Live data from Hacker News

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

journals.plos.org

51–60 of 280 posts

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

#51
post #25

How likely are these numbers to be accurate? This Swiss study of 431 adults gives a 26% incidence of "Long Covid" at 6-8 months. But another study that I'm more familiar with that tracked 4,182 people (mostly from the U.K., U.S., and Sweden) says only 2.3% of participants reported symptoms past the three month point. [0] I feel like every time I look into this topic I find a new study with a wildly different estimate…

The numbers were self-reported, so it's not going to be very accurate.

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

#52
post #34

Self-reported symptoms. And now we will have the litany of hypochondriacs that didn't even got tested for SARS-COV-2 but swear they have some misterious long term viral syndrome that in the real world, if it really exists, is extremely rare. The trash that passes as science nowadays.....

1 in 4 people are not Hypochondriacs. Medical research is used to the way people play up symptoms and this is well above the noise floor.

I don't know about 1 in 4 but it sure seems like there is a lot more of it than their used to be, just in my experience. Younger people living with constant worry about "health care" that I've only ever seen before among the elderly. When I was in my 20s the last thing I or any of my friends worried about was health care.

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

#53
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got CoVid in Osaka at the beginning of November 2019. The symptoms lasted around 5 months. I got it again in May 2021 and this time I was fully recovered in 3 weeks. I got vaccinated, even during the second infection I felt extremely tired and slightly confused, I want to minimize as much as possible the risk of repeating again. update: For all the down-votes. Time will say. But "A new study shows that first cases…

> I got CoVid in Osaka at the beginning of November 2019. Impossible, cases did not appear in Wuhan until mid-late November. You must have had some other flu/virus.

Maybe you are right and it was something else. But, it was very similar and the timing is quite close.

I just feel to share it if it may help someone to build a timeline. And, as I have said in another comment, Osaka has many many Chinese visitors and I was in a very busy airport. I doubt that it took a lot of time to jump from China to other Asian countries.

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

#55
post #37
post #3

One of those cases here. Symptoms: suddenly out of energy, occasionally suddenly being unable to spell, even mild physical exercise leaves me floored (and I was pretty fit for my age prior to this). So, 17 months in: it's still not back to where it used to be but if you think of it in terms of trends instead of absolutes it is definitely still improving. The downs are less far down, the fog is lifting and the energy…

I do wonder if this is proportional to your symptoms/proportional to other ailments. For instance, is someone with Covid (who was on the verge of needing oxygen) more likely to have long term symptoms than someone the same age who got the flu/pneumonia (and was also on the verge of needing oxygen). In other words - is there something unique about Covid? Or is that any disease that sets you back has serious long-term…

For me varicella-zoster was the causative agent. I had a lot of trouble being taken seriously by friends/some medical staff after I said that I had serious issues after a bad infection with it, because of most people believe it to be a relatively benign disease. I think it's the case that most viruses will cause chronic disease in a small subset of people.

> “If Covid didn’t cause chronic symptoms to occur in some people,” PolyBio Research Foundation microbiologist Amy Proal told Vox, “it would be the only virus that didn’t do that.”

> Even with growing awareness about long Covid, patients with chronic “medically unexplained” symptoms — that don’t correspond to problematic blood tests or imaging — are still too often minimized and dismissed by health professionals. It’s a frustrating blind spot in health care, but one that can’t be as easily ignored with so many new patients entering this category, said Megan Hosey, assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.

https://www.vox.com/22298751/long-term-side-effects-covid-19...

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

#56
post #3

One of those cases here. Symptoms: suddenly out of energy, occasionally suddenly being unable to spell, even mild physical exercise leaves me floored (and I was pretty fit for my age prior to this). So, 17 months in: it's still not back to where it used to be but if you think of it in terms of trends instead of absolutes it is definitely still improving. The downs are less far down, the fog is lifting and the energy…

Another one here (Woman, 24 y.o.). Contracted COVID, had a terrible three-weeks of infection. Nine months later, I am having weekly heart palpitations, I'm constantly fatigued and fogged in the mind and my lung capacity is half what it used to be - I now require an inhaler to go on my runs. I know several women my age experiencing far worse. Long COVID should not be ignored.

I hope this is taken the right way, but have you tried "vitamins" (broadly speaking)? Some I have seen with specific effects: Niacin, Black Seed Oil (Nigella Sativa), Magnesium megadoses, etc. etc. Don't dismiss these as "quack medicines", I've recovered from severe chronic illness thanks to some of these... I could expand if people ask, but really it's quite easy, especially for the HN crowd, to level-up rapidly on healing yourself or at least giving yourself the best chance to do so.

The greatest concentrator of such info on the whole internet, is, as far as I can tell, https://twitter.com/grimhood - follow him and get a feel for the info he's spreading, he has very valuable information on all sorts of healing protocols.

Lastly, one that will no doubt be most controversial, but also has promising anecdotes: Ivermectin.

[edit] here come the downvotes, for those that do, note that downvotes, at least on HN, are not meant to express disagreement, they are meant for content that is objectionable for other reasons.

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

#57

Since they claim a quarter of patients are showing symptoms and one of those is depression - how do they separate the out the effect of the de facto criminalization of social activity, an innate human behavior ingrained in our DNA after millions of years of evolution? You'd get significant depression in solitary confinement too.

I was about to say this also -- I haven't been to the gym for over a year and haven't done any real weight training or group exercise for this whole time in lockdown. It would be hard for me to separate the effect of that from long COVID, curious how the study is controlling for this factor.

I want to ask the commenters in this thread who have long covid if they are overweight/obese or have a medical condition. But... I don't want to get flagged.

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

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another one here (Woman, 24 y.o.). Contracted COVID, had a terrible three-weeks of infection. Nine months later, I am having weekly heart palpitations, I'm constantly fatigued and fogged in the mind and my lung capacity is half what it used to be - I now require an inhaler to go on my runs. I know several women my age experiencing far worse. Long COVID should not be ignored.

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.

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

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

#59

Is it possible to have an asymptomatic primary infection and still suffer long covid? Antigen tests where negative but ever since last fall I feel weird symptoms that I never had for any length of time. Stuff like trouble spelling, complete lack of concentration, difficulties comprehending things when trying to actively learn and a general feeling of confusion and exhaustion. I tend to just assume a general state of…

Supposedly, the risk of long COVID is not correlated to the severity of symptoms.

That’s a bad thing.

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

#60
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You were tested and diagnosed with Covid in January 2020?

No, I had it in early March, pretty much textbook, called the local doctor who said don't bother testing (it was quite obvious) but isolate from family, which we did as good as we could. There were a couple of really bad nights, and after that it got better bit by bit and after three weeks I was able to get up again and work a bit. From there it was a long slog to get back to 'normal'.

So you were never tested for covid? How do you know if it was covid ?
Post reply on HN