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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

#251

Post by Aachen »

Grim-444 wrote: post #129

So, to summarize this study, they basically just asked a few hundred people that had Covid in the past if they had recently felt tired, depressed, had trouble sleeping, etc., and then reported that a number of the people they asked this replied yes. That's it. There was no medical evaluation of whether the reported symptoms even had a medical cause. There was no comparison to the answers a random control sampling of…

Aren't those who didn't have covid the control here? They would provide a baseline of tired/depressed feelings in the current population.

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

#252

Post by fragmede »

TaupeRanger wrote: post #246
fragmede wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We (humanity) can still treat the symptoms - and the damage they cause. Eg the specific mechanism for covid-induced heart palpitations may not yet be understood, but a heart rate of 160 or even higher for prolonged periods will damage the heart. Beta blockers will manage that - but not all doctors have been willing to prescribe medication to people that clearly need it.

Rarely have I heard of sustained 160 BPM heart rate as a post-COVID symptom. Likely something else would be going on there. Mostly it's vague symptoms, maybe you have 90-120 BPM, but then it goes away by the time you see the doctor the next day. Beta blockers have their own problems and you don't want to just start prescribing them for these vague, transient symptoms.

It's frustrating that it took an an at-home heart rate monitor and a smartphone video of my heart rate for my cardiologist to do something about it (they sent me home w/ an ECG for a day or so), but I eventually managed to get a prescription for it. Doctor still can't explain the "something else going on there" but thankfully my heart rate no longer spikes for no apparent reason.

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

#253

Post by spookthesunset »

strikhedonia wrote: post #248
spookthesunset wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is your proof any of it worked. And saying “chilling at home in safety” shows extreme privilege. Like, it boggles my head how privileged and detached people in this industry are from ordinary people. The privileged work from home class who posts here all gets to work “safely from home” on the backs of an expendable lower class workforce who takes all the risks. What happened over the course of the last 17+ mont…

You seem to be assuming that: - I’m a tech worker - I work from home Neither of which are true. As an ‘essential’ worker, I found it deplorable how dismissive people are of our situation and display belligerence towards basic, near zero-cost safety measures, such as wearing a mask. Which, as the data suggest, was likely beneficial in allowing myself and many of my coworkers to avoid covid. Granted, we no longer wear…

Masks aren’t zero cost. They are a very visible indicator that something is very very wrong. They heightened the hysteria and panic. And they are uncomfortable and quite frankly silly. If you are sick enough to need a mask, don’t go out.

The gaslighting around masks, telling people they are crazy to object to being forced to wear one… almost despotic.

And plus, who knows if they even worked! They could have very well made things worse by giving people false security! Yet another uncontrolled experiment forced down upon an unconsenting population. I’m not some lab rat to be used for study by some “experts.”

2020 was the year society threw out all its ethics, morals and values in a fit of hysteria and panic. It grosses me out.

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

#254

Post by abystander »

strikhedonia wrote: post #248
spookthesunset wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is your proof any of it worked. And saying “chilling at home in safety” shows extreme privilege. Like, it boggles my head how privileged and detached people in this industry are from ordinary people. The privileged work from home class who posts here all gets to work “safely from home” on the backs of an expendable lower class workforce who takes all the risks. What happened over the course of the last 17+ mont…

You seem to be assuming that: - I’m a tech worker - I work from home Neither of which are true. As an ‘essential’ worker, I found it deplorable how dismissive people are of our situation and display belligerence towards basic, near zero-cost safety measures, such as wearing a mask. Which, as the data suggest, was likely beneficial in allowing myself and many of my coworkers to avoid covid. Granted, we no longer wear…

> near zero-cost safety measures

Do we have any sense of the cost to young children who presumably won't see as much face-mouth signalling during the crucial developmental phase of their brain?

How do you teach a kid to read with a mask?!

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

#255

Post by Invictus0 »

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…

We have a lively long covid discord group here: https://discord.gg/HcxrH7xZ

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

#256

Post by lazyasciiart »

spookthesunset wrote: post #128
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…

> doctors are surprised that COVID may do the same? Because we all decided to collectively forget every single thing we know about respiratory viruses and infectious diseases. Somehow because covid is "novel" the world needed to rebuild our entire knowledge base from the ground up. A good example is how lasting t-cell immunity was dismissed for the longest time (and still is in many circles). People apparently seemed…

> Is there any virus in the history of mankind that does this?

Yes. The common cold is a set of symptoms that are caused by many things, but a majority of instances are caused by rhinovirus. It is possible for people to be infected by the same strain multiple times, but more importantly there are over 100 variations they can catch, and previous infections from one variation do not protect against another. The worst case scenario for covid was exactly that.

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

#257

Post by sebmellen »

fragmede wrote: post #165
sebmellen wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure what I think of your comment, but I think it at least deserves discussion. I have used said supplements before. In fact, I have a close friend who is very enamored with supplements and has about 50 different pill bottles in his medicine drawer. Out of curiosity, I once spent two weeks taking about 25 pills a day at his recommendation, and I'm afraid they did not do very much for me — at least that I cou…

I mean, if you're basically fine, then the supplements, which have had studies run, aren't really going to do much for you unless you're really in tune with your body. For extreme cases of long covid, however, the right set of vitamin supplements are life saving. (I'm not exaggerating. eg https://www.cambridgeindependent.co.uk/news/long-covid-patie... ) There are absolutely scammers selling trash (there's someone sel…

Very interesting article, thank you for the link! When administered and monitored with some degree of medical oversight (as was the case for the article’s subject), I think such treatments are wonderful!

