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Long Haul Covid

We have ALL your misinformation, plus some TRUE FACTS and SCIENCE.
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MN-Skeptic
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Long Haul Covid

#1

Post by MN-Skeptic »

Dying from Covid doesn't scare me nearly as much as the idea of suffering debilitating symptoms for months afterward. Rather than linking to one of the articles about all the awful symptoms, I'm sharing this tweet instead. Yes, it's just anecdotal at this point. Yes, it may just be the placebo effect or your mind fooling you. But considering that they're recommending that anyone who can get a vaccination, I'll put some hope in this:

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Re: Long Haul Covid

#2

Post by Slim Cognito »

A good friend and neighbor just lost her sister to complications of covid. She'd been nursing-home bound for several years with many co-morbidities and caught covid there a few months ago. I can't say for sure she was vaccinated but I feel pretty certain she was. Despite being Republican, K&E weren't insane and both were vaccinated, although her brother, hubs' boss, resisted until sis caught it. Then he got the shot.

Anyway, the DC lists her death as due to one of her co-morbid conditions as well as covid. K feels the covid ravaged her body, allowing the other medical issues to wear her down. She hadn't been allowed to visit since August, when Floriduh cases shot up so dramatically but still dropped off care packages for her weekly.

It apparently came suddenly. K was not prepared for that phone call.

:crying:
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Sam the Centipede
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Re: Long Haul Covid

#3

Post by Sam the Centipede »

Sorry to hear that, Slim. :bighug:

So many families have similar sad tales of elderly or poorly relatives or friends being too weak to survive their other problems plus the added strain of Covid or its complications. Somehow it feels worse and more unfair when it's due to Covid than it would if it was the usual seasonal flu stressing them too much, the flu seems more "normal".
Patagoniagirl
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Re: Long Haul Covid

#4

Post by Patagoniagirl »

This has been my deep concern. People with comorbidities who have been vaccinated becoming infected, even with a mild case, and a tsunami of medical issues taking them, slowly and agonizingly.
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Re: Long Haul Covid

#5

Post by Volkonski »

Slim-
:bighug:
“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
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Re: Long Haul Covid

#6

Post by Slim Cognito »

Update - K's brother, also Hubs' boss, just told him that they "added covid to her death certificate to get more money." (she had covid last August but was treated at the nursing home, never admitted to a hospital and she passed in the nursing home)

As I understand the criteria, for a hospital to get additional money thru covid, a patient has to be on Medicare, in a hospital, in the ICU and on a ventilator. I don't know who he thinks is going to get that extra money. I guess he's looking for a way to somehow blame Biden.

I explained the lightning strike/wildfire analogy to hubs so he can try to explain it to the guy, but it won't matter. He's a trumper thru and thru.
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Re: Long Haul Covid

#7

Post by Sequoia32 »

Slim Cognito wrote: Mon Oct 04, 2021 12:58 pm I guess he's looking for a way to somehow blame Biden.
Those increased payments went into effect in 2020... :roll:

Regular pneumonia patients, even if they are on a vent, don't require the extensive care that Covid patients require such as proning where it takes 6-7 people, that's RNs, Respiratory therapists and MDs, NOT aides or orderlies.

I remember the first time I needed to turn a preemie on a vent and with all of the tubes and wires...
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Re: Long Haul Covid

#8

Post by Slim Cognito »

thx for the info. It's great to have you here to explain all the medical stuff.
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Re: Long Haul Covid

#9

Post by Suranis »

Slim Cognito wrote: Mon Oct 04, 2021 12:58 pm Update - K's brother, also Hubs' boss, just told him that they "added covid to her death certificate to get more money." (she had covid last August but was treated at the nursing home, never admitted to a hospital and she passed in the nursing home)

As I understand the criteria, for a hospital to get additional money thru covid, a patient has to be on Medicare, in a hospital, in the ICU and on a ventilator. I don't know who he thinks is going to get that extra money. I guess he's looking for a way to somehow blame Biden.

I explained the lightning strike/wildfire analogy to hubs so he can try to explain it to the guy, but it won't matter. He's a trumper thru and thru.
I heard that a lot last year. Basically it was used as a way to rationalize doctors and hospitals participating in the "covid con" - they get money.
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Re: Long Haul Covid

#10

Post by AndyinPA »

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... d-symptoms
More than a year after testing positive for Covid-19, Virginia’s governor, Ralph Northam, is warning about the importance of vaccines and the long-lasting effects of Covid.

