comment, but I think it
| at least deserves discussion.
|
| I have used said supplements before. In fact, I have a
| close friend who is very enamored with supplements and has
| about 50 different pill bottles in his medicine drawer.
|
| Out of curiosity, I once spent two weeks taking about 25
| pills a day at his recommendation, and I'm afraid they did
| not do very much for me -- at least that I could noticeably
| discern.
|
| The only supplement/herbal medicine I've had success with
| is St. Johns Wort, but I've been strongly discouraged from
| using it by a psychiatrist who emphatically emphasized that
| an SSRI is a much safer and more controllable way to
| achieve the same effects if need be.
|
| Magnesium deficiency is relatively common, though I wonder
| if that isn't more of a dietary issue.
| ericd wrote:
| I'm no expert on any of this, but I think the theory is
| that many of these don't have a single strong directional
| effect like most single-compound pharmaceuticals do, but
| that if your body is short on something, and that's
| causing an issue, it can grab something from the cocktail
| of compounds, and that can help. If it's not, then it
| doesn't.
| lambdaba wrote:
| Many of the recommendations are vitamins and minerals,
| that are common deficiencies (magnesium is a notorious
| one, because of soil depletion etc.). It's reasonable to
| suspect that recovery from an illness finds one in a
| nutrient-depleted state.
| ericd wrote:
| Ah yeah, I was thinking more about the plant extracts.
| But your body is probably decent at filtering out the
| vitamins and minerals it doesn't need (the water soluble
| ones, at least, be careful with fat soluble ones like
| vitamin D).
| lambdaba wrote:
| Obviously both vitamins and plant extracts need to be
| treated with care, after having done thorough research.
| Thankfully there is plenty of information available, and
| as I've said the HN crowd should be especially well
| equipped for this.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _The only supplement /herbal medicine I've had success
| with is St. Johns Wort, but I've been strongly
| discouraged from using it by a psychiatrist who
| emphatically emphasized that an SSRI is a much safer and
| more controllable way to achieve the same effects if need
| be._
|
| Yep. From Wikipedia[1]:
|
| > _On average, lead levels in women taking St. John 's
| wort are elevated about 20%._
|
| It's also a relatively dirty drug, with effects on
| typical monoamine and GABA reuptake, MAO-A and MAO-B
| inhibition and is an inhibitor or inducer at pretty much
| every relevant enzyme that breaks down common
| medications.
|
| I wouldn't want to become dependent on something like
| that because the withdrawal syndrome could be pretty
| nasty compared to something relatively more selective and
| understood like an SSRI.
|
| Even switching from SJW to something else might be tricky
| because of the enzyme induction.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypericum_perforatum#An
| tidepre...
| [deleted]
| fragmede wrote:
| I mean, if you're basically fine, then the supplements,
| which have had studies run, aren't really going to do
| much for you unless you're _really_ in tune with your
| body. For extreme cases of long covid, however, the right
| set of vitamin supplements are life saving. (I 'm _not_
| exaggerating. eg
| https://www.cambridgeindependent.co.uk/news/long-covid-
| patie... )
|
| There are absolutely scammers selling trash (there's
| someone selling stem cell injections as a cure) and fuck
| them. But don't ignore the very real problems that
| patients are experiencing, and that they're helped by
| simple remedies that aren't yet proven by science.
| Science will catch up, but people are suffering dying in
| the meanwhile.
| lambdaba wrote:
| This is my stance exactly. It doesn't hurt to try, and
| you will learn a lot in the process. Also, some of these
| _are_ proven by science, just remember there is a lot of
| science out there and doctors are only aware of a tiny
| fraction of it.
| lambdaba wrote:
| The experience you're describing doesn't disqualify
| supplements, you say you've taken "25 [random] pills",
| this is not what I'm advocating. There are various
| supplements, be it vitamins or plant extracts, that have
| definite medicinal effects. It should go without saying,
| really.
|
| For illustration, just go on pubmed and search for
| "nigella sativa" (black seed oil).
| krastanov wrote:
| > [edit] here come the downvotes, for those that do, note
| that downvotes, at least on HN, are not meant to express
| disagreement, they are meant for content that is
| objectionable for other reasons.
|
| This is factually wrong. Search for posts by dang
| frequently explaining traditions and norms in this forum,
| including the downvote very much being a standard way to
| express disagreement (although it is better to voice your
| disagreement in a comment if you think the conversation
| would be interesting).
| lambdaba wrote:
| I didn't know that, frankly I remember reading, many
| years ago, people saying that downvotes are not meant to
| express disagreement. Maybe that changed, I personally
| don't agree with this and only consider downvoting if
| someone is not being civil, is not interested in
| discussion, or really voicing something obviously false.
| I was careful with my comment, I'm not selling anything,
| I was just interested in maybe nudging some people
| towards this information.
|
| [edit] seems I'm not the only one:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19406299
| OJFord wrote:
| It's often said, but as pointed out not the case, and
| ~never has been for as long as there was anything
| resembling policy - pg commented on it in early days.
|
| Fwiw, I'm not really a fan of it (and don't _do_ it)
| either. But it 's a lot harder to upvote not-
| objectionable things (so many!) and not upvote things
| purely because you agree (tempting!) - so I suppose it
| makes sense. I've thought before about making a 'proof of
| concept' type commenting system where its designed around
| not/objectionable; the default as you scroll past things
| would be to up-vote them (automatically), only down-
| voting on intervention when 'this does not contribute to
| the discussion'. Meh, might be interesting, but I'm not
| interested enough that I've gotten around to it :).
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _Magnesium megadoses_
|
| If you're considering this (I wouldn't), be aware that milk
| of magnesia is a very effective laxative, and other
| magnesium salts like magnesium oxide etc work similarly.
| lambdaba wrote:
| Yes indeed, I was giving hints for research, that will
| quickly reveal the best forms of magnesium to take
| (glycinate, chloride).
| sethammons wrote:
| I had an awful cold or sickness about a year ago (including
| messed up taste and smell!) and since then I've developed
| heart racing, panic attacks, and working out is sooooo hard
| now. My strength is down, my cardio sucks, and just getting
| myself to work out is a chore. I can feel trouble breathing
| sometimes. My heart can race from sitting or walking up
| stairs. I was pretty dang fit and working out hard 5 days a
| week. Now getting 1-3 days in in a week is near impossible
| due to being tired.
|
| I tested negative for covid antibodies. I'm not sure about
| all the data on "post covid 19 syndrome" but I check a lot of
| boxes for it but didn't test positive. My wife is in a
| similar block. Just tossing some anecdata out there.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Ah yes, the heart thing. Forgot to mention that because it
| hasn't happened for a couple of months now but I would wake
| up at night every now and then with my heart going like I
| just ran a marathon. But that fortunately completely went
| away.
|
| As for lung capacity: I used to play saxophone pretty
| fanatically and I think that is one of the reasons I got
| through this with a relatively low amount of damage.
| varjag wrote:
| Sounds terrible. Did you (and u/mygoodaccount) have loss of
| smell among the symptoms? I recall reading somewhere that
| it correlates with protracted recovery.
| ModernMech wrote:
| My sister had this. Even today (5 months after infection)
| she says some things taste and smell funny. She can't eat
| mint ice cream anymore because she says it tastes like
| cigarettes.
| jacquesm wrote:
| During the first three weeks, yes. But afterwards that
| came back to fairly normal levels quickly.
| mygoodaccount wrote:
| > As for lung capacity: I used to play saxophone pretty
| fanatically and I think that is one of the reasons I got
| through this with a relatively low amount of damage.
|
| Funnily enough, I used to play the flute and sing before
| contracting COVID. With my lung capacity halved, my ability
| is nowhere near what it used to be. Long COVID has taken
| all my hobbies away from me: running, singing, hip-hop
| dancing. If anyone knows of any support groups relating to
| Long COVID, please let me know.
| loopz wrote:
| Breathing exercises and meditation/yoga may help, both
| with heart and lungs. Worth a try along with long covid
| support/meetups.
| disabled wrote:
| Yep. I do breathing exercises daily. It helps with the
| dysautonomia (long covid causes dysautonomia) too.
|
| You may want to look into the Airofit Pro:
| https://www.airofit.com/
| loopz wrote:
| One may also learn Ujjayi breath. It needs no technology
| and has other benefits.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Have you tried postural drainage for your lungs? I ask
| because if you've lost half your lung capacity (and I
| expect a singer and flute player would know), then you
| must have some kind of junk in there.
|
| For those not familiar with the term: You position
| yourself with your head a foot lower than your hips (and
| your back straight). You hold that for 15 minutes or so.
| You let gravity pull the junk out of your lungs down to
| where you can cough it out. Warning: It's not fun. First,
| your head feels like it's going to explode from the lung
| pressure. Second, when a chunk comes out, oxygen starts
| hitting an area of your lungs for the first time in maybe
| months. That _hurts_. (Or so my daughter says. She had to
| do this.)
