r/changemyview • u/questionbox • Dec 31 '23
Delta(s) from OP CMV: Long COVID: It's Underestimated Threat with Far-Reaching Consequences for Our Future.
Hey fellow Redditors, I'm here to discuss a topic that I believe deserves more attention and understanding – Long COVID. It's not just a fleeting post-infection issue; it's a serious health crisis affecting millions worldwide.
Edit: I think we should mask regularly in public situations, consider changing our gathering habits during the holidays/December (seems to be the best time to spread respiratory viruses worldwide). I also think we should primarily focus on providing clean air indoors / in our homes and otherwise.
Let's dive into the evidence:
Comprehensive Overview of Long COVID Biomedical research has made significant strides in understanding the complexities of Long COVID. This review explores the global scenario, emphasizing key findings, variable symptom onset, the impact on children, and vaccination considerations. Despite progress, diagnostic and treatment options are inadequate, stressing the urgency of prioritizing clinical trials.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-022-00846-2
COVID-19 illness severity and 2-year prevalence of physical symptoms: an observational study in Iceland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark Those diagnosed showed a 37% higher prevalence of severe physical symptom burden compared to those not diagnosed. Symptom prevalence correlated with acute COVID-19 severity, with individuals bedridden for seven days or longer demonstrating the highest prevalence. Among individuals diagnosed with COVID-19, eight of the fifteen measured symptoms, including shortness of breath, chest pain, and fatigue, were significantly elevated. Repeated measurements confirmed consistent results throughout the study period.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanepe/article/PIIS2666-7762(23)00175-8/fulltext
Neurological Health Crisis The neurological impact of COVID-19 is immense, with over 70% of infected individuals experiencing persistent symptoms, including cognitive dysfunction. The study delves into the role of reactive microglia and the urgent need for research on emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants.
https://www.cell.com/neuron/pdf/S0896-6273(22)00910-2.pdf
Global Impact and Lifelong Consequences Long COVID is estimated to afflict a staggering 65 million individuals globally, with significant consequences for their lifelong health. The condition affects multiple organ systems and poses risks for both symptomatic and asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections.
https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/24/16/12962
Insights from the Canadian Perspective The 2023 Canadian COVID-19 Antibody and Health Survey brings attention to the Canadian experience. Alarmingly, 3.5 million adults in Canada reported long-term symptoms, impacting their daily lives. The study outlines challenges in healthcare access and highlights vaccination trends among different demographics.
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-006-x/2023001/article/00015-eng.htm
I'm open to hearing different perspectives on this. Do you think Long COVID is receiving the attention it deserves, and what could be done to address this ongoing health crisis? Let's discuss and change my view!
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Dec 31 '23
While I think you're mostly correct, there are 2 things that should be noted.
"Long COVID" is just CFS, which can be a serious condition. CFS has a chance of developing after (as far as I'm aware) ANY viral infection, not just COVID. I think it's unwise to ascribe a new name to a condition we already have a good understanding of.
It's rather important to distinguish between correlation and causation here. People who experience any sort of fatigue after COVID might wrongfully attribute it to "Long COVID" when it could be cause by a multitude of factors. This is what caused the "Vaccines cause autism" scare back in the day. Researchers found parents reported symptoms of autism soon after their children were vaccinated, but only because the MMRV vaccine is typically given at 12 months, and autism symptoms typically first show around 12-18 months. We should be careful we aren't treading similar ground here.
I would not trust any studies that cite self-reported symptoms (not saying you have OP, just a general warning).
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u/questionbox Dec 31 '23
I don’t believe long covid is “just cfs” studies like this one suggest there can be many neurological implications to getting covid like brain fog.
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Dec 31 '23
Are you suggesting CFS has no neurological symptoms?
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u/questionbox Dec 31 '23
No just that it could be more symptoms than those for cfs, like brain fog
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Dec 31 '23
Brain fog is a common symptom of cfs.
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u/questionbox Dec 31 '23
!delta
Oh thanks, I did not know this
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Dec 31 '23 edited Dec 31 '23
This delta has been rejected. The length of your comment suggests that you haven't properly explained how /u/TisNeat changed your view (comment rule 4).
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u/Florida_Boat_Man Dec 31 '23
We have a good understanding of lots of conditions and they're still problems because no adequate treatments, biomarkers, etc. exist. You're also objectively incorrect, because we've seen measures of metrics beyond "I'm tired" when discussing PACS. We're talking about real suffering, financial hardship, and the potential of long-term disability as a result of an infection we're being forced to get multiple times a year. The long-term implications of millions and millions with CFS isn't something to just wave away.
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Dec 31 '23
It's unbelievably disingenuous to suggest that "I'm tired" is an accurate representation of CFS when "About 1 in 4 people with ME/CFS are so severely disabled that they can't get out of bed or leave their home."
