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Burden of post-Covid-19 syndrome and implications for healthcare planning

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Re: Burden of post-Covid-19 syndrome and implications for healthcare planning

#141

Post by iammisc »

axiak wrote: post #132
iammisc wrote: post #49

When my first daughter was born in 2018, I had a respiratory infection. It lasted three months before I went in to the doctor. I hesitated to seek medical advice because it was clearly viral. But the cough was so bad it was causing the newborn to wake up. The doctor (at a walk-in clinic) told me viral respiratory infections can last months and there's nothing you can do. Just wait. HE gave me some pills to stop the c…

i think the key difference is the incidence rate. if long term symptoms occur in less than one percent of cases, that's still enough for doctors to see and treat without surprise. this article says the incident rate for covid-19 is 25%, which is shockingly high.

> this article says the incident rate for covid-19 is 25%, which is shockingly high.

To be fair, we're not fully aware of all the cases of COVID. Most likely, many people had COVID but didn't know. Because we didn't have proper testing for a long time, our sampling of 'those who had COVID' is almost certainly wrong

Re: Burden of post-Covid-19 syndrome and implications for healthcare planning

#142

Post by gpm »

dtech wrote: post #114
ElViajero wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the same symptoms that I had the second time. The second time was confirmed by PCR-test. But, of course, it could have been an equivalent disease with the same symptoms: fever, mental-fog, sore-throat. It is just the timing, the fact that Osaka is visited by many Chinese nationals and the feeling was so similar that makes me quite sure that it was covid-19.

Those are symptoms of literally every airway infection known to man. Is is much, much, much more likely you had a flu/heavy cold instead of having Covid 1 month before the first public Chinese cases and 3 months before first European cases

Also that if the first disease wasn't covid, getting covid the second time around isn't that unlikely, but if the first disease was covid, getting covid again was shockingly unlikely (not impossible) because of the degree of immunity granted by the first infection.

Re: Burden of post-Covid-19 syndrome and implications for healthcare planning

#143

Post by dorchadas »

inglor_cz wrote: post #17

Six months after the end of a mild case: occassional heart arrhythmias, but getting less frequent. I got medication (Concor) to control them. Muscle twitching, also getting less frequent, but increasing after exercise or caffeine. Incidentally, the cardiologist who takes care about my arrhythmias has after-Covid muscle twitching too and a few days ago told me that another of his patients, fresh after Covid, has them…

That's about how mine is too. I had Covid late November/early December (likely caught it from a student right before the shut schools back down) and it was very mild. Only noticeable issues was a sinus-like sore throat/ear, no taste/smell and being cold. No fever. I even actually exercised during that time, keeping to 10k steps a day walking in circles around my house. All over within 5 days of first symptoms showing (and man, that first good meal after getting taste back was heavenly)

But since then I've been having random heart arrhythmia, which are also getting less frequent, as well numbness in my arms and legs. Like the tingling you get when it's asleep, but without any cause for it to go to sleep, etc. Never attributed that to post-Covid until I talked to my PCP about it recently. Still really hoping there's nothing permanently wrong, but at least endurance doesn't seem to have permanently suffered -- I actually sat my fastest 2mi run time on the treadmill yesterday.

Re: Burden of post-Covid-19 syndrome and implications for healthcare planning

#144

Post by _y5hn »

mygoodaccount wrote: post #19
jacquesm wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, the heart thing. Forgot to mention that because it hasn't happened for a couple of months now but I would wake up at night every now and then with my heart going like I just ran a marathon. But that fortunately completely went away. As for lung capacity: I used to play saxophone pretty fanatically and I think that is one of the reasons I got through this with a relatively low amount of damage.

> As for lung capacity: I used to play saxophone pretty fanatically and I think that is one of the reasons I got through this with a relatively low amount of damage. Funnily enough, I used to play the flute and sing before contracting COVID. With my lung capacity halved, my ability is nowhere near what it used to be. Long COVID has taken all my hobbies away from me: running, singing, hip-hop dancing. If anyone knows…

Breathing exercises and meditation/yoga may help, both with heart and lungs. Worth a try along with long covid support/meetups.