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| That sounds like the kind of thing you should do on the
| advice of your doctor, rather than on the advice of a
| stranger on the Internet.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Well, my daughter did it on the advice of a retired nurse
| (her grandmother).
| waterhouse wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postural_drainage#Risks
|
| "Postural drainage is considered safe and effective, but
| may cause some side effects. The procedure is
| discontinued if the patient complains of headache,
| discomfort, dizziness, palpitations,[3] fatigue, or
| dyspnea. Patients may be dyspnic after the various
| manuovers, since the head-down position increases the
| work of breathing, reduces tidal volume, and decreases
| functional residual capacity (FRC).[citation needed]"
| fragmede wrote:
| There's are many Facebook groups, and a Slack. (No idea
| the overlap.)
|
| http://survivorcorps.com
|
| The particular FB group I'm in is called (creatively
| enough) "Long Covid Support Group", but a search there
| reveals there are many more.
|
| My email is in my profile if you want to connect further
| over this. I consider myself mostly healed by this point
| (infected March 2020) and can share my vitamin regime
| (its efficacy is anecdotal, my sample size is 2) but I
| still have lingering health issues over a year later.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Gah that sucks, I really feel for you. But: you will
| recover. For the longest time I thought that I wouldn't
| and then bit by bit it got better. If you can find an
| exercise bike I would really recommend you find one, it
| is super motivating to see your distance creep up day-by-
| day as you regain your strength and wind.
| 3327 wrote:
| Thank the lab.
| atatatat wrote:
| I (anecdotally) linked the heart heart thing to viral waste
| in heart valves, clearing which can be helped by wild
| blueberries (antioxidants, which yes, are real!).
| satysin wrote:
| I am having daily heart palpitations and they are almost
| unbearable now. Sometimes I wake up and feel fine almost all
| day but not a day has gone by in the past two months where I
| don't have some kind of chest discomfort around my
| sternum/xiphoid process.
|
| I have had a whole bunch of scans and everything is normal. I
| will be having an endoscopy next week to hopefully get to the
| bottom of it. I am 'hoping' it is something simple and
| obvious that they can treat. So far everything ends up being
| "well it's not $insertMedicalCondition so let's check for
| $insertSomeOtherMedicalCondition" :(
| fragmede wrote:
| Have you managed to get medication (aka beta blockers) for
| the palpations? I am not a doctor but I _strongly_
| recommend getting a doctor to prescribe you some if you
| haven 't already.
|
| What's been particularly frustrating with long covid is
| because it's so new, I've had to have awkward pushy
| conversations with doctors to get me treatment I deserve.
| You can't get high off beta blockers, which helps assuage
| my feelings of being an addict engaging in drug seeking
| behavior, simply trying to get my heart rate under control,
| but the medical industry has largely failed patients here.
| The only reprieve is that enough healthcare professionals
| also got sick, so the fact that there's nothing that shows
| up on scans of my heart isn't taken as fact that there's
| nothing wrong with it.
| satysin wrote:
| Last week my doctor prescribed me something called
| Stresam (aka Etifoxine). Apparently it is a lot like the
| benzo Lorazepam (Ativan) but without the whole benzo
| addiction problem.
|
| I had never heard of it nor know anyone on it before but
| apparently it is good. Too early for me to say if it is
| personally. I want to avoid any kind of addictive
| medication if possible.
| disabled wrote:
| This sounds like dysautonomia.
|
| I have dysautonomia, which I had long before (probably)
| getting COVID-19. I have a rare form of dysautonomia. But,
| dysautonomia does happen, relatively frequently, as post-
| viral cases.
|
| The good news is that post-viral dysautonomia has high
| potential for improving and even (realistically) going
| away. Rest will be the best treatment.
|
| Check my profile if you want to email me or want help.
| treeman79 wrote:
| I acquired dysautonomia from toxic exposure.
|
| Turned out to be an underlying autoimmune disorder
| (Sjogrens) and a clotting disorder "factor 5 Leiden"
|
| The exposure triggered both from mild barely noticeable
| problems to I was completely disabled.
|
| Took years to figure out it out.
|
| When I got covid it was basically the same event again.
| Took months for body to calm down again.
| disabled wrote:
| Yep, I am in the exact same position as you. I lost at
| least a year of my life due to this post-viral syndrome.
| I am back to where I was prior to getting COVID-19,
| though. When I was really sick in March 2020, I thought
| "wow, I haven't been this sick in a long time". It really
| was like going back to square one. It was super scary,
| too, given the health problems that I have.
|
| I have autoimmune autonomic ganglionopathy (autoimmune
| dysautonomia), which is believed to have caused my type 1
| diabetes (autoimmune and insulin-dependent). It is also
| believed to have caused other endocrine problems and
| other neurological problems (I have another immune-
| mediated neurological disease affecting my peripheral
| nervous system). Anyways, autoimmune autonomic
| ganglionopathy is very rare, and I have the antibodies
| (about half of people do not), so I am tremendously
| lucky.
|
| Anyways, I would be interested in chatting with you. If
| you want to do so, my email is in my profile information.
| I am very resourceful and I have tips.
| satysin wrote:
| Ever since having COVID back in March 2020 I haven't been the
| same. I still have regular fatigue but my biggest issue is
| chest pains.
|
| For the past few months I have had worsening discomfort/pain in
| my chest. It was so bad a few weeks ago I ended up going to A&E
| thinking I was having a heart attack. They did an ECG, sonogram
| of my heart, chest x-rays, bloods, etc. My heart was fine so
| not a heart attack.
|
| They put it down to either a panic attack (possible) or a
| gastro problem so I am going for an endoscopy next week however
| I have a feeling I will end up needing a CT scan or MRI as I
| had high lipase levels in a blood test a few weeks ago that
| makes them want to look at my pancreas in my detail. It isn't
| urgent as two blood tests since them have shown normal levels
| and it isn't getting _worse_.
|
| Plus random abdominal pains all over yet an abdominal scan
| shows nothing out of the ordinary.
|
| Basically COVID has fucked me up long term. When I actually had
| COVID it didn't feel like a big deal, just a bit of a cough for
| two days and a little drained. But two months _after_ COVID I
| started getting a shit load of problems and over a year later
| it is no better.
|
| 37 year old male in France fyi.
| dragontamer wrote:
| I hear these stories and it makes me wonder if I somehow
| caught SARS way back in the early 2000s. Because these long
| symptoms people talk about were exactly what I felt back
| then.
|
| There was some dramatic respiratory illness I got that took
| took months before I felt "like normal" again. I was a young
| teenager so I never felt like I needed to go to the emergency
| room. But the amount of time it took to recover back was
| insane.
|
| I know I recovered by 6 months, but... yeah. That incident
| scared me for life. Sickness can be scary, not knowing if
| you'd ever get better from something...
|
| I can't imagine the stress I'd feel today if some illness
| afflicted me for more than 6 months.
| timr wrote:
| From personal experience, the symptoms being described by
| all of the posts on this thread overlap substantially with
| depression and anxiety. It's notable that the GP went to
| the hospital and was diagnosed with a possible panic
| attack. Panic attacks frequently cause your heart to race,
| skip, etc. Depression causes "brain fog" and fatigue, body
| aches, etc.
|
| So far, ~all of the reports of "long covid" are anecdotal
| and post hoc. Which is not to say that they aren't real,
| but that there's no way of knowing what is causes by the
| virus, and what is caused by a year in which a significant
| portion of the population was isolated from contact and
| systematically terrified.
|
| I've personally had "brain fog", insomnia, fatigue and
| distraction for the last year, and never had Covid. It's
| been a difficult, depressing, scary year, and a lot of
| people have these symptoms.
| cycomanic wrote:
| You're wrong that long covid evidence is anecdotal. It is
| a clinical diagnosis though (i.e. it's diagnosed based on
| symptoms). I think you also severely underestimate the
| effect this had on people, and symptoms are not generally
| compatible with depression. Patients often show reduced
| lung capacity of 60%. The brain fog is also often much
| more severe than just not being able concentrate a bit,
| people can't do simple calculations, can't follow
| conversations, can't read more than a page in a book,
| immediately forget things they just talked about. Many
| people become completely unable to perform their usual
| tasks.
| timr wrote:
| > You're wrong that long covid evidence is anecdotal.
|
| Fine, convince me. Provide a citation from a study where:
|
| 1) the results are NOT gathered by survey from a self-
| selected population
|
| 2) the study is pre-registered, with endpoints determined
| in advance
|
| 3) the study is _prospective_ , longitudinal and
| randomized
|
| 4) there is a control group
|
| 5) the participants are verified to actually have Covid
|
| 6) a significant effect is shown on the pre-registered
| endpoints
|
| and I'll take your claims seriously. The only current
| study that I'm currently aware of that _remotely_ comes
| close to this standard of evidence (but doesn 't meet all
| of them) is this one: a controlled, retrospective study
| of 250,000 kids, which found that kids _without covid_
| had roughly equivalent long-term symptoms to kids who did
| have covid.
|
| https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.05.212566
| 49v...
|
| I bring up this study only to underscore the point:
| essentially all current "long covid" data is self
| reported and uncontrolled, and when you start to be
| rigorous, the claims of severity rapidly diminish. Here's
| a relevant editorial in Nature:
|
| _" Studies of long COVID thus far--nearly all from high-
| income countries--have been difficult to interpret or
| compare, not only because of the lack of a consistent
| case definition but also because of systematic selection
| bias of cases, often without appropriate
| controls....Meanwhile, community-based studies have
| raised questions about the representativeness of cases
| compared with the general population, especially those
| using online recruitment, with many studies relying on
| self-reported symptoms and without laboratory-confirmed
| diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Selection bias becomes
| even more pronounced when people are recruited through
| online support groups, where very high rates of often
| nonspecific long-term symptoms have been reported, even
| in children."_
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01402-w
|
| > Patients often show reduced lung capacity of 60%
|
| Citation required. See above for standards of evidence.
|
| > The brain fog is also often much more severe than just
| not being able concentrate a bit, people can't do simple
| calculations, can't follow conversations, can't read more
| than a page in a book, immediately forget things they
| just talked about.
|
| Citation required. See above for standards of evidence.
|
| > Many people become completely unable to perform their
| usual tasks.
|
| Citation required. See above for standards of evidence.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Oh, I know when I was depressed (also as a teenager, but
| a few years after that). That was a different time and I
| can talk about that if you like.