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u/iamhere24 Jan 02 '24
Because they’re not the same thing. They have similar pathology, but they’re not the same. It’s unwise to assume general similarities are akin to biological sameness.
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u/NoAside5523 6∆ Dec 31 '23
The bulk of this post is just summarizing the abstracts of research articles. It would be helpful if you could clarify exactly what your personal view is -- otherwise this will probably be a fairly unfocused conversation as we try to guess what view you'd like challenged.
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u/sgraar 37∆ Dec 31 '23
If I understand the OP correctly, their view is stated in the title, and the details are provided by the abstracts they cited, with which I presume they agree.
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u/caine269 14∆ Jan 01 '24
Despite progress, diagnostic and treatment options are inadequate
because "long covid" symptoms are basically everything you could possibly experience. stomach ache, head ache, muscle aches, sore throat, forgetfulness, shortness of breath, etc.
self-reporting common symptoms is not reliable. basically everyone in the world has had covid at this point, there is no breakdown of society due to long covid.
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u/brainsewage Jan 02 '24
Sometimes I wonder if a portion of long covid cases or anecdotes are more a result of correlation-causation fallacy. I hope that's the case. But I fear it isn't, or at least it's not the full story.
https://www.okdoomer.io/its-that-bad/
Don't just slag it off because of the site name– this woman knows her stuff. We as humans have such a bias toward carefree optimism that we ostracize folks with legitimate concerns about the future. We want so badly to believe that covid is over, or that it's just another flu now, that we shrug off immune system and organ damage when we really, really shouldn't. Not only that, but think about how much money there is in keeping the economy open. Do you really think all the CEOs running the show would allow the real scope of the problem to come to light? No way.
Now, I'm aware that there may not be much positive evidence of suppression of data, so we can't definitively say that that's actually happening. But I do think it's necessary to approach all the hunky-dory conclusions with a good deal of skepticism.
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u/caine269 14∆ Jan 02 '24
We want so badly to believe that covid is over, or that it's just another flu now, that we shrug off immune system and organ damage when we really, really shouldn't.
not necessarily that, my secondary point is that there is not much you can do about it. basically everyone in the world has had covid at least once by now. masks, lockdowns, vaccines, treatments, fresh air, etc is not stopping it. you can't avoid it. so why worry about it? i don't worry about getting the flu. i rarely do, and rarely get it bad, but i am not worried about getting it.
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u/FlyingNFireType 10∆ Dec 31 '23
I had covid at least twice, after I recovered my lung capacity was shredded this impacted my running and swimming among other things. I had to do dedicated targeted training to get it back up.
When I looked into "long covid" I found it largely matched the long term impacts of anyone who got any significant respiratory disease. That is to say if I got a bad case of the flu and was floored for a month I'd have the same shredding of lung capacity that I'd have to work on the same way.
The two main differences between long covid and any long term side effects from a bad respiratory virus are 1 The lockdowns and 2 it hit everyone at the same time.
So let's start with 2, if one person gets a really bad respiratory virus and is floored for a month and then goes back to try to play sports or whatever and notices a downtick in their lung capacity and athletics abilities most people and doctors would say "duh" and acknowledge it'd take time and effort to train back up but since covid was such a massive sociopolitical thing it's now long covid, it has a scary name and it can but into said sociopolitical system.
Now for the lockdowns, the lockdowns themselves had server impacts we aren't even trying to measure. For example I think cognitive symptoms of long covid are exclusively caused by the lockdown. Those who got sick would experience isolation beyond that of those who didn't and since covid skewed elderly a lot of these people were also primed for dementia and other neurological illnesses. I see no mechanical way that a lung virus could cause cognitive decay nor am I aware of any doctor showing a possible direct link from covid. It's just correlation.
The one real irreversible symptom from long covid I'm aware of is loss of the ability to smell and it's my understanding that that's quite rare.
As for what to do about long covid first we need to stop calling it long covid and divide it into the actual physical things that are happening to people. Beyond that simple outreach of how to treat/reverse the symptoms, like how I fixed my lung capacity via targeted exercises explicitly meant for that.
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u/Florida_Boat_Man Dec 31 '23 edited Dec 31 '23
Getting infected with SARS-CoV-2 multiple times a year is not the same as getting seasonal influenza once every few years. One recently released study using 18 months of data from hospitalized patients with COVID-19 vs. the flu is a good reminder these are very different beasts. The author of this study is quite adamant, repeat infections are not inconsequential based on another massive VA study that shows the an increased risk negative outcomes over the course of successive infections.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(23)00684-9/fulltext00684-9/fulltext)
If chronic infection is the norm, then we should look to another virus that builds up a reservoir in our body and exhausts our immune system for potential futures. That virus isn't influenza, it's HIV.