Re: Burden of post-Covid-19 syndrome and implications for healthcare planning

#145

Post by timr »

dragontamer wrote: post #110
satysin wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever since having COVID back in March 2020 I haven't been the same. I still have regular fatigue but my biggest issue is chest pains. For the past few months I have had worsening discomfort/pain in my chest. It was so bad a few weeks ago I ended up going to A&E thinking I was having a heart attack. They did an ECG, sonogram of my heart, chest x-rays, bloods, etc. My heart was fine so not a heart attack. They put it d…

I hear these stories and it makes me wonder if I somehow caught SARS way back in the early 2000s. Because these long symptoms people talk about were exactly what I felt back then. There was some dramatic respiratory illness I got that took took months before I felt "like normal" again. I was a young teenager so I never felt like I needed to go to the emergency room. But the amount of time it took to recover back was…

From personal experience, the symptoms being described by all of the posts on this thread overlap substantially with depression and anxiety. It's notable that the GP went to the hospital and was diagnosed with a possible panic attack. Panic attacks frequently cause your heart to race, skip, etc. Depression causes "brain fog" and fatigue, body aches, etc.

So far, ~all of the reports of "long covid" are anecdotal and post hoc. Which is not to say that they aren't real, but that there's no way of knowing what is causes by the virus, and what is caused by a year in which a significant portion of the population was isolated from contact and systematically terrified.

I've personally had "brain fog", insomnia, fatigue and distraction for the last year, and never had Covid. It's been a difficult, depressing, scary year, and a lot of people have these symptoms.

Re: Burden of post-Covid-19 syndrome and implications for healthcare planning

#146

Post by iammisc »

gizmo wrote: post #105
iammisc wrote: post #49

When my first daughter was born in 2018, I had a respiratory infection. It lasted three months before I went in to the doctor. I hesitated to seek medical advice because it was clearly viral. But the cough was so bad it was causing the newborn to wake up. The doctor (at a walk-in clinic) told me viral respiratory infections can last months and there's nothing you can do. Just wait. HE gave me some pills to stop the c…

Because your doctor is right. Serious viral infections are no joke. Long covid asserts that people with very mild symptoms are also likely to suffer long term. This is controversial.

> Long covid asserts that people with very mild symptoms are also likely to suffer long term. This is controversial.

I'm not sure I understand. My symptoms I described above were never that bad. Were it not for waking up my newborn, I wouldn't have gone in to the doctor. It was just a mild discomfort for a long time for me

Re: Burden of post-Covid-19 syndrome and implications for healthcare planning

#147

Post by Eric_WVGG »

perlgeek wrote: post #90
iammisc wrote: post #49

When my first daughter was born in 2018, I had a respiratory infection. It lasted three months before I went in to the doctor. I hesitated to seek medical advice because it was clearly viral. But the cough was so bad it was causing the newborn to wake up. The doctor (at a walk-in clinic) told me viral respiratory infections can last months and there's nothing you can do. Just wait. HE gave me some pills to stop the c…

With a "normal" viral cough, the infection itself lasts that long. With Long Covid, the viral load is gone from your system, and symptoms still persist Previously, the general public wasn't very interested in chronic, unspecific symptoms that people have or had (google Chronic Fatigue Syndrome; it's a collection of people feeling fatigue, have concentration issues etc. similar to Long Covid, many long before COVID-19…

My friend was diagnosed with ME/CFS after a stroke at age 27. The term "myalgic encephalitis" is the preferred term, as I understand it, because the public seems to be unable to take a phrase like "chronic fatigue syndrome" seriously. In America at least, our puritan personality insists that "fatigue" is a sign of laziness.

If there's an upside to Covid-19, I hope that it's that the symptoms of ME/CFS are taken more seriously by the public and scientific community, and that the results of further research on "long covid" are transferrable.