|
| But what hit me back then was definitely not depression
| and/or anxiety. It was some mysterious illness that took
| me out for a week (kinda typical), but then made me
| unable to "breath normally" for literally months. It was
| innately a physical condition: unable to breath, unable
| to sleep well, unable to feel physically good for months
| at a time.
|
| A mental depression is... different. I know because I've
| been through both. In particular, depression doesn't have
| chronic multi-month breathing issues normally associated
| with it.
|
| -------------
|
| I only bring it up because the timeframes line up. SARS
| hit in 2003, roughly the time of my mysterious illness
| (though I never went to the doctor for it back then. I
| only knew about SARS because of COVID19 studies today).
|
| Given that SARS and COVID19 have many similarities, I
| really do wonder if the experience I felt back then is
| anything like what people with long-COVID19 feel today.
| timr wrote:
| > But what hit me back then was definitely not depression
| and/or anxiety. It was some mysterious illness that took
| me out for a week (kinda typical), but then made me
| unable to "breath normally" for literally months. It was
| innately a physical condition: unable to breath, unable
| to sleep well, unable to feel physically good for months
| at a time.
|
| Sure. Pneumonia can easily cause that. It takes a long
| time to recover from it, even if you're young.
|
| Fundamentally, "covid" is pneumonia caused by a
| particular virus, so it's not surprising that people
| (esp. people who had serious cases) might have similar
| kinds of lingering symptoms.
| satysin wrote:
| All valid points.
|
| However as someone who was diagnosed with C-PTSD back in
| 2009 and spent 4 months in hospital for treatment of
| panic disorder, depression and anxiety this is
| _different_ to what I experienced back then. It is a near
| constant discomfort in my chest.
|
| I am wondering if it is perhaps costochondritis or
| something similar to it? Perhaps costochondritis _and_
| anxiety that is making the whole thing worse? I wish I
| had answers. Hopefully I will next week.
| disabled wrote:
| You may want to take a look at this:
| https://www.ohsu.edu/sites/default/files/2021-04/Long-
| COVID-...
|
| It's basically a cheat sheet to long hauler's clinical
| presentations, along with the diagnoses that they get. It's
| all classified and stuff.
|
| I am pretty sure that I got COVID-19 in March 2020, and it
| messed me up severely.
|
| But, your heart problems could be dysautonomia. I had
| dysautonomia prior to getting COVID-19, though, and I have a
| rare form of it.
|
| Anyways, according to that cheat sheet that I referred to,
| the palpitations could be:
|
| "Arrhythmia related to myocardial, pericardial disease or PE,
| dysautonomia with POTS"
|
| The chest pain:
|
| "Chest wall pain, GI source, pericarditis, myocarditis,
| established CAD, thromboembolic disease, etc."
|
| This is the ultimate site on fatigue. Unfortunately it is in
| Norwegian, so you have to use Google Translate for the
| website (and the PDF documents--which are great):
| https://www.kognitiv.no/psykisk-helse/ulike-
| lidelser/utmatte...
| Frondo wrote:
| Hey man, similar thing here. Every six months or so, almost to
| the day, I've got a spell for about 7-10 days where I have an
| immense fatigue, like sleeping 12-15 hours at a stretch, and a
| brain fog that makes it impossible to concentrate on anything.
| Then it all lifts, and I go back to my usual 7 hours a night,
| thinking all day and night. This all started for me in February
| of 2020, too, just before the lockdowns; I didn't get a
| positive test at the time because my live-in partner did
| receive one -- the testing clinic said with the positive
| exposure to just stay home and go to the hospital if I can't
| breathe -- since then we've both had the same symptoms at
| roughly the same occurrence.
|
| It sucks.
| christkv wrote:
| Seems vaccinating might help relieve long Covid
| https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/vaccines-long-covid might be
| worth talking to your doctor
| cycomanic wrote:
| Funny I just saw a TV program discussing long covid. One of the
| guests was Jordis Frommhold who was elected woman of the year
| in Germany for her work on long covid rehab. Very interesting
| discussion.
|
| One of the things she mentioned is that many of the long covid
| patients had mild to moderate covid infections. Also at the
| moment they don't know why some people get it and others don't.
| So likely your not calling the ambulance did not make a
| difference.
|
| Hope you'll get better, the symptoms described sound awful.
| perlgeek wrote:
| > I will always wonder if I had called them earlier if I could
| have avoided the worst of this
|
| Given the prevalence of Long Covid in asymptomatic cases, many
| people claim that the severity of the initial disease and the
| long-term symptoms are not really correlated. So it's likely
| that seeking emergency care wouldn't have changed anything.
|
| Wishing you the best of luck and a good/complete recovery!
| austincheney wrote:
| Symptomatic or not if you carry the virus you should still
| pop hot on an antibody test. You would think.
|
| I had a Covid positive coworker last year cough around me and
| directly work very closely with me immediately before taking
| sick time. I still continued to fail the antibody tests
| indicating either no viral contact or no immune response of
| any kind.
|
| I don't know if there is a correlation here but in a six
| month period last year I caught the common cold three times.
| The second of those times was a month before my coworker
| tested positive and the third time was a week after they
| tested positive.
| bserge wrote:
| You will test positive for antibodies for months after
| infection.
|
| Kind of the whole point of the immune system and the
| vaccine.
|
| Contrary to some beliefs, Covid doesn't spread by people
| looking, touching or talking to each other. The latter has
| a higher chance, though.
|
| It's highly likely you've never gotten it from your
| coworker.
|
| Assuming you mean antibody blood tests, I don't know anyone
| who would willingly take several of them in a short time.
| verdverm wrote:
| Some researchers are starting to think that the spike
| protein is the main contributor to this issue and not the
| virus itself, so if even if the virus is gone, the protein
| may still be present.
| manmal wrote:
| Did you try NAC? Maybe worth a shot - this paper is about
| ,,long EBV/mono" which might have similar mechanisms:
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29228057/
|
| > These data support the idea that NAC could be considered as a
| treatment to alleviate chronic inflammatory pathologies,
| including post-viral disease
| iammisc wrote:
| NAC is illegal in the USA now. Thank you FDA.
| tguvot wrote:
| not really illegal. seems to be sold on iherb
| jamroom wrote:
| Are you talking about N-Acetyl Cysteine? Something like
| this?
|
| https://www.swansonvitamins.com/swanson-premium-nac-n-
| acetyl...
|
| When did it become illegal? I've used it before and was
| unaware of that.
| iammisc wrote:
| I've used it before as well.
|
| Here is a story about the FDA and NAC:
| https://www.naturalproductsinsider.com/regulatory/crn-
| petiti...
|
| Honestly, I haven't used NAC in ~2 years. Have just heard
| about the drama from friends.
| nick__m wrote:
| They seems to have banned products claiming to cure
| hangovers https://www.fda.gov/food/cfsan-constituent-
| updates/fda-sends... but Nac is still available. Amazon had
| an overly broad interpretation of those letters but it
| appears to be available there :
| https://www.iherb.com/pr/Now-Foods-NAC-600-mg-250-Veggie-
| Cap...
| ElViajero wrote:
| I got CoVid in Osaka at the beginning of November 2019. The
| symptoms lasted around 5 months. I got it again in May 2021 and
| this time I was fully recovered in 3 weeks.
|
| I got vaccinated, even during the second infection I felt
| extremely tired and slightly confused, I want to minimize as
| much as possible the risk of repeating again.
|
| update: For all the down-votes. Time will say. But "A new study
| shows that first cases of coronavirus infections could have
| appeared in China between October and mid-November 2019". It
| fits with my experience. https://www.dw.com/en/covid-study-
| cases-spread-in-china-earl...
|
| update 2: I arrived to Osaka Airport (KIX) on 9th November, I
| had symptoms 3 days later.
|
| update 3: Stop down-voting the people that says that it is
| impossible. It may be the case, I am just sharing my personal
| experience in case it clicks somewhere. I can be wrong and it
| could have been a virus with very similar symptoms. I didn't
| wanted to start a war of up votes and down votes, that adds
| nothing to the discussion.
| DeRock wrote:
| > I got CoVid in Osaka at the beginning of November 2019.
|
| Impossible, cases did not appear in Wuhan until mid-late
| November. You must have had some other flu/virus.
| ElViajero wrote:
| Maybe you are right and it was something else. But, it was
| very similar and the timing is quite close.
|
| I just feel to share it if it may help someone to build a
| timeline. And, as I have said in another comment, Osaka has
| many many Chinese visitors and I was in a very busy
| airport. I doubt that it took a lot of time to jump from
| China to other Asian countries.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| Yes there's a small chance of it being COVID then, was
| there an Osaka-Wuhan direct flight!
| outworlder wrote:
| Impossible is a very strong word, there are samples of
| people from months before covid was identified in Wuhan
| that are under investigation. Not specifically in Japan,
| but it can't be ruled out with the current information.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| I don't think it's impossible, unlikely given current
| information. Of course that information can change...
| [deleted]
| ping_pong wrote:
| I'm sorry but Covid wasn't in Osaka in November 2019. You
| definitely had some other disease like the flu.
| c6401 wrote:
| Given it was in the US at least in December 2019 if not
| earlier according to the NIH retrospective serology study
| it doesn't seem to be completely impossible.
| https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-study-
| offe... Also similar Italian serology study by National
| Cancer Institute showed that sars-cov-2 was circulating in
| Italy as early as September 2019.
| jjeaff wrote:
| Do you happen to work in a biolab? How do you know you had
| covid in November 2019? The first known cases in Japan aren't
| until January 2020. And the first reported case in China is
| November 2019.
| gpm wrote:
| > in Osaka at the beginning of November 2019
|
| On what basis do you believe this was covid-19 and not some
| other disease?