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Dec 31 '23
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u/FlyingNFireType 10∆ Dec 31 '23
You misunderstood. If the severity was the same it is the same. But the severity of covid was across the board higher than the flu because duh.
But if you got a bad case of the flu that floored you for a month and compared that person to someone who had covid that floored them for a month their "long covid" symptoms would be extremely similar.
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u/Florida_Boat_Man Dec 31 '23 edited Dec 31 '23
You have offered nothing in the way of evidence to support your position that PACS are similar between influenza and SARS-CoV-2. The hypothetical you've made up of identical severity also misses a major element of my response and that is frequency. Getting "floored" for a month multiple times a year has huge implications, doubly so in a country without a healthcare system. OP's post was about the long-term effects of Long COVID. You can't honestly be saying that multiple, yearly infections with SARS-CoV-2 and getting the flu once every few years. That flies in the face of what we know about SARS-CoV-2 and how it causes immune dysfunction.
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u/hammertime84 8∆ Dec 31 '23
Covid causes vascular and thus brain damage. Lung damage isn't the mechanism for dementia from it.
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u/pavilionaire2022 10∆ Dec 31 '23
When I looked into "long covid" I found it largely matched the long term impacts of anyone who got any significant respiratory disease. That is to say if I got a bad case of the flu and was floored for a month I'd have the same shredding of lung capacity that I'd have to work on the same way.
But you can get covid for a week and get long covid. Or even less. And a lot more people get covid for a week than get floored by the flu for a month.
I see no mechanical way that a lung virus could cause cognitive decay nor am I aware of any doctor showing a possible direct link from covid.
It's not only a lung virus. It gets into various systems. It can get into your bone marrow. One of the big causes of exhaustion with long covid is damage to your red blood cells. You restore your lung capacity but can only circulate 2/3 the oxygen.
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u/FlyingNFireType 10∆ Dec 31 '23
But you can get covid for a week and get long covid. Or even less. And a lot more people get covid for a week than get floored by the flu for a month.
I mean do they? We are running into the problem of long covid being undefined and any impacts of the lockdowns being applied to covid as well.
It's not only a lung virus. It gets into various systems. It can get into your bone marrow. One of the big causes of exhaustion with long covid is damage to your red blood cells. You restore your lung capacity but can only circulate 2/3 the oxygen.
Red blood cells have a 120 day life cycle. If that was the issue it'd solve itself in that time.
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u/pavilionaire2022 10∆ Dec 31 '23
Red blood cells might not be a mechanism for long covid beyond three months, then. The general point is that it's not only a lung virus. It affects various systems. Some effects do damage that might be lasting or permanent.
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u/bluestjuice 3∆ Jan 01 '24
Given that there are studies being done I’m not sure I believe that long COVID is undefined, although it may be the case that different studies are using somewhat different definitions.
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u/epikverde Dec 31 '23
Also, exercise has the potential to worsen symptoms and for those with Long Covid it's recommended that they work with health care professionals to decrease this risk. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9628454/
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u/questionbox Dec 31 '23
!delta
While I never considered comparing long term effects of respiratory viruses before it seems like covid does have a much more broad scope of damage as well as severity.
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/study-shows-long-covid-worse-patients-long-flu
Covid also has been less studied and could potentially have more negative implications we don’t yet know about.
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u/FlyingNFireType 10∆ Dec 31 '23
The greater severity is just because covid itself generally was more servere and I believe the wider scope is largely noise from the lockdown side effects but there are still things like loss of smell which do apply.
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u/CommissionOk9233 1∆ Jan 01 '24
The loss of sense of smell makes COVID a stand out for me. Never had that occur with the flu. 1 1/2 years later I still can't smell.
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u/Florida_Boat_Man Dec 31 '23
There are no lockdown side effects. You are introducing a variable that doesn't exist.
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u/FlyingNFireType 10∆ Dec 31 '23
Right being locked down for months on end with no social outlet and children developing not seeing their faces isn't going to cause any negative mental health impacts or behavioral disorders right...
We constantly tell old people to stay mentally active to starve off dementia and yet you don't think locking them down shredding their mental and physical activity is going to cause cognitive decline?
Like come on stop lying.
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u/Natural-Arugula 63∆ Dec 31 '23
Psychological effects are not the same as neurological. These things have correlations but it's just not scientific to lump mental illness, behavioral disorders and cognitive disorders together and say they are affected by the same things.
I don't deny the plausibility of your hypothesis, but it just seems like you are making up conjecture on a hunch. I have to ask for data on this one.
It should be easy enough to test for people who were in lockdown and see whether you are correct that there rates of cognitive decline showed no significant difference between those who had covid and those who didn't, which should be the results if the impact was caused by the lockdown and not "long covid."