After a mild case in September 2020 that felt like a sinus infection, Northam said in a video briefing that he was recovering quickly, and he waited for his sense of smell and taste to return. Instead, his symptoms gained force – when he drinks lemonade, it tastes like gasoline, and sometimes he smells smoke that isn’t there. Most of the time, though, he can’t smell or taste anything – including potential gas leaks when he restores vintage cars.

These conditions are called parosmia, phantosmia and anosmia, and they are among the leading symptoms of Covid-19 – studies suggest that about half of Covid patients lose their senses of smell and taste. Most patients recover within a year, but those who don’t – like Northam – may never recover.

Northam, a Democrat who is ineligible to run for re-election because the Virginia constitution prohibits incumbents from serving consecutive terms, is using the remaining three months of his term to renew calls for vaccination, with only 62% of Virginians fully vaccinated.
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Re: Long Haul Covid

#11

Post by RTH10260 »

A note from a fresh Swiss news item:

approx 20 percent of adults and 3 percent of children develop long haul covid effects of various degrees.

(w/o link)
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Lani
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Re: Long Haul Covid

#12

Post by Lani »

SARS-CoV-2 causes microvascular brain pathology
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593- ... NRJournals
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) can damage cerebral small vessels and cause neurological symptoms. Here we describe structural changes in cerebral small vessels of patients with COVID-19 and elucidate potential mechanisms underlying the vascular pathology. In brains of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)-infected individuals and animal models, we found an increased number of empty basement membrane tubes, so-called string vessels representing remnants of lost capillaries. We obtained evidence that brain endothelial cells are infected and that the main protease of SARS-CoV-2 (Mpro) cleaves NEMO, the essential modulator of nuclear factor-κB. By ablating NEMO, Mpro induces the death of human brain endothelial cells and the occurrence of string vessels in mice. Deletion of receptor-interacting protein kinase (RIPK) 3, a mediator of regulated cell death, blocks the vessel rarefaction and disruption of the blood–brain barrier due to NEMO ablation. Importantly, a pharmacological inhibitor of RIPK signaling prevented the Mpro-induced microvascular pathology. Our data suggest RIPK as a potential therapeutic target to treat the neuropathology of COVID-19.

:snippity:

A considerable proportion of patients, up to 84% of those with severe COVID-19, show neurological signs and symptoms including anosmia, epileptic seizures, strokes, loss of consciousness and confusion1,2,3. Typically, COVID-19 can present with the clinical picture of encephalopathy2. Beyond 4 weeks after onset, the post-acute COVID-19 syndrome includes cognitive impairment and a range of psychiatric symptoms and may affect up to 76% of patients4.
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Re: Long Haul Covid

#13

Post by AndyinPA »

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2 ... -research/
In early 2020, Alison Sbrana watched the coronavirus skip from China across continents with a sense of impending doom. Sbrana, plagued by fatigue and brain fog since being diagnosed with mononucleosis six years earlier, was convinced that the pernicious new virus would wreak similar havoc in some of those who contracted it.

Her intuition proved prescient. Some people who had suffered even mild cases of covid-19 began complaining of problems that Sbrana knew too well, including muscle pain and drop-dead exhaustion. Now, as millions of people nationwide are suffering from long-haul covid, Sbrana and an army of patient advocates are cautiously hopeful that new research may unlock clues to other conditions that appear to crop up after infections, including myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, known as ME/CFS.

“I think there is potential,” said Sbrana, who suffers from ME/CFS.

Covid long-haulers inherited many of the challenges that have faced people like Sbrana for years, including a lack of understanding of the mechanisms that triggered their disabilities — leaving some doctors to view their symptoms as largely psychosomatic.
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Lani
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Re: Long Haul Covid

#14

Post by Lani »

I read this yesterday and was happy to read that people with CFS, ME, Fibromyalgia & long covid may at long last be taken seriously.

Then a number of commenters reported on how little funding there has been for decades while people suffered. Maybe the huge number of people with long covid will finally force the medical institutions to devote the time, money, and research that is desperately needed.
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Sam the Centipede
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Re: Long Haul Covid

#15

Post by Sam the Centipede »

Lani wrote: Wed Nov 10, 2021 12:39 am Maybe the huge number of people with long covid will finally force the medical institutions to devote the time, money, and research that is desperately needed.
I think that's inevitable, whether it's direct or indirect. The mechanisms of brain fog, chronic exhaustion, etc. in long Covid, other post-acute viral sequelae and ME/CFS must overlap and are possibly identical. Research into one will benefit the other.