Those here who are experiencing Long Covid symptoms should keep an eye on a drug called Ampligen. It is the first and only drug that has been approved for the treatment of ME/CFS, but thus far only in Argentina. There are a couple ongoing studies in the United States (one in Lake Tahoe), but no FDA approval yet. Recently, Ampligen has been put into trials for the treatment of Long Covid as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rintatolimod

https://www.clinicaltrialsarena.com/news/company-news/aim-do...

https://www.proactiveinvestors.com/companies/news/921928/aim...

Re: Burden of post-Covid-19 syndrome and implications for healthcare planning

#148

Post by amirhirsch »

OzyM wrote: post #113
amirhirsch wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Symptoms were present in 385 (89%) participants at diagnosis and 81 (19%) were initially hospitalized. The US hospitalization rate is (2,297,764 hospitalized / 33,604,986 tested positive) 6.8% so the study is a cohort of extra-sick folks. Also consider the selection bias of those who want to tell the surveyor about it. I've been thinking about how to correct for this in cohort studies, like perhaps ask people if th…

You lost me at the vegan part? I agree that this is a major source of error in a lot of studies like these, though.

The joke is that they go out of their way to tell people about it. Like, I tried the vegan diet, but gave it up after telling my cousin.

Re: Burden of post-Covid-19 syndrome and implications for healthcare planning

#149

Post by spookthesunset »

_ykl9 wrote: post #82
FiReaNG3L wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No idea why you're getting downvoted - they have no control group and as you say there's 'depression' in their symptoms they count for. I'm pretty sure 'depression' (which I'm sure they don't count as clinically depressed, but 'im feeling more depressed') went up significantly in the whole population last year. Also PLoS one is basically not peer reviewed - they accept every paper after a short review.

No idea why you're getting downvoted Speculation: conflation of his reasonable and factual statement with the ostensibly similar far-right talking point that the cure (social distancing) is worse than the disease.

> far-right talking point

Expressing skepticism surrounding the efficiency of social distancing, masks, "non essential business" and all these lockdowns is not a "far right" talking point. None of our response was in any playbook for this level of threat. We threw out all our pandemic planning in a fit on hysteria and panic.

To this day we cannot say for certain that lockdowns did anything at all, let alone enough to justify their social costs. Same with social distancing or even masks for that matter. The fact that all this can be considered an uncontrolled experiment on unwilling participants is not "far right" thinking.

Re: Burden of post-Covid-19 syndrome and implications for healthcare planning

#150

Post by dragontamer »

timr wrote: post #145
dragontamer wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear these stories and it makes me wonder if I somehow caught SARS way back in the early 2000s. Because these long symptoms people talk about were exactly what I felt back then. There was some dramatic respiratory illness I got that took took months before I felt "like normal" again. I was a young teenager so I never felt like I needed to go to the emergency room. But the amount of time it took to recover back was…

From personal experience, the symptoms being described by all of the posts on this thread overlap substantially with depression and anxiety. It's notable that the GP went to the hospital and was diagnosed with a possible panic attack. Panic attacks frequently cause your heart to race, skip, etc. Depression causes "brain fog" and fatigue, body aches, etc. So far, ~all of the reports of "long covid" are anecdotal and p…

Oh, I know when I was depressed (also as a teenager, but a few years after that). That was a different time and I can talk about that if you like.

But what hit me back then was definitely not depression and/or anxiety. It was some mysterious illness that took me out for a week (kinda typical), but then made me unable to "breath normally" for literally months. It was innately a physical condition: unable to breath, unable to sleep well, unable to feel physically good for months at a time.

A mental depression is... different. I know because I've been through both. In particular, depression doesn't have chronic multi-month breathing issues normally associated with it.

-------------

I only bring it up because the timeframes line up. SARS hit in 2003, roughly the time of my mysterious illness (though I never went to the doctor for it back then. I only knew about SARS because of COVID19 studies today).

Given that SARS and COVID19 have many similarities, I really do wonder if the experience I felt back then is anything like what people with long-COVID19 feel today.

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