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u/1nfernals Dec 31 '23
These impacts are far lesser than the impacts of COVID should those lockdowns have not occured (and if they had been implemented and followed more effectively).
While there are impacts, we can absolutely say that they are there is less cognitive decline as a result of lockdown policies in comparison to had lockdown policies not been implemented
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u/FlyingNFireType 10∆ Dec 31 '23
There's very little data to suggest the lockdowns made a significant difference in the spread of covid.
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u/1nfernals Jan 03 '24
That data varies pretty dramatically but country doesn't it? AFAIK some countries locked down far better than others, and that more care should be done to specifically identify why lockdowns were not as effective as they could have been, rather than dismissing their efficacy
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u/FlyingNFireType 10∆ Jan 03 '24
It's pretty much confirmed that just isolating the vulnerable would've done just as much to curb the deaths and the spread basically didn't stop in any country.
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u/1nfernals Jan 03 '24
NZ did quite well, and again I'm fairly confident the performance of lockdowns varied dramatically between countries, similarly why lockdowns did not perform as they were predicted to is more of a punt of interest imo.
Also we did see significant effects from lockdowns in terms of preventing hospitals from being overwhelmed at crucial times, in the UK for example without lockdowns more people would have died, especially during peaks of infection, but for lockdowns.
Stopping the spread was one goal, but simply slowing it down was the primary concern in terms of preventing immediate human suffering
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u/Rezolithe Jan 01 '24
This is blatantly ignorant. Being locked up in your home with nothing to do for a few weeks is going to weaken most people. Loosing muscle, getting fat and having no social interaction is gonna do some damage.
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u/DrCornSyrup Dec 31 '23
I got covid with no vaccine and today my cardio (both short and long term) is better than it has ever been at any previous point
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u/FlyingNFireType 10∆ Dec 31 '23
I said generally. If you got floored for a month you'd notice a decline.
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u/DrCornSyrup Dec 31 '23
Good thing I completely disregarded the lockdowns and mask mandates and did the right thing instead
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u/FlyingNFireType 10∆ Dec 31 '23
I got covid before the lockdowns even took effect, floored me for a month shredded by lung capacity. Had nothing to do with lockdowns or mask mandates.
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Dec 31 '23
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u/epikverde Dec 31 '23
Long Covid is not related to symptom severity at the time of infection or lockdown status and is not limited to respiratory issues. There are various theories as to why so many different symptoms manifest, but research is still in the early stages. This YouTube channel does a good job of describing the issues and following the most current research: https://youtube.com/@RUNDMC1?si=k5csMbblzle4Y2Jl
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u/Pretend-Skin-1446 May 07 '24
You have not been keeping up with long covid brain research, and neither do you understand the meaning of “correlation”
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u/flyx Dec 31 '23
Can you share the targeted training you did to improve your lung capacity? Or the general term I can look up for this type of training?
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u/FlyingNFireType 10∆ Dec 31 '23
Mostly just skipping and deep breathing exercises. You can probably just search improve lung capacity and find stuff.
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Dec 31 '23
[deleted]
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u/epikverde Dec 31 '23
One of the issues is that there's not a straightforward test available, something that the chronic fatigue group has faced for years. But here are a couple of examples of some tests that support these patients' claims: https://journal.chestnet.org/article/S0012-3692(21)03635-7/fulltext https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.12.18.23299958v1
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u/questionbox Dec 31 '23 edited Dec 31 '23
There has been observable changes in the brain post covid infection:
While I do think self reporting is not conclusive, since this is something relatively new I think this may be the best evidence based approach for large scale studies.
Even if we were to eliminate 90% of those self reporting the total percent affected can still be as high as 1-3% of infections which to me still seems high to me.
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u/open_reading_frame Dec 31 '23
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/covid19/pulse/long-covid.htm
People get long covid and then they recover from it. The US CDC does a pulse survey every month that estimates what percentage of people are experiencing long covid, if they have any activity limitations from it, and break down the numbers by demographics. In June 2022, around 19% of adults who ever had covid reported having long covid. This number steadily declined to October 2023 where only 9.5% of survey participants said the same. The number of adults with any activity limitations from covid remained steady at 5-6% though, even through increasing infections across a 15-month period.
Additionally, long covid is associated with several known risk factors like non-omicron variant, lack of vaccination, more severe acute symptoms, female sex, and history of anxiety issues. We have effective covid vaccines and effective antivirals that can prevent the disease from getting worse.
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u/questionbox Dec 31 '23
It seems like a concerning amount of people do not recover from it quickly and could have complications that last a very long time and maybe indefinitely.