| ElViajero wrote:
| I had the same symptoms that I had the second time. The
| second time was confirmed by PCR-test.
|
| But, of course, it could have been an equivalent disease
| with the same symptoms: fever, mental-fog, sore-throat.
|
| It is just the timing, the fact that Osaka is visited by
| many Chinese nationals and the feeling was so similar that
| makes me quite sure that it was covid-19.
| dtech wrote:
| Those are symptoms of literally every airway infection
| known to man. Is is much, much, much more likely you had
| a flu/heavy cold instead of having Covid 1 month before
| the first public Chinese cases and 3 months before first
| European cases
| gpm wrote:
| Also that if the first disease wasn't covid, getting
| covid the second time around isn't that unlikely, but if
| the first disease was covid, getting covid again was
| shockingly unlikely (not impossible) because of the
| degree of immunity granted by the first infection.
| axiosgunnar wrote:
| You mean your brain was starved of oxygen for some time? (while
| still enough to not faint)
|
| Interesting, could somebody more knowledgable say if this is
| possible?
|
| Wish you a swift recovery in any case!
| jacquesm wrote:
| I made one critical mistake: it hurt a lot to try to sleep so
| I tried to sleep on my back one night, and that cost me
| dearly: the active area of the lungs is not symmetrically
| divided between front and back, the back part has a larger
| active surface. Fluid then migrates from the front to the
| back pooling there leading to less gas exchange. I suspect
| that this was the lowest point and after that sleeping on my
| belly at least kept me safe. The really stupid thing: I knew
| this already (had double pneumonia when I was in my 20's).
| kbelder wrote:
| Yeah, when I had Covid my wife was doing everything she
| could for me... hydrating, vitamins C and D, so on, but I
| think the treatment with the biggest effect was resting
| face-down. The fact that that is now pretty common
| knowledge has probably saved many thousands of lives.
| sunkenvicar wrote:
| Ivermectin improves long-Covid symptoms. Worth a try because its
| safe and effective.
| mikewarot wrote:
| I'm fairly certain I've had it as well. I had coworkers who were
| confirmed to have had it, and I got sick. This was back before
| testing was widely available. I've since tested negative for
| active infection (last June), and been vaccinated (March 2021).
|
| I have almost no endurance. A trip to the store shopping for
| groceries, and getting them back in the house, and put away, is
| about all I can do for a day.
|
| The long term consequences of Covid are just starting to be
| recognized. I wonder how many people are going to end up on
| disability.
| halotrope wrote:
| Is it possible to have an asymptomatic primary infection and
| still suffer long covid? Antigen tests where negative but ever
| since last fall I feel weird symptoms that I never had for any
| length of time. Stuff like trouble spelling, complete lack of
| concentration, difficulties comprehending things when trying to
| actively learn and a general feeling of confusion and exhaustion.
| I tend to just assume a general state of exhaustion or slight
| burnout after a pretty intense year. Reading long-covid
| experiences makes me wonder tough.
|
| Edit: spelling...
| quenix wrote:
| Supposedly, the risk of long COVID is not correlated to the
| severity of symptoms.
|
| That's a bad thing.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| Yes, but is it even correlated to Covid? This study lacks a
| control group, so we don't know.
| perlgeek wrote:
| Yes, it's totally possible.
|
| https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20210615-a-fifth-of-as...
| claims it's 20% of asymptomatic cases that develop Long Covid.
| Even if the number is off, it's unlikely to be actually zero.
|
| Good luck and speedy recovery!
| inb4_cancelled wrote:
| I'd like to know as well. Never had any covid AFAIK, yet I'm
| currently on my second week of feeling tired and on my fourth
| day of experiencing heart palpitations maybe once every hour
| (feels like my heart skipped a beat and the next one is a bit
| stronger). I've never had this before and my antigen test
| yesterday was negative.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I have those. At least in my case, it's a premature
| ventricular contraction. What happens is that the nerve fires
| too _early_ , and the heart muscle says: "What? LOL, no. I'm
| still on my coffee break." But blood keeps arriving at the
| heart, so the next beat is stronger because it has more blood
| to move. They can get strong enough to hurt a bit.
|
| In my case, it seemed to be caused by Claritin. When I
| stopped taking Claritin, I quit having these. Years later,
| just recently, I've started having them again.
|
| Disclaimer: I am not a doctor, and this is not medical
| advice. Your symptoms may be something else.
| shaicoleman wrote:
| The FLCCC have published the I-RECOVER Protocol for treating Long
| COVID:
|
| https://covid19criticalcare.com/covid-19-protocols/i-recover...
|
| https://youtu.be/ZCYM2HW2Ayw?t=321
| abz10 wrote:
| A theory that I ascribe to is that Long Covid is viral induced
| CFS/ME. As someone with hEDS I've battled CFS/ME for most of my
| life. I don't want to celebrate too soon but in the last few
| weeks do I feel like I have now won the battle. I just started
| using a combination of very powerful but targeted drugs. I feel
| 110% and no longer get Post Exertion Malease (PEM) which is a
| major indicator of CFS/ME.
|
| I take Low Dose Naltrexone, Testosterone Cypionate, BPC-157,
| TB-500, Mod GRF, Ipamorelin, Thyroxine (T4), and Triiodothyronine
| (T3). I take a ton of vitamins but the effective ones seem to be
| the megadoses of B1 and B3. I also take NMN for NAD+ deficiency
| but I'm not sure if that is doing anything. I eat a low carb diet
| and take cold showers and work out every other day.
|
| Low Dose Naltrexone is great for brain fog and I've been taking
| it for 5 years.
|
| The Test, hGH peptides, and T3/T4 is probably responsible for the
| bulk of my improvement. I've only been taking them for a few
| weeks and it's night and day difference.
|
| I'm not saying this is for everyone but it definitely worked for
| me so it may help others looking for ideas.
| nprateem wrote:
| Anyone know of any studies regarding whether the vaccines reduce
| the risk of long covid if you catch it after being double
| vaccinated? They're only supposed to be about 95% effective after
| 2 shots, so if you catch it in that 5% probability how likely is
| long covid afterwards?
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| Severe viral diseases are no joke. I know a couple people who got
| COVID19 and are still dealing with issues months on. One had to
| drop out of university due to "brain fog" and concentration
| issues.
|
| > Individuals that have not fully recovered or suffer from
| fatigue, dyspnea or depression were more likely to have further
| healthcare contacts. However, a third of individuals (37/111)
| that have not fully recovered did not seek further care.
|
| My personal experience of getting chickenpox as an adult was a
| high fever for almost a week and nearly two years before I felt
| normal again. At about 6 months in I stopped going to doctors
| because they had nothing new to tell me. What was a mild disease
| for children turned into a protracted ordeal for me.
| abystander wrote:
| Since they claim a quarter of patients are showing symptoms and
| one of those is depression - how do they separate the out the
| effect of the de facto criminalization of social activity, an
| innate human behavior ingrained in our DNA after millions of
| years of evolution?
|
| You'd get significant depression in solitary confinement too.
| caturopath wrote:
| > how do they separate the out the effect of the de facto
| criminalization of social activity, an innate human behavior
| ingrained in our DNA after millions of years of evolution?
|
| Presumably you can tease that out to some degree by comparing
| to folks who didn't have COVID.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| I was about to say this also -- I haven't been to the gym for
| over a year and haven't done any real weight training or group
| exercise for this whole time in lockdown. It would be hard for
| me to separate the effect of that from long COVID, curious how
| the study is controlling for this factor.
| deregulateMed wrote:
| I want to ask the commenters in this thread who have long
| covid if they are overweight/obese or have a medical
| condition. But... I don't want to get flagged.
| ljf wrote:
| Hey can only talk for my wife (got covid late March 2020)
|
| 40yo, not over weight, was at the gym 4 days a week, could
| squat and deadlift 50kg, very active life.
|
| Only 'pre existing' was coeliac disease and very very mild
| asthma. Like barely ever took a blue inhaler but had one in
| the house. Other that That fit and healthy and very active.
|
| Inital covid as bad, but after 2 weeks was nearly back to
| normal, then breathing got worse, heart rate all over the
| place, numbness, brain fog etc. Only just getting back to
| normal now but still not ready for exercise yet.
| FiReaNG3L wrote:
| No idea why you're getting downvoted - they have no control
| group and as you say there's 'depression' in their symptoms
| they count for. I'm pretty sure 'depression' (which I'm sure
| they don't count as clinically depressed, but 'im feeling more
| depressed') went up significantly in the whole population last
| year.
|
| Also PLoS one is basically not peer reviewed - they accept
| every paper after a short review.
| buu700 wrote:
| _No idea why you 're getting downvoted_
|
| Speculation: conflation of his reasonable and factual
| statement with the ostensibly similar far-right talking point
| that the cure (social distancing) is worse than the disease.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > far-right talking point
|
| Expressing skepticism surrounding the efficiency of social
| distancing, masks, "non essential business" and all these
| lockdowns is not a "far right" talking point. None of our
| response was in any playbook for this level of threat. We
| threw out all our pandemic planning in a fit on hysteria
| and panic.
|
| To this day we cannot say for certain that lockdowns did
| anything at all, let alone enough to justify their social
| costs. Same with social distancing or even masks for that
| matter. The fact that all this can be considered an
| uncontrolled experiment on unwilling participants is not
| "far right" thinking.
| CarelessExpert wrote:
| > Expressing skepticism surrounding the efficiency of
| social distancing, masks, "non essential business" and
| all these lockdowns is not a "far right" talking point.
|
| You're absolutely right. This kind of misinformation
| isn't limited to the far right.
|
| > To this day we cannot say for certain that lockdowns
| did anything at all,
|
| LOL, what? This is a truly astonishingly statement.
