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

Been in lockdown for 18 months before I actually caught covid, to be perfectly honest most of the symptoms described for "long covid" I experienced from being locked down, after actually having covid I haven't noticed much of a difference (once my smell and taste returned, thankfully that was soon).

Low energy, out of breath, etc. You have to keep in mind most of us are doing a fraction of walking around that you would do from a commute and it can make a huge difference over time. I was already getting out of breath running up and down one flight of stairs to answer the door after 6 months staying at home, embarrassingly I was one day interviewing a potential hire over video chat, quickly had to collect a package and could barely talk after running back upstairs, completely out of breath. I can see how a sedentary life kills people.

This is before we get into what depression, doom scrolling,Journalist created hysteria fear and dread, realizing there isn't much to life once a few factors are removed, loneliness, video call fatigue and isolation, lack of distance between work space and life space can do to your body and mind.

Doubt we'll ever get a truly objective assessment for the past year and a half for at least 10-15 years, if ever.

> Where is your studies showing these restrictions worked well enough to justify their immense costs to society?

And predictably the goalposts shift.

First it was that we "cannot say for certain that lockdowns did anything at all".

Now it's that the results don't "justify their immense costs to society".

> and even then we didn’t know it would work going in,

Again: Lockdowns are a basic application of germ theory.

The only way they could not work is if infection didn't pass from human to human but was transmitted via miasma or aether.

You could absolutely make valid arguments for or against specific lockdown policy choices (i.e. capacity limits, sizes of gatherings, types of businesses affected, etc).

But lockdowns in general? There's piles of evidence that shows they're extremely effective. Heck, in my own city, we saw a massive spike brewing prior to Christmas, and once a lockdown was instituted, the numbers immediately began to fall. That pattern is repeated anywhere you care to look.

I honestly refuse to spend any time citing data for you, as I do not believe for a second that you're arguing in good faith. If you really wanted to find facts, you could easily dig them up. That you haven't done so tells me everything about your willingness to question your own beliefs.

Yep, I am in the exact same position as you. I lost at least a year of my life due to this post-viral syndrome. I am back to where I was prior to getting COVID-19, though. When I was really sick in March 2020, I thought "wow, I haven't been this sick in a long time". It really was like going back to square one. It was super scary, too, given the health problems that I have.

I have autoimmune autonomic ganglionopathy (autoimmune dysautonomia), which is believed to have caused my type 1 diabetes (autoimmune and insulin-dependent). It is also believed to have caused other endocrine problems and other neurological problems (I have another immune-mediated neurological disease affecting my peripheral nervous system). Anyways, autoimmune autonomic ganglionopathy is very rare, and I have the antibodies (about half of people do not), so I am tremendously lucky.

Anyways, I would be interested in chatting with you. If you want to do so, my email is in my profile information. I am very resourceful and I have tips.

I feel for you, I completely lost smell and taste and it was extremely scary, you don't know how bad it is until it happens and you can't tell if your teeth are clean, your clothes are clean, your milk has gone off, it's crazy to put fragrance on and put your wrist to your nose and there's nothing. Eating suddenly becomes a miserable chore, I normally cook a lot but just ended up eating ramen and fruit and only when my stomach called for it.

Thankfully mine returned mostly after 2 weeks, some things maybe smell slightly different but I think if I was one of the people to have it for 6 months or not at all I'd be pretty deep in depression by the end of it.

I saw some comments online saying long term sufferers returned after taking Vitamin-D and Zinc. I was already taking D but ordered zinc and started taking it as soon as it happened. Could be quackery, normally wouldn't post something like that on HN but only doing it in case that was the reason mine came back so quickly because I know how much it impacts your quality of life.

How do you disambiguate "long Covid" from the very real fact that people are incredibly suggestible.

My father-in-law was convinced he had long Covid. He talked about it all the time.

He was never diagnosed, but he had a cold near the beginning of the pandemic and he decided it was Covid.

He claimed he could run up and down the steps at the park before getting Covid. Now, he claimed, he was always breathless. I exercise him and he'd be convinced exercise will do nothing because of his long Covid.

Of course when he got tested he had no antibodies.

But it's not just that. During the height of the pandemic, did you notice yourself, or notice in others, that people were always thinking Covid was coming on? Every little pain or weird breath and people became very worried.

The brain is incredible at turning normal sensations into symptoms. We don't realize all the sensory input we're constantly discarding until we start becoming hyperaware.

The incentives for the media to hype long Covid and for researchers to find long Covid is incredibly intense. Every shred of evidence will by hyped to the moon. Every other person you meet with a panic disorder or heart condition will have a story attributed to Covid. Ordinary people will have absolutely zero way to contextualize the true risk.