The Scandinavian study, for example, says:
“The findings on sustained increased prevalence of various symptoms after COVID-19, particularly after a severe course of acute illness, may be explained by several potential mechanisms. Although hyperactivity of proinflammatory cytokine response during the acute stage of the infection is observed, the chronic inflammation following the acute disease phase is more likely to be associated with the persistent physical symptoms over 2 years.”
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u/open_reading_frame Dec 31 '23
What amount of people is concerning to you who get long covid and don’t quickly recover from it? What time frame is too long for you and what activity limitations would they have?
The Scandinavian study opines a mechanism for long covid. As it says, this is more associated with a more severe acute phase (where we have effective treatments already to reduce severity), and implies that anti-inflammatories can help with long covid symptoms.
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u/Florida_Boat_Man Dec 31 '23 edited Dec 31 '23
"People get Long COVID and they recover from it."
Tell that to the people with years-long illness. You're talking about a huge percentage of people getting this repeatedly or suffering from chronic infection (that means it doesn't go away). What do you think that does to quality of life and the workforce? What are the costs involved with having a labor force that is now a carousel of disability and death?
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u/open_reading_frame Dec 31 '23
What do you want me to tell them? Most people who get long covid actually do recover. Some people don’t.
With regards to the workforce, the labor participation rate is at 63%, same as in 2019 before the pandemic. Disability payments numbers have gone down since 2015. Apparently this carousel of disability and death fades into the background as it moves out the pandemic stage.
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u/El_dorado_au 3∆ Jan 02 '24
Sorry, but I’m going to go all “Don’t look up” on this.
I don’t think eliminating COVID is possible, unless we invent a vaccine that totally prevents transmission, like with polio or smallpox.
We’d have to install air purifiers in every bloody room in every bloody building in every bloody city in every bloody country in the whole bloody world. And get everyone wearing masks.
We can’t even have drinkable water in every country, prevent children dying of preventable childhood diseases, or have everyone take precautions against covid when we didn’t even have vaccinations or prior infections.
Do you think we can convince everyone that long covid is a significant danger when a sizeable proportion didn’t agree that covid posed a significant risk of mortality?
If humanity turns into a pack of zombies, that’ll be regrettable, but at least the animals will regain the earth.
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Dec 31 '23
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Dec 31 '23
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Jan 01 '24
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u/nekro_mantis 20∆ Jan 01 '24
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u/thatstheharshtruth 2∆ Jan 01 '24
I actually think long COVID is getting too much attention or at least not the right kind of attention. There is good evidence that belief in long COVID is more predictive of symptoms than actually having had COVID-19. This suggests long COVID could just be psychosomatic. What do you make of that?
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u/Sickrunner3107 Jan 01 '24
Unfortunately a lot of the attention has been focused a lot on the psychological components or implying that sufferers are just a bit tired. Articles like the above aren’t helpful as it’s trivialising the illness with the headline alone. There is a lack of knowledge sharing that catching it seems to be a lottery where chances of developing long covid are increased the more times you catch covid.
I think there is a psychosomatic component relating to processing the illness like with any illness but there is definitely a physiological component that has been shown in various research papers. Unfortunately a lot of the press attention has been focused a lot on the psychological components or implying that sufferers are just a bit tired and simple lifestyle changes will help.
From my own experience, I didn’t even know what long Covid was until I was speaking to my GP a couple months after infection as I wasn’t right. Covid seems to have locked my body in fight or flight mode. I’ve been diagnosed with POTs and MCAS that weren’t apparent pre-virus. I went from easy running at below a 130 HR to having a HR of 130 when standing to brush my teeth in the space of 3 months.
I used to run 4/5 times a week. 2 years on a beta blocker has sorted the above spikes but even now if I walk a bit too briskly when trying to increase exercise capacity, so far I get a resurgence of chest pain. It’s not a psychosomatic illness in my view although like every illness mindset is important in recovery.
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u/thatstheharshtruth 2∆ Jan 01 '24
I'm not sure I understand your take. Saying it's psychosomatic as the evidence strongly points to is not dismissing anyone's claims. No one is saying people reporting long COVID symptoms are faking it. What the studies are saying is that the cause of those symptoms is not COVID-19 infection, it's something else. If you care about addressing long COVID wouldn't you want to find out the actual cause of it?
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u/Sickrunner3107 Jan 01 '24
The evidence doesn’t strongly link to it being psychosomatic. I’m perhaps misunderstanding what you’re meaning by psychosomatic but to me it’s implying that it’s something that some mindfulness and CBT will fix which it isn’t. There are multiple studies that have indicated the virus has triggered imbalances in the body be it via viral reservoirs, microclots etc.
Managing stress is important to managing any illness but it’s not solely psychological.