It might feel humiliating for ME/CFS sufferers and campaigners to be riding on long Covid's wave after so much indifference to their plight, but that seems the best game in town. And it will help push the Graded Exercise Therapy quacks (whose core belief is that CFS is in the mind, and tallany evidence to the contrary can be ignored) off their backs.
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Lani
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Re: Long Haul Covid

#16

Post by Lani »

How COVID-19 can damage all five senses
The virus that causes the disease disrupts not just smell and taste, but all the ways humans perceive the world. For some, the loss may be permanent.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/scie ... 48368741AA
It’s easy to take our senses for granted—until there’s a problem with one of them. This is something many people who suffered from COVID-19 discovered when they unexpectedly lost their senses of smell and taste. More recently, though, it has become apparent that a COVID-19 infection can also affect sight, hearing, and touch.

In the short term and the long run, this virus can affect all the ways we perceive and interact with the world.

Though not life-threatening, “it’s disarming to lose any of these senses, especially as suddenly as happens in the context of this infection,” says Jennifer Frontera, a professor of neurology at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine.
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Sam the Centipede
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Re: Long Haul Covid

#17

Post by Sam the Centipede »

From the little I have read about it, it's not so much the individual senses themselves being affected as the nerves that communicate to the brain and elsewhere. And those effects can be caused by the general immune response, or actual interference by the virus. Often it seems the virus isn't actually infecting nerve cells (which tend not to have lots of ACE2 receptors, iirc – although of course there are other secondary routes for the virus to enter cells) but rather interfering with support cells.

I wonder how many other viruses cause symptoms that we have not focused on, because they are mild, transient or simply not complained about?
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Lani
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Re: Long Haul Covid

#18

Post by Lani »

Sam the Centipede wrote: Sat Dec 04, 2021 5:31 am :snippity:

I wonder how many other viruses cause symptoms that we have not focused on, because they are mild, transient or simply not complained about?
Many people with chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, etc. are hoping that the interest in long COVID will benefit them as well. Those conditions often occur after a viral illness. Somewhere on the forum I posted an article about it.
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Sam the Centipede
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Re: Long Haul Covid

#19

Post by Sam the Centipede »

Yes, we both have posted on that!

It is all very odd, because it's easy to see why an infection causes causes problems, viruses kicking around inside cells, and it's easy to see why the clean-up can take a while, as infected cells die (as a direct result of infection, apoptosis, or attack by immune killer cells) and are replaced, and it's easy to see why some damage is never repaired properly (regrowing things is difficult if you're not a flatworm). Induced auto-immune disorders are also understandable, but the general fatigue and mish-mash of sensory and other problematic sequelae is weird. I can't recall auto-immune issues being mentioned much in connection with Covid, but given the damage the virus can cause to germinal centers in the lymph nodes, perhaps that wouldn't be a surprise.

The body's systems are kicked out of kilter, but the very strong homeostatic and repair mechanisms that usually sort out an upset stomach, a skin abrasion, too much alcohol in the bloodstream, etc. seem to be thrown out of whack for a long period.

It will be fascinating to hear what the understanding of post-acute viral sequelae for this virus and others is in a few years time, as researchers puzzle over their findings, talk to each other, and work towards a synthesis of common issues, and elucidation of seperable issues. Before then I am sure there will be some false trails and over-hyped solutions, but that's all part of progress.
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Lani
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Re: Long Haul Covid

#20

Post by Lani »

Long COVID patients and doctors detail the growing 'mass disabling event' in America
https://news.yahoo.com/long-covid-patie ... 04184.html
In December 2020, Congress allocated $1.15 billion over four years to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study the prolonged health consequences of COVID-19.

“We’ve had [pandemics] before but never to the point where it’s been an absolute public health crisis where 10 to 20 million people in the United States are going to be suffering from this for months and years,” Ely said. “It’s something that our medical community and society at large really were not prepared to handle, this issue of long COVID.”

An estimated 14.5 million Americans are struggling with long COVID, according to the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (AAPMR), which uses a model that assumes 30% of all COVID-19 surviving cases result in long COVID.

“One patient told me: ‘Dr. Ely, I wish that my hand was cut off so that people could see that something was wrong with me. But as it is when they look at me, they think I’m fine. And I’m completely diseased and burdened by these problems of long COVID, and everybody thinks I’m OK, and it makes it worse for me,’” Ely said.

