Long-Term Effects/Risks/Vulnerabilities of Having Had COVID

[kyphysics]

We have lots of different COVID threads (some on vaccines, some on individual variants, etc.), but none on its long-term effects.

I wasn't sure where to place this recent news item (and others like it), so I thought I'd create a thread solely devoted to it. Here is said recent news article:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/covid-raises-risk-long-term-150329709.html

CHICAGO (Reuters) - People who had COVID-19 are at higher risk for a host of brain injuries a year later compared with people who were never infected by the coronavirus, a finding that could affect millions of Americans, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday.

The year-long study, published in Nature Medicine, assessed brain health across 44 different disorders using medical records without patient identifiers from millions of U.S. veterans.

Brain and other neurological disorders occurred in 7% more of those who had been infected with COVID compared with a similar group of veterans who had never been infected. That translates into roughly 6.6 million Americans who had brain impairments linked with their COVID infections, the team said.

"The results show the devastating long-term effects of COVID-19," senior author Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly of Washington University School of Medicine said in a statement.

One thing that's always creeped me out are stories of long COVID, where people have practically what seems like dementia.

I've read stories of people constantly forgetting basic stuff - some individuals having to quit their jobs (like those in the medical field, law, etc., due to inability to remember stuff).

 

[Godot_]

It's not only mnestic issues. Fatigue is an even more frequent symptom in long (neuro-)CoViD.

And while not knowing what you wanted to fetch from the basement when you're there is annoying and terrifying, it can be remedied by writing notes etc. etc. Not being able to move more than a few metres, and then needing to recover for several minutes to tackle the way back (think e.g. toilet) is pretty damning...

 

[pinball1970]

We have lots of different COVID threads (some on vaccines, some on individual variants, etc.), but none on its long-term effects.

I wasn't sure where to place this recent news item (and others like it), so I thought I'd create a thread solely devoted to it. Here is said recent news article:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/covid-raises-risk-long-term-150329709.html

One thing that's always creeped me out are stories of long COVID, where people have practically what seems like dementia.

I've read stories of people constantly forgetting basic stuff - some individuals having to quit their jobs (like those in the medical field, law, etc., due to inability to remember stuff).

from this paper
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-02001-z

"Because we aimed to examine outcomes at 12 months, our cohorts were enrolled before 15 January 2021 (before SARS-CoV-2 vaccines were widely available in the US), and less than 1% of people in the COVID-19 group and contemporary control group were vaccinated before T0. Our subgroup analyses were designed to estimate the risk of outcomes in each subgroup, the strength of the association for any specific outcome may not be necessarily comparable across subgroups"

 

[kyphysics]

Some figures I saw that were interesting.

 

[pinball1970]

Some figures I saw that were interesting.

This article in the Guardian yesterday. Estimated 2 million in the UK with long Covid. 200,000 dead since 2020, so 3% and 0.3% of the UK population respectively so far.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/20/long-covid-treatment-symptoms-research-uk

 

[pinball1970]

@Bystander I get a calculation wrong? It is over 200,000 dead so far and population about 66 million.
Or do you doubt the numbers? Or source?

 

[Bystander]

Or do you doubt the numbers? Or source?

It's been "the tempest in a tea pot" from day one; "long covid" is a neurotic status symbol/crown of thorns.

 

[pinball1970]

It's been "the tempest in a tea pot" from day one; "long covid" is a neurotic status symbol/crown of thorns.

Ok. I have not read a huge amount on it.
I will follow up.

 

[Laroxe]

The numbers around Covid19 are always problematic, the figures for deaths are likely fairly reasonable but in estimates of mortality you can't really work from the overall population, you would need to know the number of people infected, and we don't.
I think regardless of our beliefs about the reaction to Covid19 I really don't see long Covid as a neurotic status symbol, trying to maintain that sort of degree of disability for so long is highly unlikely and it appears to be linked to increased mortality risks. I think its similarity to ME and the rather typical medical responses to conditions they don't understand has muddied the picture, the low numbers of people with ME allowed it to be dismissed and sufferers were treated appallingly. The very large numbers of people with long Covid19 has in fact lead to a flurry of research activity and an increasing number of biomarkers have and are being identified along with identification of differences in immune responses and potential risk factors. There has also been the identification of other long term effects from Covid19 infection, this virus has proven to be a real little bundle of joy and a real education for many in medical research. The viruses ability to selectively target a wide range of tissues has lead to the discovery of a range of long term problems that can be identified in various organs in people who consider themselves recovered, the most worrying being the evidence of damage in the central nervous system. We also know that the effects of the virus on the cardiovascular system appears to increase the risk of cardiovascular events for up to a year following recovery. It is still the case that the background mortality rate remains higher than in the pre-Covid period and this is not readily explainable by reduced screening and medical care nor can it be attributed directly to Covid.
Even if the responses to Covid19 have principally been used to test population control and allow the transfer of money from the pockets of the poor into the pockets of the rich, the increased funding for research has in fact provided a great deal of useful information and highlighted vast areas medical ignorance which might prove to be very useful.

