Disability from having had even mild Covid - a growing problem

I've been warning people about this since the beginning of the pandemic; that death is not the only stat that is important in understanding the impact of Covid-19, but also sequelae in survivors (that is, long-term symptoms of organ damage), which can be quite disabling and will be a growing economic burden (cost of treatment, lost of productivity) in the next decades.

Now, an article written for a finance page is detailing the problem:

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/long-covid-patients-doctors-america-172004184.html

 

The article calls it a "mass disabling event."

Here, a description by a patient:

"Bean has experienced a variety of symptoms which she said “really grinds you down” and is “much more flattening” than other forms of chronic illness. These include tachycardia, constant sweating, post-exertional malaise, digestive issues, brain fog, weakness in the hands, loss of fine motor skills, loss of taste and smell, insomnia, and costochondritis (inflammation of the cartilage that connects a rib to the sternum).

“When you have such profound exertion intolerance, there are days where you literally cannot do anything,” Bean said. “You can barely speak, you can't think, you can't enjoy things, you can't tolerate noises and stimuli, you can't even afford the energy required to care about the people you love. It's a profoundly dulling experience. And it's so tiring because everything is exertion: eating is exertion, responding to voicemails and emails is exertion, paying attention to my clients is exertion.”

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The article also makes reference to a Lancet study:

"A study published in The Lancet that looked at long COVID patients from 56 different countries, including the U.S., found that 96% of the participants still had symptoms 90 days after testing positive, with the most common symptoms being fatigue, post-exertional malaise, and cognitive dysfunction. And, 45.2% had to reduce their work schedule as a result, while 22.3% had to stop working altogether."

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589537021002996?via=ihub

Actually the study talks about 35 weeks of symptoms, which is 245 days.

 

I had someone, in the health profession, the other day tell us that it was “only a respiratory disease”. And it was “just like pneumonia” and “what were we worried about”. Obviously this was one who has yet to look after a patient with COVID

 

The mass disabling effect comes from the clot shots.

Thanks for another bit o' fear porn from the resident pharma rep.

 

Perhaps some should look into other viruses that cause long term damage of various organs, and extensive damage to the autoimmune system.

But I guess this viruses is 'special', now that people have learned to weaponize it.....l

 

Jolene Kolenosky of Canada does not have to worry about any long term effects, because she is dead after taking the shot.

Jolene Kolenosky: 39-year-old Canadian woman gets injected because she wanted to travel, dead four days later (pharmaceuticalfraud.com)

 

Although these long-term symptoms are alarming, disability is more common than one might think. I've heard it said that 1 in 4 workers will end up on disability. So, 2 out of 10 COVID sufferers having long-term symptoms is not statistically significant. It's just 1 in 5, just about the same number as the average rate of disability in the general population.

 

Whaaat? It's not one or the other. It's one AND the other. We'll be adding lots of disabled people to the existing one, including, lots of young people with disabilities that otherwise they'd never have had.

50 million people with Covid and counting... and a good percentage of them get long-term organ damage, and you think it's no big deal? I see that you're not used to thinking in terms of public health and economic impact.

 

This long-term symptoms thing is sad, but there's a glimmer of hope. That is, the body can repair itself. In fact, with all the cell division going on, in 7 years every cell in the body (with the possible exception of brain cells) will be replaced. Someone should run with this and plot a long-term plan towards directing the body's damaged organs to heal themselves.

 

I don't disagree that this is an issue. We've seen it with some diseases in the past.

Interestingly the long-term side effects of this Covid virus infection are similar to the long-term side effects of the Covid vaccine, and I would imagine those people most likely to suffer from one are also more likely to suffer from the other.

(And yes, I will also concede that the risk of these side effects is probably substantially greater from infection than it is from the vaccine, although you also have to factor into the equation the probability of getting infected in the first place, since substantially more people will get vaccinated than will actually get infected)

 

From health experiences I have experienced, I suspect that might take a long time. 7 to 15 years.
(That is if things are not able to repair themselves within several months)

 

It sounds like the virus infected her nervous system, and brain, causing autonomic dysfunction. This is not normal, but could be possible.
It also seems to have caused some long-term damage to her heart.
Inflammation caused by an external factor does not always go away can be self-perpetuating (inflammation of the cartilage).

She probably had genetic factors that caused her to be more vulnerable to this, where her immune system overreacted.

For this type of person, the vaccine would have been very likely to cause adverse effects also.

 

The Myth of ‘Long COVID’

The largest study so far of “long-haulers,” published by researchers at University College London in July, comprised nearly 4,000 subjects from over 56 countries. Participants were over the age of 18 and suffered from symptoms lasting at least 28 days. The researchers acknowledged merely in passing that in the study a mere 27% or 1020 of these “COVID long-haulers” had evidence of exposure to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. That’s whether antigen or antibody. The only connection to COVID was the attestation of the sufferers. They “felt” they had COVID, regardless of evidence.

