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Almost third of UK Covid hospital patients readmitted within four months

theguardian.com

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Re: Almost third of UK Covid hospital patients readmitted within four months

#141

Post by azeirah »

bserge wrote: post #106
timr wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I now personally know over a dozen people (ranging from mid-20s up through upper 40s) who have had Covid-19. All had minor illness and are now fine. Which is not to say that others do not have lingering symptoms -- but if we're going to emphasize scary anecdotes, it seems like we should spend proportional time reporting the vastly larger number of anecdotes that are not scary, as well?

It would be great to have such a database of reports from anyone with a confirmed Covid infection. Like Erowid for Covid. Most people (I read it's around 86%) having such mild symptoms that they don't even realize it's Covid must've contributed a lot to its rapid spread. The more vulnerable people get the same virus and suffer much more. Perhaps vulnerable people should've been subjected to stricter lockdown measures…

You could start by datamining /r/covid19positive timelines. There should be over 100 personal experiences there, with symptoms per date

Re: Almost third of UK Covid hospital patients readmitted within four months

#142

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

lifeformed wrote: post #85
dnautics wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you're also an island. there's a strong multiscalar correlation between being an island and having good covid outcomes. NZ, Taiwan, South Korea (not technically an island, but might as well be), Australia, Japan. And at subnational levels too: The best us state is Hawaii. The best city in the bay area is Alameda.

How does being an island help? Are America's covid problems primarily caused by infected Mexicans crossing the border? Do the islands you listed not have much air travel?

Being an island that gets all its goods through cargo ships or planes allows a lockdown as strict as NZ’s. That cargo influx involves a small number of personnel. However, that isn’t the case in e.g. Europe, where countries have not been self-sufficient in foodstuffs etc. for long decades, and many people live on one side of a border and work on the other side. That means there is a steady flow of trucks across the continent, as well as commuting of at least workers judged essential.

Re: Almost third of UK Covid hospital patients readmitted within four months

#143

Post by notahacker »

jaybrendansmith wrote: post #43

Long Covid is real. I had a mild case back in August, but it took around 5 months to feel 'normal' again. Lots of inexplicable things: Minor heart palpitations, feeling of 'heaviness' behind my breastbone. When I exercised, even moderately like running a half mile, I would feel strangely exhausted for many hours later. All of this has gone away now, but I can easily see how someone who is hospitalized could have a re…

> feeling of 'heaviness' behind my breastbone.

You may already be aware of this but there's an organ there called the thymus which is a core part of the immune system (especially in younger people)

Seems to be a symptom with relatively little discussion even in medical journals but can confirm I also had it for months after a relatively mild case, tending to reemerge due to tiredness or exercise.

Re: Almost third of UK Covid hospital patients readmitted within four months

#144

Post by dukeofdoom »

I once had pneumonia, early 30s. It took months to feel 100% again. Its just your lungs get damaged, and takes time to heal. But if you have other health problems, its a spiral. One bad thing leads to the next. Hence, I feel that life is like a bumpy pothole filled road. For the most part, if you get past one, you will keep rolling down. The key is to avoid the big potholes. Some people in terrible physical shape get lucky, and missed a few. When reality is anyone of those previous ones could have taken them out. I learned this on a road from the airport to a hotel in Dominican Republic.

Re: Almost third of UK Covid hospital patients readmitted within four months

#145

Post by kayodelycaon »

ckosidows wrote: post #130
guscost wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may be unpopular to say, but anxiety could have caused some or all of these symptoms.

Sounded like anxiety to me. I experience a number of those things on and off again and as far as I can tell they've always been because of anxiety. They can feel serious but it's often just your mind telling you something is wrong when it's not. Not a doctor. Could be wrong. Just sound like anxiety symptoms from my experience.

I have anxiety and asthma that are well-controlled and I’ve never been afraid or worried about COVID-19. I got sick last March for four months with severe symptoms that were described above. I was having many anxiety and asthma attacks with no obvious cause.

I still haven’t gotten fully back on my feet.

Re: Almost third of UK Covid hospital patients readmitted within four months

#146

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

godmode2019 wrote: post #135

In my opinion the 'long covid' was a line thrust into the spotlight from the media to justify continued restrictions. Person A: 'We should open up' Person B: 'Have you not heard most people have serious health problems after covid?' When we talk about proportional reporting I think of the book 'Thinking fast and slow'.

You are not wrong. Yes, scientific studies speak of some subset of patients experiencing symptoms weeks or months (but not necessarily longer) after COVID. However, the actual studies emphasize that severity of long-term symptoms strongly correlates with severity of illness. That means that young people are at very low risk (not zero, of course, but as low as with many other common illnesses). When the media has taken these research findings up, however, they typically leave out all the nuance, because that way it sounds like more dramatic, attention-catching news.