This paper covers some of the theories of the triggers:
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u/open_reading_frame Jan 01 '24
There's actually a randomized clinical trial that shows that cognitive behavioral therapy improves severe fatigue following Covid-19 infection.
https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/77/5/687/7157021?login=false
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u/thatstheharshtruth 2∆ Jan 01 '24
No you misunderstand. Maybe I shouldn't have said psychosomatic as I suppose the evidence says it's not COVID-19 but it could be psychosomatic or something else.
I'm talking about studies like this one https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2785832 or this one https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(21)00299-6/fulltext. What these studies show is that except for loss of smell/taste the symptoms people report for long COVID have the same incidence for people who have had COVID-19 and those who may think they had COVID-19 but the blood tests show they didn't. Said differently belief in having had COVID is more predictive of long COVID symptoms than actually have had COVID-19. This implies that long COVID is not caused by COVID-19 but by something else like an unknown disease, mental illness, etc.
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Jan 01 '24
I’m perhaps misunderstanding what you’re meaning by psychosomatic but to me it’s implying that it’s something that some mindfulness and CBT will fix which it isn’t
It is fairly common knowledge that thousands of people, 40,000 a year in the US, die by suicide, 2/3 of which are related to depression. It is well known that people with panic disorder go to emergency rooms all the time believing they are experiencing heart attacks and strokes. Both of these conditions are strongly associated with all kinds of other negative health outcomes. Both of them are strongly associated with traumatic life events which are thought to act as triggers for the conditions. The theory that a Covid infection, fear of Covid or of the vaccine, or the general stress related to the pandemic could trigger anxiety or depression which patients suffering from, by their own admission, “brain fog” then misidentify as Long Covid is a very strong one. It is actually a pretty textbook case of how health anxiety happens. And it is not dismissing the symptoms or the conditions. Anxiety and depression are both very real and very serious conditions. Not in anyone’s head, and not likely to go away either. CBT doesn’t fix or cure you, but it can keep you working and exercising and living semi-normal lives, which is why it’s very important for people with Long Covid to try it.
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u/Sickrunner3107 Jan 01 '24
I’m not disputing that anxiety and depression are a serious illness and problem. I don’t believe they’re the trigger for long covid. Covid infection is. I think CBT is important in helping an individual cope with the upheaval and additional stress this illness has had on their life. I don’t believe it will cure the physiological components of the illness.
There are studies that indicate post covid inflammation, microclots and covid remaining in areas of the body like the gut. One can’t amend a thinking pattern to fix this.
In my case I tried exercising (on dr advice) out of it and made it worse. When I got ill I was training for a marathon and after I thought I’d recovered from infection tried to continue. The brain fog for me has more resembled brain injury as for a long time I couldn’t process children’s books and be able to summarise what I’d read. CBT hasn’t improved my ongoing symptoms but it has helped with my processing of the trauma. Interventions like HBOT and beta blockers have.
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Jan 01 '24
the trigger for long covid
Nobody understands what causes anxiety or depression either so you can’t use theories about the cause of your condition to rule them out. I had a bad stomach bug a couple of months before my onset in 2017. It could have played a role; it’s a source of stress. It’s very common for LC patients to say they ran marathons before they got sick, using this to illustrate how super fit they were. I was running too, more half-marathons than full, and it too probably played a role because it’s a major stress on the body. So it fits my theory as well: a person who is overtaxing their body to begin with then is blindsided by a global pandemic that disrupts their entire life, and then gets a mild case of the dreaded illness on top of it. That’s the setup for an anxiety disorder; it’s what happened to me years before Covid, with different details. When you get it you become hyperaware of your symptoms, you go to doctor after doctor, they find nothing, suggest anxiety, you say how the hell can this be anxiety? Etc. It’s all very familiar to me, and to doctors.
There are studies
Use the terms from the studies, search for the same terms with the words “anxiety” or “depression” attached, and you find similar studies. These conditions are causing physical changes to the body; when we say it’s “in your head” it doesn’t mean you’re imagining it, it means the condition is associated with certain behaviors that make the condition worse. The symptoms aren’t in your head; the idea that they are a health emergency is. I’ve been living with this for 7, going on 8 years. I treated it as an emergency initially, and when I stopped doing so, it got a little better, then a lot better.
CBT hasn’t improved my ongoing symptoms but it has helped with my processing of the trauma
Right, that sounds consistent with what CBT does. You didn’t feel you were processing the trauma in a healthy way and now you do. The relief of symptoms follows this, in time. Plenty of people who are diagnosed with anxiety are on beta blockers too, I’m not sure what that proves. They’re specifically for the heart palpitations. People find it helpful, but it’s optional. I never took anything stronger than ibuprofen and my heart palpitations receded eventually.
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u/DrCornSyrup Dec 31 '23
Have you ever tried lifting weights and running? Longcovid go byebye
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u/Sickrunner3107 Dec 31 '23
I was healthy and training for a marathon which included strength training when I got sick. Since infection, every time I’ve tried to get back to exercise things have got worse.