He added that when long COVID patients “are silenced or feeling silenced, it causes additional pain and additional mental health problems already on top of the physical suffering.”
Even asymptomatic cases can have long term effects, usually beginning after the infection clears.
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Re: Long Haul Covid

#21

Post by AndyinPA »

The friend of mine from New Mexico had been diagnosed with long-haul Covid tachycardia. She used to walk daily (and go to a gym five days a week before Covid put the gym out of business), but her doctor said she's at risk of a stroke if she even tries to resume her usual schedule. She can't walk across the room without setting her heartbeat skyrocketing.
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Lani
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Re: Long Haul Covid

#22

Post by Lani »

Here's the original article about the tsunami of long haulers.

A Tsunami of Disability Is Coming as a Result of ‘Long COVID’
We need to plan for a future where millions of survivors are chronically ill

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... vid-rsquo/

:snippity:
Consider the numbers we know. At least 34 million Americans (and probably many more) have already contracted COVID. An increasing number of studies find that greater than one fourth of patients have developed some form of long COVID. (In one study from China, three quarters of patients had at least one ongoing symptom six months after hospital discharge, and in another report more than half of infected health care workers had symptoms seven to eight months later.) Initial indications suggest that the likelihood of developing persistent symptoms may not be related to the severity of the initial illness; it is even conceivable that infections that were initially asymptomatic could later cause persistent problems.

Common long-term symptoms include fatigue; respiratory problems; “brain fog”; cardiac, renal and gastrointestinal issues; and loss of smell and taste. Surprising manifestations continue to emerge, such as the recent realization that infection may precipitate diabetes.
:snippity:
Basically, there will not be recovery from the coronavirus for many people, and the info that omicron is milder does not mean that people won't have long term problems.

Sorry to be a downer.
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Lani
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Re: Long Haul Covid

#23

Post by Lani »

Though it's long been known to linger in respiratory tracts for weeks after infection, the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 can quickly spread to the entire body and remain in the heart, brain and other organs for as long as eight months, according to new research from U.S. scientists—shedding light on so-called long Covid infections as experts warn the highly contagious omicron variant could spur a surge in U.S. hospitalizations.

In a pre-print paper released Saturday that has not been peer-reviewed, scientists at the U.S. National Institutes of Health wrote that they found the SARS-CoV-2 virus present in autopsies in multiple sites across the body for up to 230 days after patients first reported symptoms, building on previous research that's shown the virus can persist in the respiratory tract for weeks.

The scientists said results from autopsies on 44 patients who died following coronavirus infections showed that although the "highest burden" is in the airways and lung, the virus can "disseminate early during infection and infect cells throughout the entire body,” including widely in the brain, as well as in ocular tissue, muscles, skin, peripheral nerves, and tissues in the cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, endocrine and lymphatic systems.

Covid researcher Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, a medical professor at the Washington University in St. Louis, told Bloomberg the research may help explain why long-term effects of Covid can occur in people who had only mild or asymptomatic infections.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanpo ... a443ce2c42
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Sam the Centipede
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Re: Long Haul Covid

#24

Post by Sam the Centipede »

Thx Lani.

I guess there are going to be there main subtypes of Long Covid:
  • damage to lungs and other organs, where the body has cleared the virus but cannot fully repair itself
  • autoimmune type disorders where the body continues to damage itself, and
  • viral persistence, where reservoirs of virus can cause continuing problems
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Lani
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Re: Long Haul Covid

#25

Post by Lani »

Sorry to be a downer, but it gets worse.
At the time, doctors were just learning that this new coronavirus doesn’t target only the lungs and heart. It also impacts other organs, including the brain. “People arrived at the hospital with severe depression, hallucinations, or paranoia—and then we diagnosed them with COVID,” says Maura Boldrini, a neuroscientist and psychiatrist at Manhattan’s Columbia University Irving Medical Center.

Now, almost two years into the pandemic, it’s become clear that neurological problems from COVID-19 can linger or intensify. After recovering from the virus, an alarming number of patients remain shrouded in brain fog, suffering from anxiety or depression, unable to think straight or hold on to memories, and fumbling for words. Not all had been hospitalized; some had only mild infections.

Today these neurological problems are an established element of a larger syndrome known as long COVID that includes at least 203 symptoms in 10 organ systems.

Boldrini notes that some long COVID symptoms mirror those caused by various chronic brain- and personality-altering conditions, including other viral infections, traumatic brain injuries, and neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and Huntington’s. These conditions can radically change how people experience, interpret, and understand the world; destabilize emotions; and influence how people think about themselves or interact with others.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/scie ... 48368741AA

So the belief that most people recover from the virus may not be true. The virus can harm several organs, sometimes mildly, but the damage will appear as time goes on. Earlier I posted about the tsunami of disability on the horizon. This sad article supports what is coming.
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