|
| Literally every place that instituted lockdowns saw a
| drop in COVID transmission, and every place that reduced
| or eliminated lockdowns saw an increase.
|
| This isn't even controversial. It's an application of the
| basic germ theory of infectious transmission.
|
| You can't seriously be making this claim in good faith,
| can you?
| harpersealtako wrote:
| I would hope we're past the point now where we can write
| off legitimate complaints or concerns about the overall
| direction of COVID mitigation strategies implemented in
| most developed countries. Many well-intentioned anti-
| misinformation campaigns have been proven misguided and
| potentially harmful (for example, the debacle around the
| lab-leak theory, and the subsequent censorship and
| ostracization of anybody who dared suggest it), so we
| should be careful when we accuse others of arguing in bad
| faith, lest we repeat our past mistakes. This isn't 2020
| anymore, we should be able to take a sober look at what
| likely worked (universal mask-wearing, vaccines, border
| closures, quick contract tracing) and what may not have
| worked (closing otherwise safe outdoor spaces, obsessive
| surface cleaning, the "6-foot-rule") without judgement
| now.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| I am absolutely making this claim in good faith.
|
| Where is your studies showing these restrictions worked
| well enough to justify their immense costs to society?
| They don't exist. To date I've yet to see a single cost
| benefit analysis done for any of this. It simply wasn't
| allowed to be done... you'd get shouted down by the mob.
|
| It worries me greatly how little critical thinking has
| been applied to the last 17+ months. It's appeals to
| authority all the way down.
|
| Show me the proof this stuff worked... and even then we
| didn't know it would work going in, which makes it
| incredibly ethically (and morally) challenged. The last
| 17 months have shown me the depths of what humanity can
| do when gripped with fear and hysteria... it is pretty
| terrifying.
| abystander wrote:
| I notice a lot of run-of-the-mill liberals automatically
| assume their opponents who aren't manifestly crazy are
| "devil's advocates" or not making the argument in good
| faith.
|
| It seems intellectually lazy and the epitome of
| condescension to cast away all criticism in this way. As
| those opposing arguments are always beyond the pale and
| not worthy of thought.
|
| The overwhelming feeling I get from this type of person:
| "there's no possibility I'm wrong."
| kwthrows wrote:
| > It's appeals to authority all the way down.
|
| Welcome to the new far-right.
| CarelessExpert wrote:
| > Where is your studies showing these restrictions worked
| well enough to justify their immense costs to society?
|
| And predictably the goalposts shift.
|
| First it was that we "cannot say for certain that
| lockdowns did anything at all".
|
| Now it's that the results don't "justify their immense
| costs to society".
|
| > and even then we didn't know it would work going in,
|
| Again: Lockdowns are a basic application of germ theory.
|
| The only way they could _not_ work is if infection didn
| 't pass from human to human but was transmitted via
| miasma or aether.
|
| You could _absolutely_ make valid arguments for or
| against specific lockdown policy choices (i.e. capacity
| limits, sizes of gatherings, types of businesses
| affected, etc).
|
| But lockdowns in general? There's piles of evidence that
| shows they're extremely effective. Heck, in my own city,
| we saw a massive spike brewing prior to Christmas, and
| once a lockdown was instituted, the numbers immediately
| began to fall. That pattern is repeated anywhere you care
| to look.
|
| I honestly refuse to spend any time citing data for you,
| as I do not believe for a second that you're arguing in
| good faith. If you really wanted to find facts, you could
| easily dig them up. That you haven't done so tells me
| everything about your willingness to question your own
| beliefs.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > There's piles of evidence that shows they're extremely
| effective. Heck, in my own city, we saw a massive spike
| brewing prior to Christmas, and once a lockdown was
| instituted, the numbers immediately began to fall. That
| pattern is repeated anywhere you care to look.
|
| That isn't proof. I could very easily claim it was
| seasonality or things well beyond our control that caused
| cases to go down. And I am probably right. The charts and
| graphs all follow the same basic pattern everywhere in
| the world regardless of restrictions in place. Clearly if
| lockdowns worked so well you'd see orders of magnitude
| difference between a place like Florida or Sweden
| compared to California or New York.
|
| The burden of proof is upon those forcing it upon us and
| so far, crickets from all around. It's truly insane how
| nobody is allowed call out the mounds of public data
| suggesting the effects of lockdowns or any of our non
| pharmaceutical interventions are minimal at best... we
| pissed away well over a year of people's lives for
| basically nothing.
|
| Show me they work. And show me they worked well enough to
| justify the extreme damage they caused to society.
| Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
| Where is the evidence?
| wesleywt wrote:
| This post is classic Dunning-Kruger. Florida arrested a
| statistician who was attempting to publish the real death
| toll. So can we seriously accept thier count as the
| truth? California and New York were hit before they could
| implement lockdowns. I don't understand why hundreds of
| thousands of deaths is okay for the right wingers like
| you?
| abystander wrote:
| > I don't understand why hundreds of thousands of deaths
| is okay for the right wingers like you?
|
| Kamala said she wouldn't take the vaccine cause it was
| from Trump.
|
| Cuomo/Murphy have clearly made massive mistakes in their
| handling of the most vulnerable during the pandemic
| likely directly causing 10s of thousands of deaths in
| those states.
|
| Never mind the liberals and others that called for a
| WWII-like mobilization and takeover of private industry
| to create ventilators that likely ended up causing _more_
| death, meanwhile calling anyone else that objected to
| those calls heartless murderers.
|
| No one is ok with 100s of thousands of deaths and
| implying that's true is slander.
| abystander wrote:
| > Lockdowns are a basic application of germ theory.
|
| And eugenics is a basic application of evolutionary
| biology.
| CarelessExpert wrote:
| Because the entire comment is clearly phrased to be
| antagonistic? "de facto criminalization of social activity"?
| Are they trying to troll people? Because that's how you troll
| people.
| abystander wrote:
| What would the average pro-lockdown person say if someone
| hosted a party or even got together with someone for coffee
| without a mask? They'd be calling for jail. I've heard this
| enough throughout the pandemic.
| emodendroket wrote:
| That part is fine but the part where he instead diagnoses
| everyone with having been driven crazy by the (by implication
| misguided) coronavirus response is not really thoughtful in
| my opinion.
| abystander wrote:
| > the part where he instead diagnoses everyone with having
| been driven crazy [...] is not really thoughtful
|
| I said you could expect "significant" depression if there's
| de facto (in some countries de jure) criminalizing of
| social activity.
|
| I think you're the one who's not being thoughtful about
| characterizing arguments here.
|
| I believe the policy is often misguided/short-sighted but I
| never said that, you're extrapolating that valid criticism
| of the policy would be a discredit for officials.
| [deleted]
| iammisc wrote:
| When my first daughter was born in 2018, I had a respiratory
| infection. It lasted three months before I went in to the doctor.
| I hesitated to seek medical advice because it was clearly viral.
| But the cough was so bad it was causing the newborn to wake up.
|
| The doctor (at a walk-in clinic) told me viral respiratory
| infections can last months and there's nothing you can do. Just
| wait. HE gave me some pills to stop the cough since it was
| interfering with my life.
|
| That was it. It was about one year later that the cough finally
| dissipated. It got better after about 5 months, but it took many
| more months for all symptoms to go away.
|
| I guess my question is... why did my doctor tell me that viral
| respiratory diseases can last for many months in early 2019, when
| according to what I gather here, doctors are surprised that COVID
| may do the same?
| perlgeek wrote:
| With a "normal" viral cough, the infection itself lasts that
| long. With Long Covid, the viral load is gone from your system,
| and symptoms still persist
|
| Previously, the general public wasn't very interested in
| chronic, unspecific symptoms that people have or had (google
| Chronic Fatigue Syndrome; it's a collection of people feeling
| fatigue, have concentration issues etc. similar to Long Covid,
| many long before COVID-19 was a thing). With Covid, there are
| too many to ignore, so such things are now getting more
| attention.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > With Covid, there are too many to ignore, so such things
| are now getting more attention.
|
| Too many to ignore or just that we decided to put a huge
| magnifying glass on it? We have our log levels turned up to
| "ultra verbose" and are collecting every single scrap of
| data. If we looked at other respiratory viruses with the same
| amount of logging... I would bet we'd see just as much, if
| not more, crap as we are with covid. Never has a respiratory
| virus been followed this closely.
| [deleted]
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| My friend was diagnosed with ME/CFS after a stroke at age 27.
| The term "myalgic encephalitis" is the preferred term, as I
| understand it, because the public seems to be unable to take
| a phrase like "chronic fatigue syndrome" seriously. In
| America at least, our puritan personality insists that
| "fatigue" is a sign of laziness.
|
| If there's an upside to Covid-19, I hope that it's that the
| symptoms of ME/CFS are taken more seriously by the public and
| scientific community, and that the results of further
| research on "long covid" are transferrable.
|
| Those here who are experiencing Long Covid symptoms should
| keep an eye on a drug called Ampligen. It is the first and
| only drug that has been approved for the treatment of ME/CFS,
| but thus far only in Argentina. There are a couple ongoing
| studies in the United States (one in Lake Tahoe), but no FDA
| approval yet. Recently, Ampligen has been put into trials for
| the treatment of Long Covid as well.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rintatolimod
|
| https://www.clinicaltrialsarena.com/news/company-news/aim-
| do...
|
| https://www.proactiveinvestors.com/companies/news/921928/aim.
| ..
| SamBam wrote:
| Except that Post-Viral Syndrome has been a thing since before
| Covid:
|
| > Post-viral syndrome, or post-viral fatigue, refers to a
| sense of tiredness and weakness that lingers after a person
| has fought off a viral infection. It can arise even after
| common infections, such as the flu.
