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Long Covid brain fog may be due to damaged blood vessels in the brain

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Re: Long Covid brain fog may be due to damaged blood vessels in the brain

#141
post #92
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you look at the Epstein-Barr virus we call the result of the infection all kinds of syndromes. Personally I had Long Epstein-Barr for almost a year. So I know it's no joke. Most virus infections can cause long term problems.

> Most virus infections can cause long term problems. This is very, very false. Your body is currently fighting off a very large number of virus and bacterial infections. Most are innocuous, and don't even raise the symptoms of a cold. Now, going out on more of a limb and moving into speculation: There is a tiny minority of diseases -- most very new and poorly-understood -- which do this. There's some evidence that p…

Herpes virus at least has been infecting humans since long before the rise of civilization. Once a person is infected they can remain a contagious carrier for life, so there's plenty of opportunity to spread it even with lower population density.

https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msu185

Re: Long Covid brain fog may be due to damaged blood vessels in the brain

#144
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s PEM?

PEM is post-exertional malaise, the hallmark symptom of mecfs and some portion of what we call long covid. It's brutal, trying to push through it can lead to permanent worsening of symptom severity.

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Re: Long Covid brain fog may be due to damaged blood vessels in the brain

#145

The last para suggests that this is not reversible. But does anyone have any treatment options or supplements/nootropics to recommend?

Long Walks, Sleep, Ritalin :-)

Most experts on chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) would advise most CFS sufferers to avoid stimulants because they tend to make the fatigue worse (once the stimulant effects wear off).

And that has been my experience.

Re: Long Covid brain fog may be due to damaged blood vessels in the brain

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Experts react: https://www.scimex.org/newsfeed/expert-reaction-long-covid-m... > It is because of these specific factors as well as inherent limitations of the study methodology itself, that their conclusion that it is “time to stop using terms like ‘long COVID’” is overstated and potentially unhelpful. Long COVID has been a global phenomenon, recognised by WHO. > Unfortunately, this question cannot be simply answere…

> "Long covid is not a thing" plays into the "Covid is not a thing" conspiracy theory; it's probably a harmful trope, rather than meaningfully helpful for the people suffering symptoms. That something plays into a harmful trope doesn’t speak to its veracity though, and diminishing smaller inconvenient truths so as to not lead people astray in my opinion exacerbates rather than diminishes conspiracy theories. Could pr…

Your last paragraph makes no sense to me.

There were plenty of places which published long, complex, nuanced data and explanations about ivermectin.

But lots of people are unable to understand complex writing or statistics. And most people have little understanding of biology, medicine or disease. This led to widespread misinformation, which in turn led people to try to simplify out all the complexity, and trim it down to basic things like "ivermectin doesn't work" and "don't take horse medicine when your doctor refuses to prescribe ivermectin to you".

The messaging you think would have "prevented a lot of wasted time" was exactly the messaging in the medical reports that started the whole problem. Dumbing it down was a response to the "internet arguments".

Re: Long Covid brain fog may be due to damaged blood vessels in the brain

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Long Walks, Sleep, Ritalin :-)

Most experts on chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) would advise most CFS sufferers to avoid stimulants because they tend to make the fatigue worse (once the stimulant effects wear off). And that has been my experience.

[deleted]

Re: Long Covid brain fog may be due to damaged blood vessels in the brain

#148
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Long covid is not a thing" plays into the "Covid is not a thing" conspiracy theory; it's probably a harmful trope, rather than meaningfully helpful for the people suffering symptoms. That something plays into a harmful trope doesn’t speak to its veracity though, and diminishing smaller inconvenient truths so as to not lead people astray in my opinion exacerbates rather than diminishes conspiracy theories. Could pr…

Your last paragraph makes no sense to me. There were plenty of places which published long, complex, nuanced data and explanations about ivermectin. But lots of people are unable to understand complex writing or statistics. And most people have little understanding of biology, medicine or disease. This led to widespread misinformation, which in turn led people to try to simplify out all the complexity, and trim it do…

I am saying there’s a middle-ground between “long, complex, nuanced” and “ivermectin doesn’t work”, which is useful because as you point out, most people can’t understand the former, but are able to understand abstracts of papers that suggest ivermectin does work, and wonder why they’re being told it doesn’t. Likewise telling people that entertaining the thought that a coronavirus escaped from a lab — in a city that has a lab that studies them — is ridiculous and racist simply opens a huge space for conspiracy peddlers who wonder out-loud and with reasonable justification why this is being dismissed without any nuance at all.

Dumbing a message down to contain no nuance — in my opinion — opens up the floor for quacks who will be exploit the lack of nuance on their podcasts.

Re: Long Covid brain fog may be due to damaged blood vessels in the brain

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the distinction between pandemic and endemic is political and typically related to “we don’t care to contain it”. It’s not related to immunity levels. The interesting thing is that it used to be citizens of poorer countries who would be fodder, now it’s also the richer ones which I think says something about the state of those countries and progress in general

I wouldn't say so much that we don't care to contain it, but that pandemic means it's sweeping over a population, endemic means it's simply always present in the population without major swings in prevalence. Impossible to contain because it's already everywhere.

‘impossible to’ doesn’t really fit into my idea of the HN crowd.

It’s cost/benefit and leaders took the ‘keep the graph going up and to the right next quarter’ approach to the long term risks.

Containment is of course possible, it would just take technology improvements for diagnostic tests and education and investment in air quality.

The calculation is that saving the years of ill health aren’t worth disrupting the status quo

Edit: What’s the difference between sweeping over and always present? Whether we test and report it in the news or not?

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