 

[pinball1970]

The numbers around Covid19 are always problematic, the figures for deaths are likely fairly reasonable but in estimates of mortality you can't really work from the overall population, you would need to know the number of people infected, and we don't.
I think regardless of our beliefs about the reaction to Covid19 I really don't see long Covid as a neurotic status symbol, trying to maintain that sort of degree of disability for so long is highly unlikely and it appears to be linked to increased mortality risks. I think its similarity to ME and the rather typical medical responses to conditions they don't understand has muddied the picture, the low numbers of people with ME allowed it to be dismissed and sufferers were treated appallingly. The very large numbers of people with long Covid19 has in fact lead to a flurry of research activity and an increasing number of biomarkers have and are being identified along with identification of differences in immune responses and potential risk factors. There has also been the identification of other long term effects from Covid19 infection, this virus has proven to be a real little bundle of joy and a real education for many in medical research. The viruses ability to selectively target a wide range of tissues has lead to the discovery of a range of long term problems that can be identified in various organs in people who consider themselves recovered, the most worrying being the evidence of damage in the central nervous system. We also know that the effects of the virus on the cardiovascular system appears to increase the risk of cardiovascular events for up to a year following recovery. It is still the case that the background mortality rate remains higher than in the pre-Covid period and this is not readily explainable by reduced screening and medical care nor can it be attributed directly to Covid.
Even if the responses to Covid19 have principally been used to test population control and allow the transfer of money from the pockets of the poor into the pockets of the rich, the increased funding for research has in fact provided a great deal of useful information and highlighted vast areas medical ignorance which might prove to be very useful.

Found a couple of studies

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(22)00491-6/fulltext


https://www.cochrane.org/CD013877/E...lfactory-dysfunction-after-covid-19-infection

 

[Laroxe]

Yes, its certainly an interesting virus and the infection has highlighted a whole range of issues that have been recognised in other diseases but have been largely ignored. Post viral illness is not uncommon but quite a number can be explained with reference to the tissues targeted by the virus, the type of immune responses generated or the heavy metabolic costs of recovery. The virus, called SARS-Cov-2 because it described as causing a sever acute respiratory syndrome, which while true has been rather misleading, most viruses are rather fussy about the cells they target and use to multiply however this virus has been described as "permissive". While it tends to enter the body via the upper respiratory tracts it can rapidly infect the deep areas in the lungs and as it enters circulation it is capable of attacking any cell type the has ACE2 receptors, and there are plenty. In fact its a common receptor type in mammals and this virus seems to readily adapt to other species, in some cases these adapted viruses retain the ability to infect humans. Its perhaps important to recognise that this virus also attacks cells of the immune system, the destruction of the developing germinal centres in lymphatic tissue is clearly associated with sever disease and death. However even without this sort of dramatic damage our immune system creates a number of different sorts of antibodies that act in a coordinated way. It has been noticed that in some people the relative balance of different antibody's and their interaction with various other immune molecules can be quite distorted and reduce their effectiveness. It seems that many people with longer term symptoms have difficulty clearing all the viral remnants, this maintaining the inflammatory responses. Some of these seem to effect very specific parts of body causing dissimilar presentations over variable periods of time, even in the majority of infections, symptoms persist for periods much longer than virus itself in the body. The risks of cardiovascular problems during an acute infection are well known but it appears that increased risks can persist for a year,
https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj.o378#:~:text=After covid, risks of heart,for up to a year.
Relapses in the infection caused by residual virus is relatively common. https://www.medscape.com/viewarticl...lrt_pos1_ous_230223&uac=29315AJ&impID=5189472
and a range of causes have been suggested.
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticl...mrk-OUS_ICYMI&uac=29315AJ&impID=5146130&faf=1
In people who develop long Covid following serious disease the symptoms can be compounded by the psychological effects of suffering a life threatening disease or experience of intensive care.

 

[artis]

It's been "the tempest in a tea pot" from day one; "long covid" is a neurotic status symbol/crown of thorns.

When something is that widespread as Covid was/is you will get all kinds of errors both in numbers etc, you will also get different interests coming out and pushing their agenda in their own preferred direction, but somewhere deep down there is the ordinary "Joe" like me who got Covid, and it took me roughly 3 months to recover, where my symptoms where mostly neurological, and purely physically I was fine already after a month in the tests, but the feeling was that of strong fatigue etc.

So please @Bystander don't throw the baby out with the bathwater , Covid clearly (it seems like the spike protein particularly) can and does create all kinds of issues with a large majority of them being neurological in nature and neurological issues not only sometimes take time to onset but for those that already have them after Covid they are not easy to diagnose medically to have that definite proof on paper.

 

[artis]

@kyphysics You can google "Covid N protein" and search for papers that describe how that protein messes with certain mechanisms that can bring forth or accelerate diseases like Parkinsons.
I looked at that a while ago so don't have the links at hand , heres one for sneak peak

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34860005/