Also, last year some newspapers irresponsibly allowed some people to share their claims that they were dealing with tough long-term COVID symptoms even when they had never even tested positive for the disease in the first place. It was no different than giving a megaphone to the people who, before COVID, experienced some distress and, without any actual medical verification, were sure they were cases of "chronic Lyme disease".

Health officials in several countries have plainly fudged the truth or left out details when speaking to the public, for what they see as the greater good of maintaining restrictions for long enough to reach their public-health goals. One naturally suspects that they found the panic about long COVID useful for this.

Re: Almost third of UK Covid hospital patients readmitted within four months

#148

Post by dnautics »

JimDabell wrote: post #91
dnautics wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you're also an island. there's a strong multiscalar correlation between being an island and having good covid outcomes. NZ, Taiwan, South Korea (not technically an island, but might as well be), Australia, Japan. And at subnational levels too: The best us state is Hawaii. The best city in the bay area is Alameda.

I don’t really understand this argument in relation to the USA. A country like Germany, where they are in the Schengen Area, surrounded on all sides by multiple countries, with no hard border? Sure, I can see that being a factor. But the USA has only two land borders, both of them hard. If the USA had locked down properly, it would have resembled New Zealand a lot more closely than Germany.

it's more like between the states, not between the US and other countries. One should think of the US analogous to the EU and the state analgous to the countries within the EU, with schengen. The virus need only make a beachhead early on (which it did) and then it was inside of an unsealable domain that is wide enough to basically keep things going in perpetuity.

Re: Almost third of UK Covid hospital patients readmitted within four months

#149

Post by spookthesunset »

mdoms wrote: post #66

The only reason you've had to endure this for over a year is because you never once tried to do it properly. 6 weeks of hard (proper) lockdown followed by sensible plans to manage outbreaks and boom you'd have been done. But no, Americans absolutely refuse to work together, to pull in the same direction, to achieve something.

That is patently false. The whole idea of lockdowns was to "flatten the curve" in order to prevent healthcare from collapsing. It was never, ever to stop outbreaks or stop covid. It was made quite explicit by "the experts" that everybody who was gonna get covid would do so and everybody who would die would do so. The area under the "death curve" was going to be exactly the same so long as healthcare didn't collapse. The goal was to literally slow the spread not stop it. Make it roll out slower to keep healthcare in check.

This idea that if we locked down harder or people "behaved" we'd be done with covid is a complete lie. That was never the intent of these restrictions. Ever.

I find it very curious how even after massive stockpiles of unused ventilators were donated and countless field hospitals were closed up after never seeing a single patient governors extended their stay-at-home orders. Despite it being shown that covid was never a true threat to healthcare, despite the sky-high IFR predictions being shown wrong (thankfully!), we let the goalpost shift to.... well... I still don't know what the goal is. We got very lucky having a vaccine delivered so quickly because without it, we'd have been drifting along aimlessly and things would have got very dark and ugly.

> Americans absolutely refuse to work together

Curious how many of the nations in Europe that "did it right" wound up getting major outbreaks regardless. Also curious how the curves of all regions basically mirror each other regardless of restrictions or "how serious they took it". Maybe, just maybe, humans aren't as in control of a widespread respiratory virus as they'd like to believe.

I believe it is peak human arrogance to think we could somehow control a respiratory virus in this manner. In my opinion history will look upon all this the same way we look at our ancestors performing rain dances and goat sacrifices. They are all examples of meaningless rituals humans perform in order to fool themselves into believing they have more control over mother nature than they actually do.

Re: Almost third of UK Covid hospital patients readmitted within four months

#150

Post by Twounwhe »

ckosidows wrote: post #130
guscost wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may be unpopular to say, but anxiety could have caused some or all of these symptoms.

Sounded like anxiety to me. I experience a number of those things on and off again and as far as I can tell they've always been because of anxiety. They can feel serious but it's often just your mind telling you something is wrong when it's not. Not a doctor. Could be wrong. Just sound like anxiety symptoms from my experience.

(I'm not the person you were replying to.).

I've had similar symptoms, and more, for the past 8 months. Heart palpitations, feeling of heaviness in the chest, strange exhaustion... I admit this does sound like anxiety. However, after suffering from anxiety for two decades, I've learned what my anxiety feels like. This is different. It's like comparing grits and runny oatmeal--I can understand why many descriptions are insufficient to distinguish between them, and even how one might be able to masquerade as the other, but having had both, it's clear they are not the same.

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