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

#258

Post by timr »

dragontamer wrote: post #242
timr wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're wrong that long covid evidence is anecdotal. Fine, convince me. Provide a citation from a study where: 1) the results are NOT gathered by survey from a self-selected population 2) the study is pre-registered, with endpoints determined in advance 3) the study is prospective , longitudinal and randomized 4) there is a control group 5) the participants are verified to actually have Covid 6) a significant effect…

> Fine, convince me. Why do you need a control group? We know that typical people don't just randomly get coughs on a daily basis. Anyway: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle... A pretty small study (250-ish people) but plenty of evidence for long-haul COVID19, since ~20+% of them got long-haul COVID19. ----------- Random, normally functioning adults don't have breathing issues under normal c…

> Why do you need a control group? We know that typical people don't just randomly get coughs on a daily basis.

Because this is science, not a spread in the New York Times. And if you read the link to the paper I cited, you'd see that "typical people" do randomly get these "symptoms" on a regular basis (I'm coughing right now!) And in fact, once you control for this, you find out that some of what you thought was "long covid" was just...what happens in a normal population of people.

As for your paper, it fails the criteria established:

"COVID-19 symptom data were obtained at the time of acute illness or retrospectively recounted at a 30-day enrollment visit. A total of 234 participants with COVID-19 were contacted between August and November 2020 to complete a single follow-up questionnaire between 3 and 9 months after illness onset."

In other words, this is self-reported data. The control group isn't actually a control group, because the people in each group knew if they had Covid, and are self-reporting their own symptoms...in a survey about Covid. It's a recipe for confirmation bias.

A good study of this sort would follow N people over time, randomly selected and matched on various demographic criteria (age, weight, gender, etc.), split into known sero-positives and known sero-negatives. You'd then survey all of those people over time about a few selected health issues, without telling them you're doing a study about Covid.

A gold-standard study would find a way of objectively confirming the illness, and wouldn't rely on self-reported data (e.g. medical exam with lung volume test). But even if you can't do that, you can still do a lot better than this. This is just...meaningless. It's like taking a group of people who broke their legs in the last decade, and asking them if their leg hurts today. Sure, maybe some people have "long broken leg", but your experiment is a bad way to find out.

> Besides, you're playing "judo" with the argument. If you want to convince ME that long-haul COVID19 is fake news, YOU are the one who has to pull up the study indicating evidence in your favor.

Nope. Again, this is science. The burden is on the person making the claim to prove the claim. If you believe that Cooties are a thing, or that head shape predicts personality, or that fusion can occur at room temperature in a can of Mr. Pibb, I am not obliged to believe you simply because you want very badly for it to be true.

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

#259

Post by dragontamer »

timr wrote: post #258
dragontamer wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fine, convince me. Why do you need a control group? We know that typical people don't just randomly get coughs on a daily basis. Anyway: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle... A pretty small study (250-ish people) but plenty of evidence for long-haul COVID19, since ~20+% of them got long-haul COVID19. ----------- Random, normally functioning adults don't have breathing issues under normal c…

> Why do you need a control group? We know that typical people don't just randomly get coughs on a daily basis. Because this is science, not a spread in the New York Times. And if you read the link to the paper I cited, you'd see that "typical people" do randomly get these "symptoms" on a regular basis (I'm coughing right now!) And in fact, once you control for this, you find out that some of what you thought was "lo…

> Nope. Again, this is science.

Your turn to demonstrate your science. Please, procure a paper that supports your point of view and simultaneously satisfies your requirements.

Science is not a black and white issue. There are "cheaper science" (surveys and other "lesser" studies), and there's "expensive science" (10,000+ experiments with control groups). Both are science.

But what you're doing isn't science at all. You're just shitting on other people's work without showing what you actually like. The papers I pointed out are in respected journals and respected methodologies, albeit cheaper than what you want.

But given your "standards", I'm convinced that the "studies" you want simply don't exist, either on my side of the argument nor on yours.

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

#260

Post by rutherblood »

ModernMech wrote: post #189
varjag wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds terrible. Did you (and u/mygoodaccount) have loss of smell among the symptoms? I recall reading somewhere that it correlates with protracted recovery.

My sister had this. Even today (5 months after infection) she says some things taste and smell funny. She can't eat mint ice cream anymore because she says it tastes like cigarettes.

Can relate. Been 3 months since I recovered. Sense of smell has recovered definitely but since the past 2-3 weeks I've noticed it's still not fully there. A rare house plant blooming in the night which for everyone at home triggers a strong sweet fragrance which can be sensed even on the second floor, for me it was like a lingering placebo. Additionally, there is this weird stench that permeates everything I eat. I can't explain it, just a kind of smell I've never come across but now have to every other hour because it colors pretty much any earlier-pleasant-smelling thing
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