|
| https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/326619
| shoto_io wrote:
| Same here. Had a terrible, terrible flu (?) back in 2017. I was
| weak and couldn't smell nor taste anything for months.
|
| It took a long time before I was the old me.
|
| Maybe it's common with virus diseases and we have an attention
| bias now and it might be additionally more common with COVID.
| iammisc wrote:
| I think it's an attention bias thing. I mean... when I found
| out about this phenomenon from my doctor, I was shocked --
| how could people be walking around with these bad infections
| and just not be able to do anything about it. But then I
| realized that many people have medical things that I can't
| see that they just deal with. Like many people excrete their
| feces into a bag on their stomach. And some people have to
| inject hormones constantly.
|
| It's just life, and you can't choose what cards you're dealt.
| I'm glad people are paying more attention to these
| disabilities (although I hesitate to even call them that),
| but on the other hand, we should be careful not too get drawn
| in simply because COVID is the current story du jour.
| gizmo wrote:
| Because your doctor is right. Serious viral infections are no
| joke. Long covid asserts that people with very mild symptoms
| are also likely to suffer long term. This is controversial.
| iammisc wrote:
| > Long covid asserts that people with very mild symptoms are
| also likely to suffer long term. This is controversial.
|
| I'm not sure I understand. My symptoms I described above were
| never that bad. Were it not for waking up my newborn, I
| wouldn't have gone in to the doctor. It was just a mild
| discomfort for a long time for me
| inlikealamb wrote:
| You aren't kidding. It isn't the norm, but I've had a viral
| bronchial infection for almost 2 months now. All you can do is
| wait and suppress the symptoms.
|
| As a side note, having an unrelated cough during a respiratory
| pandemic is not a good time.
| deregulateMed wrote:
| Physicians are not scientists. They repeat what was taught in
| their craft.
|
| If their professors and coworkers never mentioned this, they
| don't know.
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| > why did my doctor tell me that viral respiratory diseases can
| last for many months in early 2019, when according to what I
| gather here, doctors are surprised that COVID may do the same?
|
| I don't think most doctors are terribly surprised (at least not
| ones who have dealt with respiratory diseases before). The
| press, on the other hand, loves stories like these.
| spidersouris wrote:
| Interestingly I had a similar experience three years ago as
| well. I would cough non-stop and no medication was of any help.
| It lasted three months and then slowly disappeared. The weeks
| after I still had some respiratory problems (whistling when
| breathing), but nothing too annoying compared to the cough.
| Without joking, this was far from being an agreeable period and
| it impacted my studies quite a lot as coughing all day made me
| very tired and I was unable to study properly. Doctors never
| found what had happened.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| >why did my doctor tell me that viral respiratory diseases can
| last for many months in early 2019
|
| Going out on a limb here but coughing for months my first
| thought would be mold. Not sure why they didn't suggest that to
| you.
| iammisc wrote:
| It wasn't coughing for months though. It started with a runny
| nose. Then I got a cough (coincided with the baby being born
| and waking up). I took cough suppressors for about 1.5 weeks.
| Then I had general sinus aches and the cough stopped. Then i
| had body aches. Then I had a runny nose and cought again,
| until finally it became general malaise until it finally
| dissipated.
|
| I count the 'end' of the infection as the point in time at
| which I was able to do my standard gym routine in full again.
| Fomite wrote:
| "doctors are surprised that COVID may do the same?"
|
| Doctors aren't. Epidemiologists aren't. We've been discussing
| and trying to study the long term effects of COVID-19
| infections (and there were similar studies for SARS) pretty
| early on - the results are just long in coming, both due to the
| nature of the problem itself, and the pandemic.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > doctors are surprised that COVID may do the same?
|
| Because we all decided to collectively forget every single
| thing we know about respiratory viruses and infectious
| diseases. Somehow because covid is "novel" the world needed to
| rebuild our entire knowledge base from the ground up.
|
| A good example is how lasting t-cell immunity was dismissed for
| the longest time (and still is in many circles). People
| apparently seemed to think that this virus was so special and
| new that people would just keep getting it over and over again
| every six months or something. Is there any virus in the
| history of mankind that does this? If we kept getting infected
| with the same virus over and over... humanity would have died
| off a long time ago....
|
| Labeling it as "novel" let people just ignore common friggen
| sense and completely loose the plot.
| yread wrote:
| But... we did get infected with coronaviruses (the OC43 and
| friends) and other common cold viruses over and over again.
| The reinfection rate of ~15% for SARS-COV-2 is comparable to
| those
| legolas2412 wrote:
| It would have been better if reinfection was described as
| "you'll test positive again, but it will be milder".
| Instead the media was full of articles saying "immunity
| lasts only 6 months"
| spookthesunset wrote:
| "There is just so much we don't understand about this
| virus".
|
| Yeah. No. It's a respiratory virus that is pretty nasty
| in really old people but not so much in anybody else.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| What was interesting to me is if you went back and read up on
| how various childhood disease worked. Nothing about Covid
| would surprise or confuse you. And one would not be blase
| about just letting it rip.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| > If we kept getting infected with the same virus over and
| over... humanity would have died off a long time ago....
|
| But it's only recently (~50-100 years) that we travel around
| the world so much, would covid-19 have propagated like it's
| doing now 300 or 2000 years ago ?
| ianlevesque wrote:
| Like forgetting that respiratory viruses are airborne?
| axiak wrote:
| i think the key difference is the incidence rate. if long term
| symptoms occur in less than one percent of cases, that's still
| enough for doctors to see and treat without surprise. this
| article says the incident rate for covid-19 is 25%, which is
| shockingly high.
| iammisc wrote:
| > this article says the incident rate for covid-19 is 25%,
| which is shockingly high.
|
| To be fair, we're not fully aware of all the cases of COVID.
| Most likely, many people had COVID but didn't know. Because
| we didn't have proper testing for a long time, our sampling
| of 'those who had COVID' is almost certainly wrong
| [deleted]
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > Symptoms were present in 385 (89%) participants at diagnosis
| and 81 (19%) were initially hospitalized
|
| This is not a normal cohort. The hospitalization rates for Covid
| were much less than 19%. This seems to be a sicker cohort.
| Miner49er wrote:
| > Third, we did not have a baseline (pre-COVID-19) assessment of
| participants' physical and mental health. Thus, it is impossible
| to distinguish the effects of COVID-19 from pre-existing
| conditions. The interpretation of our findings regarding
| depression and anxiety is further limited by the psychological
| burden that the pandemic may impose in general [48, 49]. While we
| tried to compare our results with estimates from the general
| population, applicable comparison data was not available. Other
| studies investigating longer-term sequelae after SARS-CoV-2
| infection found a relevant excess risk for longer-term symptoms
| among infected individuals compared to SARS-CoV-2-negative
| control groups [9, 50].
|
| Kind of hard to tell what this result means without a control or
| baseline, IMO.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| I hope we don't go down the path of dismissing post-COVID
| symptoms as mental illness.
|
| Yes, some patients with post-COVID symptoms could simply be
| presenting with mental illness. However, we can't simply
| dismiss the patients with measurable symptoms like cardiac
| irregularities, exercise intolerance, orthostatic intolerance,
| and other physical issues that only occurred after the COVID
| infection.
|
| Modern medicine (in any country) is not well equipped to handle
| complex disorders that don't yet have specific medical tests.
| It's common for doctors to reach for mental illness as an
| explanation, to the detriment of patients. Let's not repeat
| that for post-COVID.
| mulvya wrote:
| > Kind of hard to tell what this result means without a control
| or baseline
|
| Yes. As pointed out in
|
| Causation or confounding: why controls are critical for
| characterizing long COVID
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01402-w
|
| "To address some of these biases, we and others used
| established longitudinal cohorts recruited at the start of the
| pandemic for regular testing for antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 and
| thus provided objective confirmation of infection. We asked our
| healthcare-worker participants about 72 symptoms reported to be
| associated with long COVID, at a median of 7.5 months after the
| development of COVID-19, and found that mental-health,
| gastrointestinal and dermatological symptoms were as common
| among 140 patients with mild-to-moderate symptomatic
| seropositive COVID-19 ('cases') as in 1,160 control
| participants who remained asymptomatic and seronegative
| throughout the surveillance period. Of concern, 40-60% of both
| cases and control participants reported mental-health symptoms,
| which highlights the toll of pandemic on the healthcare
| workforce. We also identified three clusters that included 12
| symptoms--affecting the sensory, neurological and
| cardiorespiratory systems--that were reported by 67% of cases
| but also 44% of control participants, which emphasizes the
| ongoing difficulties in characterizing long COVID."
| mysterypie wrote:
| > _enrolled 431 adults from the general population with SARS-
| CoV-2 infection_
|
| How do you control for people's willingness to enter a study? If
| I had a mild case of Covid and no ongoing symptoms, I wouldn't be
| too interested in participating in a study. But if I had serious
| ongoing symptoms, I'd be very interested. It's a voluntary study,
| so how in the world do you control for that? If you can't control
| for that, it skews the results to make long COVID seem much more
| common.
| barefeg wrote:
| Interested in knowing how this statistic changes for a vaccinated
| population
| ctyc wrote:
| May not help everyone but was a mega game changer for me - extra
| strength breath right strips, both at night when sleeping and
| also while working out (or meditating/working on breathing
| exercises).