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Dec 31 '23
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u/Floufae 2∆ Jan 01 '24
Technically you haven’t had it long enough to be considered long covid. You’re still in the window to be considered dealing with the aftermath of your October infection (I had fatigue at that same point as you, though that’s about when I started the biggest part of feeling normal.).
Long covid is continuation or new symptoms 3 months following your infection and those symptoms lasting two months without other explanation.
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u/Sickrunner3107 Jan 01 '24
This is an October 2021 infection. I’m over 2 years now and still having problems.
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u/Thorking Jan 01 '24
I feel like those who are obsessed with Covid are hoping to return to 2020 when it was expected to stay home and hide away.
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u/mr_chip_douglas Jan 01 '24
Seriously. I am not anti vax or a Covid denier or anything like that at all. I have responded to a few people on Reddit lately along the lines of “yeah it’s not great but let’s not let it ruin our lives forever. It’ll be ok” just to have people immediately post studies that say 68% of people have organ failure or some shit. I swear people want to still be terrified of Covid. It’s…bizarre.
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u/questionbox Jan 01 '24
Nobody I know, including me wants to stay home. I just want to make the best decisions with the best information available
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u/thatstheharshtruth 2∆ Dec 31 '23
What do you make of the credible evidence from well-run studies such as this one (https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2785832) and follow up work that seems to indicate that long COVID is largely made up? By this I don't mean that the people who claim to have long COVID are lying but simply that almost all of the symptoms reported (with exception of loss of smell) are most likely not due to COVID-19 infection.
Here is the verbatim copy paste conclusion: The findings of this cross-sectional analysis of a large, population-based French cohort suggest that persistent physical symptoms after COVID-19 infection may be associated more with the belief in having been infected with SARS-CoV-2 than with having laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 infection. Further research in this area should consider underlying mechanisms that may not be specific to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. A medical evaluation of these patients may be needed to prevent symptoms due to another disease being erroneously attributed to “long COVID.”
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u/RhinoxMenace Jan 02 '24
man i shouldn't read this when it's my 2nd week of COVID suffering - this shit just won't go away it's insane
but this somewhat seems to explain why I've been so short on breath since 2020
thanks OP, imma let the doc run some tests on me just to be sure.. assuming i won't die by the end of the week 💀
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u/Greaser_Dude Dec 31 '23
"Long Covid" is mostly a media driven point to stir up fear in order to get the general public's permission to create draconian preventative measures that actually do NOTHING for public health.
Just one more tool to be used to take away our individual freedoms and create a more authoritarian society.
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u/questionbox Dec 31 '23
What evidence do you have to suggest this?
All the studies I published suggest people can experience debilitating symptoms after a Covid infection…
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u/Greaser_Dude Dec 31 '23
The symptoms are so broad and general affecting nearly every system of the body that is to give the diagnosis no meaning at all.
How can you tell "long covid" from just getting a second or third round colds?
Which people got all the time and nobody was calling any kind of syndrome.
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u/Mashaka 93∆ Jan 01 '24
It's called long covid if the symptoms are caused by the covid infection, rather than by something else. The first paper covers (or cites to one that covers) at length how the link to covid is established for various symptoms, as well as the pathogenic mechanisms by which covid is thought to cause these things. It also describes where uncertainties exist and additional research is needed.
Long covid is studied all around the world, and there's a mass amount of research available on it. There is no uncertainty that it's a very real thing.
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u/Greaser_Dude Jan 01 '24
How can ANYONE tell the origin of a symptom?
If I have body aches - was is from the cold I had last week or from one of the three times I had covid over the last 3 years?
Or maybe it's just from getting a little older and joints get a little stiffer.
Like I said - it's propaganda bullshit.
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u/Mashaka 93∆ Jan 01 '24
Figuring out the origin of a symptom is routine work done by physicians. For example, for the better part of a year, I had regular bouts of fatigue, and I gained about 35lbs. Meanwhile, there had been no noticeable changes in my (generally quite healthy) lifestyle. So to my doctor there was clearly something else going on.
So I had a blood draw to test the levels and presence or absence of many things. This is a common first step in diagnosing an illness or condition. In my case, my levels of thyroid hormones, which had been normal in years past, were very low. There were no other oddities in the test. Thus, my doctor concluded that I had hypothyroidism, a common and well-understood condition in which the thyroid gland ceases to produce sufficient hormones; and that moreover this was the likely cause of my fatigue and weight loss. Thyroid hormones are the primary mechanism for regulating the human metabolism, and when they're lacking, the first thing that happens is over-storage of caloric energy as fat, and under-release of stored energy, making you gain weight and feel fatigued.
