[HN Gopher] Long Covid Comes into the Light
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Long Covid Comes into the Light
Author : CharlesW
Score : 20 points
Date : 2023-03-20 20:39 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (slate.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (slate.com)
| rngname22 wrote:
| I'll bet this is likely considered but,
|
| "For instance, 407 of the COVID patients reported having
| persistent concentration and memory problems at the end of the
| first year, while 276 of the controls also did. That meant that
| for every 10,000 people, only about 13 had cognitive difficulties
| that were attributable specifically to COVID"
|
| ^ is there a chance that a year later, these folks just got used
| to their "new normal" level of memory and concentration, and
| stopped feeling off?, and so reported lower levels of those
| cognitive symptoms?
| dagorenouf wrote:
| Here's my experience with long covid:
|
| - got infected in December 2021
|
| - 10 days of fatigue and headaches, couldn't think clearly
|
| - got better but had trouble breathing the following three months
| and had to stop any intense physical activity
|
| - during the whole year 2022, every time I got any slight immune
| system challenge (catch a cold; have a short night sleep), the
| breathing problems would come back and stay with me for 2-3 weeks
|
| - in February 2023 it seemed to have went away. No breathing
| problems for 4 months, yeepee!
|
| - 2nd week of February and out of nowhere, I started feeling
| tired, but had no other symptoms. So I spent the week taking it
| easy and just working a less and sleeping a lot
|
| - a week later, I went to get groceries and could feel my heart
| pump heavily through my chest, almost fainted twice
|
| - since then it got worse and now I can't walk, take the stairs
| or even sit upright on a chair for more than a couple minutes,
| else I risk fainting (and my heart beats like crazy the whole
| time)
|
| - spent the past 4 weeks working from bed. Can't drive; can't
| walk more than 1 min; and can't sit upright
|
| - I feel fatigued almost all the time and have the same symptoms
| as when I had covid in 2021, symptoms I never had in my life
| before
|
| - I don't know if / when it will improve, doctor didn't find
| anything
|
| I don't know if it's because of long covid, the vaccine or just
| bad luck but I'm positive I never had these kinds of symptoms
| before catching covid in 2021. And now 2 years later I live with
| a debilitating disease that makes me objectively disabled for
| most things. I'm 33 and otherwise healthy. This is not a
| hallucination.
| terminatornet wrote:
| i'm sorry you're dealing with this and I hope your symptoms
| improve soon.
| dagorenouf wrote:
| Thanks! Looking at the bright side and grateful to be running
| my own startup from a laptop, so at least I can still work.
| Many others aren't as lucky
| justinclift wrote:
| > - since then it got worse and now I can't walk, take the
| stairs or even sit upright on a chair for more than a couple
| minutes, else I risk fainting (and my heart beats like crazy
| the whole time)
|
| As a super simple thought, if you take an iron supplement do
| you reckon it might help at all?
|
| Asking because when I occasionally get that, it generally means
| I'm so low in iron that I need to supplement for a while. (Some
| history of mild anaemia in the family, but nothing to worry
| about in itself.)
|
| Note, not thinking it'd be a solution here. More a workaround
| that might help. :)
| seydor wrote:
| What's the reasoning behind trying to downplay long covid?
| zamadatix wrote:
| Based on the conclusion I think the author is positioning it
| was (and still is) overhyped in reporting to be more alarming
| than it turned out to be, which is a common complaint/issue to
| take with news reporting.
| stcroixx wrote:
| If there is no way to test for it and having it makes one
| eligible for disability payments, there's simply a high
| potential for abuse.
| Am4TIfIsER0ppos wrote:
| Its an obvious lie you can spew when "think about grandma"
| stops working.
| batmaniam wrote:
| It's a self-serving article by the corporate elites to get
| people comfortable with the idea of returning to the office.
| Some VP is gonna point to these types of articles and say covid
| is no longer an issue, back to works guys.
|
| Kinda how like Zuckerberg recently pointed to bogus 'reports'
| on in-office workers being more productive than remote workers,
| and then used it as an excuse to RTO. Except it's funnier in
| that case since Meta is all about the metaverse and being
| remote, so it's kinda ironic.
| smackeyacky wrote:
| I don't think that is ironic. I think it's a pretty damning
| indictment of how useless Meta really is as a concept and a
| product.
| terminatornet wrote:
| honestly, probably the same reason covid in general has been
| downplayed: get people working and get people spending
|
| once the vaccines became available to the general public in
| early 2021, it was game over for any covid mitigations. At that
| point, it had been about a year since worldwide lockdowns and
| people were ready to get back to normal.
|
| From then it was a slow trickle of ignoring the problem and
| getting people to forget covid, in order:
|
| - if you're vaccinated, you can't get or spread covid
|
| - ok if you're vaccinated you can still get covid but it's
| basically just a cold
|
| - alright, you can still spread covid, but you're vaccinated so
| not a big deal
|
| - ok looks like there's some new variants of covid, but your
| vaccine is still basically as effective
|
| - ok look like there's another new variant and it doesn't
| protect you as much as the original variant, but only
| unvaccinated people die from covid
|
| - well, looks like the elderly and immunocompromised aren't
| protected well even with the vaccine, but whatever they can
| wear masks
|
| - alright, so it looks like repeat infections might cause
| neurological and cardiac issues, but those people probably
| weren't healthy.
|
| you get the picture. I'm being hyperbolic here, but this stuff
| happened over the course of 2-3 years, not overnight. All in
| favor of trying to keep a status quo that doesn't exist
| anymore.
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