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Autopsies are showing micro-ruptures in the brain. It's not
| surprising that the brain damage takes so long to heal and has
| such strange side effects.
| ellyagg wrote:
| How do you disambiguate "long Covid" from the very real fact that
| people are incredibly suggestible.
|
| My father-in-law was convinced he had long Covid. He talked about
| it all the time.
|
| He was never diagnosed, but he had a cold near the beginning of
| the pandemic and he decided it was Covid.
|
| He claimed he could run up and down the steps at the park before
| getting Covid. Now, he claimed, he was always breathless. I
| exercise him and he'd be convinced exercise will do nothing
| because of his long Covid.
|
| Of course when he got tested he had no antibodies.
|
| But it's not just that. During the height of the pandemic, did
| you notice yourself, or notice in others, that people were always
| thinking Covid was coming on? Every little pain or weird breath
| and people became very worried.
|
| The brain is incredible at turning normal sensations into
| symptoms. We don't realize all the sensory input we're constantly
| discarding until we start becoming hyperaware.
|
| The incentives for the media to hype long Covid and for
| researchers to find long Covid is incredibly intense. Every shred
| of evidence will by hyped to the moon. Every other person you
| meet with a panic disorder or heart condition will have a story
| attributed to Covid. Ordinary people will have absolutely zero
| way to contextualize the true risk.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| There are people right in this thread claiming long covid
| without ever even having tested positive for covid... this
| seems to be a common theme with those suffering from long covid
| and worse, found in research about long covid.
| causi wrote:
| Yes, you can easily see symptoms that arise well after the active
| infection is over. Personally I had complete loss of smell and
| taste that slowly came mostly back over a two month period, only
| to suddenly go bizarre at the tail end. Six months later I can
| only assume something between my nasal membranes or olfactory
| bulbs healed wrong because my sense of smell is just as good as
| it was pre-covid, it's just incorrect. Feces, beef, chocolate,
| and french fries all have the same stale/burnt grease smell. I've
| essentially lost hope the problem is going to correct itself.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Six months after the end of a mild case: occassional heart
| arrhythmias, but getting less frequent. I got medication (Concor)
| to control them.
|
| Muscle twitching, also getting less frequent, but increasing
| after exercise or caffeine. Incidentally, the cardiologist who
| takes care about my arrhythmias has after-Covid muscle twitching
| too and a few days ago told me that another of his patients,
| fresh after Covid, has them as well.
|
| So there seem to be lingering issues. Hopefully not of the fatal
| or life-shortening kind, but this cannot really be ruled out.
|
| BTW My Covid was really fairly mild, only about 30 hours of fever
| and sweating plus a few days of blocked nose. No pneumonia or
| even much cough at all.
| dorchadas wrote:
| That's about how mine is too. I had Covid late November/early
| December (likely caught it from a student right before the shut
| schools back down) and it was very mild. Only noticeable issues
| was a sinus-like sore throat/ear, no taste/smell and being
| cold. No fever. I even actually exercised during that time,
| keeping to 10k steps a day walking in circles around my house.
| All over within 5 days of first symptoms showing (and man, that
| first good meal after getting taste back was heavenly)
|
| But since then I've been having random heart arrhythmia, which
| are also getting less frequent, as well numbness in my arms and
| legs. Like the tingling you get when it's asleep, but without
| any cause for it to go to sleep, etc. Never attributed that to
| post-Covid until I talked to my PCP about it recently. Still
| really hoping there's nothing permanently wrong, but at least
| endurance doesn't seem to have permanently suffered -- I
| actually sat my fastest 2mi run time on the treadmill
| yesterday.
| joeblow21 wrote:
| I persoanlly experienced this too. I had no symptoms and after 6
| months I still have no symptoms
| seriousquestion wrote:
| Correct me if wrong, but this doesn't appear to have a non-
| Covid-19 control group?
|
| This study on Long Covid found there was no statistical
| difference between teenagers that had Covid compared to those
| that didn't. Suggesting that these symptoms may be getting
| entangled and misattributed.
|
| https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.11.21257037v...
| ghastmaster wrote:
| If you read through the limitations section of the report, you
| will find they covered this along with several other
| limitations of the study.
| samatman wrote:
| When a study has unsurmountable limitations, which make it
| impossible to usefully reason about the "results" of the
| study, is being frank about those limitations more useful to
| society than not publishing the study?
|
| To me the obvious answer is "no, you toss it in the bin, or
| better yet you think for awhile and don't perform the useless
| study", but opinions can differ here.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| Completely agree. The term "limitations" is being used here
| to mean faults. When your study has faults, its conclusions
| are of little to no use and only serves as fodder for the
| media. It should be binned.
| standardUser wrote:
| I had a diagnosed case of COVID-19 that hit me and my partner
| pretty hard about 7 months ago. It lasted longer than either of
| us expected (close to a month) but there were only a few really
| rough days.
|
| Fast forward, and I have plenty of issues. We were both fairly
| depressed during the winter months - for me it was the worst in a
| great many years. I've had some moments of mental iffiness here
| and there, at least enough to notice. I had a really nasty throat
| infection a few months after COVID. And I've had a joint issue
| crop up in that time as well.
|
| The thing is, I never once considered any of this to be the
| direct consequence of my COVID infection. And I still don't. We
| were depressed because, after enduring nearly a year of pandemic,
| the weather was shit, our jobs were on shaky ground and the world
| was re-closed. The mental iffiness? I don't know. Sustained lack
| of stimulus and activity levels? Natural decline due to age?
| Occasionally too much drinking?
|
| I think you see where I'm going with this. I don't want to
| dispute anyone's own experience. But I do think it's worth
| considering that to _not_ have any ailments arise within a
| 12-month period as unusual as this one might not be the most
| common outcome, with or without a COVID infection.
| kalaido wrote:
| Have chronic Sinusitis from many colds I got from my little one.
| "Long Cold"
| thinkingemote wrote:
| This is an example of attention, social media and science:
|
| My anecodte. Last year I didn't get a bad infection and didn't
| get long covid.
|
| My story is not interesting, no one wants to hear it and no one
| else will share their similar anecdotes.
| [deleted]
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Been in lockdown for 18 months before I actually caught covid, to
| be perfectly honest most of the symptoms described for "long
| covid" I experienced from being locked down, after actually
| having covid I haven't noticed much of a difference (once my
| smell and taste returned, thankfully that was soon).
|
| Low energy, out of breath, etc. You have to keep in mind most of
| us are doing a fraction of walking around that you would do from
| a commute and it can make a huge difference over time. I was
| already getting out of breath running up and down one flight of
| stairs to answer the door after 6 months staying at home,
| embarrassingly I was one day interviewing a potential hire over
| video chat, quickly had to collect a package and could barely
| talk after running back upstairs, completely out of breath. I can
| see how a sedentary life kills people.
|
| This is before we get into what depression, doom
| scrolling,Journalist created hysteria fear and dread, realizing
| there isn't much to life once a few factors are removed,
| loneliness, video call fatigue and isolation, lack of distance
| between work space and life space can do to your body and mind.
|
| Doubt we'll ever get a truly objective assessment for the past
| year and a half for at least 10-15 years, if ever.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > Doubt we'll ever get a truly objective assessment for the
| past year and a half for at least 10-15 years, if ever.
|
| My daughters children maybe will have enough distance to
| reflect on it. Maybe her grandkids. And it won't be pretty...
| this last year and a half has been the biggest public health
| care fuck up in recorded history.
|
| What we did with lockdowns, masks, social distancing... it's
| all modern day rain dances. Just humans thinking they have more
| control over nature than they actually do. Same basic mechanism
| humans used thousands of years ago to trick themselves into
| thinking goat sacrifices would ward off disease and famine.
|
| What we did is truly horrific. But the truth won't be widely
| recognized until most of the players involved are long dead.
| Unfortunately...
| strikhedonia wrote:
| You think asking people to wear a piece of cloth over their
| face and maybe not go out to eat if they're vulnerable is
| "truly horrific?"
|
| Seems to me that, for the vulnerable portion of the
| population, the social distancing guidelines worked
| perfectly. Spend a year chilling at home in safety, get a
| vaccine, go back to normal. "Rain dance?" Bullshit.
| OzyM wrote:
| How likely are these numbers to be accurate? This Swiss study of
| 431 adults gives a 26% incidence of "Long Covid" at 6-8 months.
|
| But another study that I'm more familiar with that tracked 4,182
| people (mostly from the U.K., U.S., and Sweden) says only 2.3% of
| participants reported symptoms past the three month point. [0]
|
| I feel like every time I look into this topic I find a new study
| with a wildly different estimate.
|
| [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01292-y
| ping_pong wrote:
| The numbers were self-reported, so it's not going to be very
| accurate.
| peteretep wrote:
| I am partial to the Zoe studies, as their cohort seems to be
| large, stable, and include people who haven't been infected.
|
| Write-up: https://covid.joinzoe.com/us-post/long-covid Paper:
| https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.19.20214494v...
| amirhirsch wrote:
| >>Symptoms were present in 385 (89%) participants at diagnosis
| and 81 (19%) were initially hospitalized.
|
| The US hospitalization rate is (2,297,764 hospitalized /
| 33,604,986 tested positive) 6.8% so the study is a cohort of
| extra-sick folks.
|
| Also consider the selection bias of those who want to tell the
| surveyor about it. I've been thinking about how to correct for
| this in cohort studies, like perhaps ask people if they are
| vegan.
| OzyM wrote:
| You lost me at the vegan part? I agree that this is a major
| source of error in a lot of studies like these, though.
| amirhirsch wrote:
| The joke is that they go out of their way to tell people
| about it. Like, I tried the vegan diet, but gave it up
| after telling my cousin.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Self-reported symptoms. And now we will have the litany of
| hypochondriacs that didn't even got tested for SARS-COV-2 but
| swear they have some misterious long term viral syndrome that in
| the real world, if it really exists, is extremely rare.
|
| The trash that passes as science nowadays.....
| Retric wrote:
| 1 in 4 people are not Hypochondriacs. Medical research is used
| to the way people play up symptoms and this is well above the
| noise floor.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I don't know about 1 in 4 but it sure seems like there is a
| lot more of it than their used to be, just in my experience.
| Younger people living with constant worry about "health care"
| that I've only ever seen before among the elderly. When I was
| in my 20s the last thing I or any of my friends worried about
| was health care.
| ziml77 wrote:
| The worry isn't that their health is always bad. The worry
| is that if they do happen to have something happen, whether
| that be disease or injury, they won't be able to afford to
| go to the hospital or visit their doctor. And death isn't
| the only negative outcome from not getting medical
| attention, it could be permanent effects like constant pain
| or reduced physical ability.
| quenix wrote:
| Are you really trying to paint the fact that the younger
| generation is taking greater steps to systematically take
| care of their health as a bad thing? That is absurd.
| rangoon626 wrote:
| Well if that's the case, they should start with general
| nutrition
| strict9 wrote:
| This is a shallow dismissal and isn't contributing anything of
| value to the conversation.
|
| Further it disregards the multitude of commenters experiences
| with "self-reported symptoms."