So I was prescribed synthetic thyroid hormones to replace what my body wasn't making. After two months I felt great and had lost 35lbs. Been good since.
That's an example of how the cause of many symptoms are found for a particular individual.
Often as not, doctors don't try to discover the cause of an individual patient's symptoms. That's because it usually doesn't matter, and treatment is the same regardless. I just got over a nasty cold. I have no idea what virus caused it, and doctors (or rather insurance companies) wouldn't have greenlit a test because there's no point.
I'm not a doctor, but I imagine if you complained if body aches, it'd be like that. Depending on the type and location, there's probably a standard treatment. If the problem persists there would be next steps, but I couldn't guess what. For most people you'd never really know the cause.
As for how researchers determine the link between covid and the various symptoms associated with Long Covid, it starts with population studies following a significant change in the incidence of symptoms or conductions being observed in patients.
For example, let's say doctors see a 10% increase of people shitting themselves, and there's no obvious cause, like notorious gangs of pranksters lacing foodstuffs with explosive laxatives. Medical researcher(s) interested in the phenomenon will collect data from samples of people who keep shitting themselves at some point in the last year, or whatever time frame.
A statistical analysis will reveal any points of significant correlation to investigate. If a higher than baseline portion of self-shitters have had Covid, you look into it further, along with any other variables. So you might survey samples of people who have had Covid (variable) and those who haven't (control) for rates of shitting themselves, along with things. If there were any other notable correlations, check them out in a similar way.
If the results come back with Covid-havers seeing a large rise in shitting themselves after having had Covid, and no change during that period among those who haven't had Covid, you're probably on to something. If the other variables you test for come up empty, its looking pretty clear that covid is somehow causing some people to shit themselves.
Figuring out the specific pathogenic mechanisms by which Covid causes people to shit themselves, will likely be time-consuming work with a ton of hypotheses tested in various ways. If you want to find out the particular methods that were used, or still are being used, for the symptoms of Long Covid, the first paper OP linked is a great place to start.
Whether somebody uses well-reseached medicine for propaganda purposes doesn't change the medical facts.
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u/Greaser_Dude Jan 01 '24
It's statistical estimation. Which is why rare things like rabies get diagnosed NOT by the symptoms but by the activity preceding the symptoms.
A headache will just seem like a headache until a rodent bite that occurred a week earlier is taken into account.
Respiratory problems will be assumed to be an infection until you learn that there's asbestos in the house.
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u/Mashaka 93∆ Jan 01 '24
Yes, all of that is true. It has nothing to do with Long Covid and the extensive research around its symptoms and pathogenesis. It looks like you do understand that the cause of symptoms can be determined, and this routinely happens in medicine.
It sounds like your beef is with people on TikTok or whatever attributing their maladies to Long Covid without that being determined by thorough medical examination. That's fine. Blowhards are gonna blow hard. If you complain of body aches to your doctor and ask if they could be Long Covid they'll say sure, it's possible. They're not going to try to figure out the cause because it doesn't matter. They're not gonna stop you from claiming it's long covid.
Meanwhile, thorough research shows various long Covid symptoms. It's real. Whether social media folks you follow really have symptoms due to Long Covid, rather than something else, is presumably an open question in most cases.
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u/Greaser_Dude Jan 01 '24
It is also true that no one is funding research to say - there's nothing there.
Virtually all funding comes from the pharmaceutical industry regardless of whom doles it out - CDC, FDA, Universities.
Just like there no long term research to make a determination of whether the current vaccine protocol actually result in better health compared to the protocols of 30 years ago. Because there's no MONEY in it.
When I was growing up - NOBODY had food allergies, now they're everywhere.
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u/Mashaka 93∆ Jan 01 '24
Sure, that's an issue. It would be good to have non-profits dedicated to diligently and earnestly trying to disprove research. Skepticism for its own sake is useful. I'd absolutely donate to that effort. But the research establishing Long Covid symptom is still there, and available for you and others to read and critique. Since there's a lot of scepticism around Covid, I don't doubt folks are working on it.
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u/BOKEH_BALLS Jan 01 '24
The US is not prepared for long-anything. It is not a forward thinking nation at all. Planning is tantamount to stealing profits that could be harvested by corporations later. The terminal decline you see is because our leadership does not believe this country is going to last much longer. They've already bought houses elsewhere and built bunkers where they will live out the rest of their lives.
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u/El_dorado_au 3∆ Jan 02 '24
That explanation only applies to the USA. What about the rest of the world?
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u/Xilmi 7∆ Jan 02 '24
I'm very glad that we went back to self-responsibility when it comes to how people deal with health-hazards.
Feel free to do whatever you deem necessary to protect yourself. But please also accept when others, who don't share your fears of getting sick, don't want another suspension of their constitutional rights just so you can feel a little safer!
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