 

OK, now you are not only not familiar with public health, you're not familiar with medicine either. Kidney insufficiency doesn't get any better. It only gets worse to the point of dialysis or transplant. Same with liver damage. Diabetes from the virus destroying Beta cells, once you have it you have it, they don't regrow. A stroke hitting the brain, is often irreversible. Myocarditis with congestive heart failure also doesn't regenerate, short of a heart transplant. A fibrotic lung doesn't recover.

 

Except that there are no long term side effects of the Covid vaccines. That's entire a creation of your imagination. The issues with the vaccines manifest within the first 2 months.

And what I'm talking about are not "side effects" of this Covid virus. THESE ARE ITS EFFECTS. We call them sequelae. They are caused by direct damage. Nothing "side" about them.

 

Nope.
The virus directly damages brain cells and heart cells, even in the absence of inflammatory overdrive. The virus damages endothelial walls, thus affecting organ perfusion everywhere.
Obviously you are not familiar with the virus' effects and syndrome.
Long Covid can indeed come from an over-reaction of the immune system, but can ALSO be caused in other cases, simply by direct viral damage inflicted upon these organs.
No, the vaccine would not be VERY LIKELY to cause it, given that we see for example myocarditis in 4 out of 1 million cases with the vaccines, and in 45% of natural viral infections or almost 1 in 2.
Which means that MILLIONS of people have issues like this person's, but just a handful have it with the vaccine. So how do you account for the several millions who have it with the virus? Would they all have it with the vaccine? LOL. If that were the case, we'd be seeing millions, hundreds of millions of cases with the vaccines instead of 4 in 1 million.
If you think that 4 in 1 million is "very likely", you might want to go back to math and practice a little.
Aren't you tired of being wrong?

 

A small price to avoid offending the Bronze Deity

 

Yeah I can understand why there would be some sort of lasting effect from it I have one that's really rather mild. I can no longer stand the taste of Turkey and I used to love it.

But there's nothing we can really do the virus seems to be pretty much unstoppable. Nothing we've thrown at it seems to be effective.

Try to wash your hands try to avoid big gatherings which I do anyway, so on and so forth.

 

With due respect to "Bean", there is plenty of precedent for viewing this syndrome as a possible post-viral malaise. IOW, anxiety and/or depression.

It's even more likely to be somatic, given the intense focus given to this particular virus .. and the sheer volume of material on Long COVID. Anyone with a predisposition to 'milking' an illness (and we're all capable of that to some degree .. it's not a terrible flaw or a rarity), is going to subconsciously absorb that and run with it.

 

More likely, it's an endothelial and inflammatory disease. It just happens to get to the lungs first. Covid-19 is a full-blown systemic disease, and one with dire consequences.

People who dismiss its seriousness are fools. That someone in the health profession does, is pretty much a confession of poor training.

 

Sure, there will be those cases too. Similar to the fibromyalgia conundrum.
But there is more than enough evidence of physiologic, demonstrable damage by Covid-19 that a very large number of these cases are legitimate. For example, there is direct evidence of cardiac compromise with elevation of cardiac-specific inflammatory and cell-degradation markers, cardiac functional MRI, disarray of cardiac muscle cells in biopsy, and so on and so forth.
You don't fake those by subconsciously running with it.
Same with direct brain damage with drop in neurocognitive testing.
Same with markers of renal functioning. An elevated creatinine can't be faked by the subconscious.
Permanent shortness of breath from a fibrotic lung can be seen in pulmonary function tests with loss of elasticity and lung capacity, and can be directly seen in lung biopsy too.

Sure, every legitimate disease known to men will generate its share of hysterical copy-cats, factitious disorder, malingering, etc.

But the vast majority of the sequelae of such a devastating virus are real, very real.

 

All of her symptoms can be explained by anxiety and/or depression. They're very similar to other somatic syndromes like CFS, and Fibromyalgia (when I refer to these as somatic, I'm doing so from ONE (medical) point of view. The science is still very much unsettled on this).

If you want some examples of just how much our mental health can impare our physiological function, check out the Youtubers and Vloggers known collectively as "Munchies". Mostly female, and mostly quite sick in a psychiatric sense - they refer to themselves as chronically ill. They 'acquire' conditions which are either impossible to test for (CFS, Fibromyalgia, Gastroparesis, POTS, etc), or which are auto-immune dysfunctions - which we know can be precipitated by depression. They gain satisfaction from reducing their capacity to function normally, and from medical attention and procedures/meds/devices, etc. A disturbing number end up dying as a result of their determination to impair themselves.

 

I don't dispute the findings, my concern is with their cause.

I would only be happy with certainty when it comes to quantifiable organ damage .. with the possible exception of cardiac, which can be a result of severe stress/anxiety. As for the cognitive stuff ... that's very often the first thing to go when we're severely stressed or depressed.

Just to clarify again .. I don't think these people are 'faking' it. I believe that in some cases, some or all of the symptoms will be somatic - not factictious. It's happening at the subconscious level.

 

Agreed. I just have not been able to get back to the person and set her right

 

Every virus is “special”. If you want to see devastating see what Herpes can do to a brain - or measles for that matter. We have just forgotten how deadly some diseases can be

https://www.encephalitis.info/measles-infection-and-encephalitis