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| guscost wrote:
| Your comment was not the right tone, to put it mildly. On the
| other hand there is probably no way to bring up this
| possibility without being attacked.
|
| For anyone curious, I am not a doctor, this is not medical
| advice, and every case is different, but state of mind alone
| can almost certainly do real and serious damage:
|
| https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09540261.2017.13...
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1447278/
| kamilafsar wrote:
| Not "long Covid" but my sense of smelling/tasting is still not
| the same after 6+ months.
|
| I had mild symptoms, but my sense of smelling and tasting were
| totally gone for a few weeks. After a few weeks it turned almost
| back to 80% only intense smells (like gasoline, garlic and
| diapers :shrug:) were filtered out. Since ~3 months these things
| stink intensely with an indescribable way... (I guess the diapers
| always did ;)) Additionally very neutral tasting stuff like
| cucumber and paprika stink too..
|
| Curious to hear if anyone totally "recovered" from similar
| symptoms and if so, how they did it.
|
| Edit: seems like loss of smell/taste like symptoms is also called
| "long covid"
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| I feel for you, I completely lost smell and taste and it was
| extremely scary, you don't know how bad it is until it happens
| and you can't tell if your teeth are clean, your clothes are
| clean, your milk has gone off, it's crazy to put fragrance on
| and put your wrist to your nose and there's nothing. Eating
| suddenly becomes a miserable chore, I normally cook a lot but
| just ended up eating ramen and fruit and only when my stomach
| called for it.
|
| Thankfully mine returned mostly after 2 weeks, some things
| maybe smell slightly different but I think if I was one of the
| people to have it for 6 months or not at all I'd be pretty deep
| in depression by the end of it.
|
| I saw some comments online saying long term sufferers returned
| after taking Vitamin-D and Zinc. I was already taking D but
| ordered zinc and started taking it as soon as it happened.
| Could be quackery, normally wouldn't post something like that
| on HN but only doing it in case that was the reason mine came
| back so quickly because I know how much it impacts your quality
| of life.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Can't say anything about being 100% back with smell, it seems
| more like some got back and then long plateau where I am now.
|
| My story - had covid in february 2021, +-flu but complete loss
| of smell. But not for taste - all major tastes were there (so
| salt was salty, sour sour etc.) but all the fine tastes (ie you
| barbecue a fine steak without any seasoning, and its amazing)
| were gone. The result was food that didn't taste horrible, just
| incredibly bland. I was super sporty, and started again almost
| right after it.
|
| Smell was gone 100%. I used a home made 52% apple brandy bottle
| to test my smell continuously ( _very_ strong alcohol smell,
| strong fruity by-smells), for maybe 2 weeks it was like
| breathing fresh forest air, actually OK if I didn 't consider
| what it meant. No alcohol smell. Then it gradually came back,
| same with fruity flavors.
|
| After 6 months, I would say I have my smell back. But it feels
| like its quite toned down, all the smells are rather mild. Did
| some test and my own perfumes don't smell so great anymore.
| Some other previously great smells are mild or not so great
| anymore. At least nothing smells outright horribly, and all
| food is OK to eat (since smell affects our tastes greatly).
|
| Smell is probably the least bad sense to lose, as long as its
| just about some % loss and not making many fine things smell
| like rotten shit.
| mygoodaccount wrote:
| RESULTS:
|
| _Symptoms were present in 385 (89%) participants at diagnosis
| and 81 (19%) were initially hospitalized._
|
| _At six to eight months, 111 (26%) reported not having fully
| recovered._
|
| _233 (55%) participants reported symptoms of fatigue, 96 (25%)
| had at least grade 1 dyspnea_
|
| _111 (26%) had DASS-21 scores indicating symptoms of
| depression._
|
| _170 (40%) participants reported at least one general
| practitioner visit related to COVID-19 after acute illness_
|
| _10% (8 /81) of initially hospitalized individuals were
| rehospitalized._
|
| _Individuals that have not fully recovered or suffer from
| fatigue, dyspnea or depression were more likely to have further
| healthcare contacts. However, a third of individuals (37 /111)
| that have not fully recovered did not seek further care._
| wk_end wrote:
| A 20% hospitalization rate immediately throws their sample into
| question. Here in BC (Canada), for instance, the overall case
| hospitalization rate is 5% [0]. And, FWIW, in BC we performed
| far fewer tests per capita (around 0.6) [1] than, say, the US
| (~1.3) [2], suggesting that we missed cases at least as often
| as they did in the US (per the CDC, which estimated only ~1 in
| 4 COVID cases detected [3]). So a 20% hospitalization rate is
| beyond generous (likely by an order of magnitude), and it
| wouldn't be crazy to figure the same goes for the rest of their
| stats.
|
| Add to that the lack of control, and the self-reported (and
| potentially psychosomatic) nature of symptoms...not to
| unreasonably diminish the severity of COVID or deny the reality
| of Long COVID or anything, but it's frustrating that people are
| going to read - or the media is going to report on - this
| uncritically and imagine catching COVID leaves you two coin
| flips away from permanent disability.
|
| I suppose the damage has been long-since done, and with most of
| the west well on its way, blessedly, to being vaccinated it's
| moot anyway. It's just hard not to be sick of the hysteria.
|
| [0] http://www.bccdc.ca/Health-Info-
| Site/Documents/COVID_sitrep/...
|
| [1] https://health-
| infobase.canada.ca/covid-19/epidemiological-s...
|
| [2] https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases_totaltests
|
| [3] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-
| updates/burd...
| justwanttolearn wrote:
| I haven't had covid but I definitely suffer a lot of these
| symptoms from the pandemic burn out..
| gremlinsinc wrote:
| I had bronchitis symptoms for only a week in March 2020,
| didn't think it was covid, took antibiotics but miraculously
| this really bad case of Bronchitis cleared up 3 days
| later.... I get Bronchitis every year or other year... and
| it's almost ALWAYS a 3-4 week thing.
|
| since then I've had brain fog, fatigue, pain in my
| extremities, numbness in hands/feet (off/on), body aches,
| when I stand sometimes I have to sit back down for a minute,
| my standing HR is about 130...just standing, AFTER getting up
| from sleeping. My sitting is 90... Walking is just 130-140...
| Depression, and the worst anxiety attacks of my life, just
| panic, can't stop racing thoughts, etc...
|
| Most of this stuff stopped a few months ago when I started
| doing 2 hours of mindfulness per day after seeing some
| "glitch" in the matrix type stuff which isn't really relevant
| here...
|
| I can't say for a certainty the weird Bronchitis was Covid,
| but a lot of signs point to that, and it cleared up after my
| vaccinations...so who knows...
|
| Feel like 80% of normal, which is way better than the 20% I
| was feeling just this past March.
| Grim-444 wrote:
| So, to summarize this study, they basically just asked a few
| hundred people that had Covid in the past if they had recently
| felt tired, depressed, had trouble sleeping, etc., and then
| reported that a number of the people they asked this replied yes.
| That's it. There was no medical evaluation of whether the
| reported symptoms even had a medical cause. There was no
| comparison to the answers a random control sampling of the
| population that hadn't gotten Covid would have given. They just
| asked a bunch of people that had just finished living through 1+
| years of lockdown if they had been tired or depressed recently.
| nprateem wrote:
| A doctor friend of mine has had it for months. She's had test
| after test after test. Things come back abnormal but they can't
| pin down what's wrong with her to treat it. The assumption is
| long covid - she has the tiredness, brain fog etc.
|
| So right now I'm not sure if they really know how to test for
| it.
| andred14 wrote:
| More lies for the stupid masses. Any flu or cold will have
| lasting symptoms if you don't shake it off, do some exercise, eat
| well and force yourself to 100%
|
| Also avoid pharamceuticals.
|
| I was sick in the winter 2019/2020. Took a few weeks to get
| running again so what. It was just a flu we are being lied to:
|
| https://www.bitchute.com/video/Z4s9cYZ5IBUz/
| raarts wrote:
| Maybe related to Post-Viral Fatigue Syndrome? [1]
|
| [1]
| https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaneurology/fullarticle/5...
| reader_mode wrote:
| It's self reported symptoms and the sample contains a massive
| amount of hospitalization cases compared to general pop. Couldn't
| they secure funding to do a more meaningful study where they
| actually examined random samples of population post COVID and
| looked for abnormalities in lung function or cognitive abilities,
| etc. ?
|
| Considering the stakes this seems like an important question to
| answer correctly and gathering data about potential long term
| complication sounds valuable.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-07-13 23:01 UTC)