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jimmy m
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15 Sep 2022, 4:14 pm

It is now 20 hours since I had my new COVID shot that will protect me against the Omicron variant. The fever blister in my mouth disappeared. It lasted a total of 2 hours. In general whenever I had a fever blister in the past it lasted around a day or two. So a two hour blister is rather unusual and I suspect it is a strange side effect from the shot. Other than that all is good.


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16 Sep 2022, 7:35 am

Any bad side effects from the new COVID booster shot seem to have worn off. Things are back to normal.


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19 Sep 2022, 4:49 am

Long Islanders struggle with life-altering health problems from long COVID
Behind a paywall

Quote:
The symptoms can be so debilitating that some of those who live with the condition can no longer work or must cut back on hours. At times, they struggle with severe fatigue, breathing problems, balance issues and trouble concentrating.

Long COVID — an insidious condition left behind after the virus initially strikes — has changed, in some cases even ravaged, the lives of tens of millions, including many on Long Island.

Martha Raffloer of Wantagh hasn’t worked since she first got sick with COVID-19 in January 2021. She still relies on supplemental oxygen to help her breathe. Like many others with long-term effects of the virus, her future is uncertain.

“I don’t know what the new me looks like,” she said. “I don’t know what the new work me looks like. I still don’t know what the end of the line is: Is this as good as you’re going to get and you’re not going to get any better?”

The resulting unemployment or underemployment can lead to financial problems, depression and, for those still working, tension with employers, experts and people with long COVID said.

Nearly 1 in 5 adults who had COVID-19 reported having symptoms three months later, according to June federal surveys analyzed by the CDC. A separate CDC study of medical records of people with COVID-19 found a similar percentage with long COVID symptoms.

Raffloer spent 122 days in the hospital with COVID-19, but others with long COVID initially had either mild or no symptoms, the CDC says.

Fatigue, headaches, concentration problems, hair loss and difficulty breathing are among the most common long COVID symptoms, studies have found.

Jane Homan, 53, of Farmingville, was never hospitalized with COVID-19. But a few weeks after she first got sick in June, new symptoms emerged, and what had initially been a mild breathing problem became more severe.

Homan works as a bookkeeper for a tax and investment firm. She’s usually only able to work four hours a day, although recently she’s been trying to make it to five or six.

“I get very tired,” she said. “I have a hard time concentrating. After a while, I tend to just gloss over things.”

Her “brain fog” gets worse as the day goes on, and she’s worried about making mistakes.

“You’re playing with people’s money, whether it’s bookkeeping or investments,” Homan said. “I have to make sure it’s right. I sometimes have to check two, three or four times.”

“Thankfully, I have a very understanding boss,” she said. But Homan worries if she’ll be able to handle the deluge of work when tax season begins in January, and she and her husband are having difficulty making ends meet with the loss of income, she said.

“We struggle to pay the utilities, we struggle to pay the mortgage, we struggle to put food on the table,” she said.

Dr. Sritha Rajupet said almost all the more than 900 people who had been patients at Stony Brook Medicine’s Post-COVID Clinic in Commack had shown some improvement in long COVID symptoms. But few have returned to their pre-COVID-19 health, said Rajupet, primary care lead physician at the clinic.

Some people with milder long COVID symptoms may recover more quickly and completely, she said.

There is no known treatment for long COVID, only medication and therapies for some of the symptoms, Rajupet said.

“Knowing there is no cure, we spend a lot more time talking about what it’s like to have a new chronic illness,” she said.

Dr. Jenna Palladino, a psychologist with Stony Brook who founded an online long COVID support group, said the ailment can cause anxiety, depression and other mental health problems, or exacerbate existing issues.

“Working and participating in life is a core part of our human experience that people get a lot of benefit out of,” she said.

“So not feeling as competent or productive as you used to, whether that’s work within the home or work outside the home, can really impact mental health over time.”

Especially frustrating for some with long COVID is that others, including doctors, sometimes don’t believe they’re really sick, or that they’re exaggerating symptoms, Palladino said.

Dr. Gita Lisker, a pulmonary disease doctor at Northwell Health who runs a post-COVID-19 program for those with lung issues, said testing for some common long COVID symptoms like fatigue “almost always comes out normal.” That and other issues, including the complexity of long COVID cases, mean some doctors don’t want to treat long COVID patients, she said.

Kristine Anthony, 48, of Selden, has seen many specialists since she first got sick in December 2020. She lost her child-support enforcement job after she was out sick on medical leave for more than a year.

“I’ve been working since I was 14,” she said. “It’s an emotional struggle to not be working. It’s been an identity crisis.”

Anthony said she has reactive airway disease that makes it difficult for her to breathe, along with functional neurological disorder that can cause her to sometimes lose her ability to walk or speak.

“COVID is taking away a lot of dignity,” she said. “I’m very young and sometimes I feel like an old lady.”

An August Kaiser Family Foundation analysis of several surveys and studies found that adults with long COVID who had worked before their infection were 3½ times more likely than all adults pre-COVID to be out of work and nearly 50% more likely to be working reduced hours.

A January Brookings Institution analysis concluded that long COVID may account for up to 15% of unfilled jobs nationwide and could be contributing to the labor shortage.

Jeremy Schneider, 51, of Baldwin, has been working full time as chief technology officer for a Manhattan nonprofit, despite fatigue, brain fog, asthmatic reactions, tremors and sleeping problems.

He only goes to the office once a week — most employees go a minimum of three — but his employer has been asking him to go in twice. The last time he tried that, in the spring, his symptoms worsened.


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jimmy m
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19 Sep 2022, 8:16 am

Interesting that you came across an article on Long Term Covid. Because I just finished reading one about this subject.

For Long-Haul COVID, No End in Sight

The article talked about the subject in very fine detail but like most papers avoided making meaningful analysis that can be used. But the main points that I found interesting were the following:

Some people who become infected with COVID experience long term symptoms. This represents around 15 percent of the people in the U.S. who became infected with COVID.

They experience the following types of long term effects from getting COVID.

* Fatigue (58%).
* Shortness of breath (21%).
* Pain (19%).
* Cough (19%).
* Memory loss (16%).

The data on 4,113 INSPIRE patients show 35% with prolonged symptoms but essentially no further symptomatic changes 3 months after acute infection. [The INSPIRE study is funded by the CDC and the purpose of the INSPIRE Study is to learn about the long-term health effects of COVID-19.]

(Link to image.)
Image


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jimmy m
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19 Sep 2022, 9:00 am

I received my new and improved COVID shot four days ago. This one protects me from the latest variant of COVID called the Omicron variant. Nothing bad to report. Life is returning to normal. So you might say I am acting like a guinea pig by being one of the first in line to get the new shot. So that is why I am providing feedback.

It will take me two weeks after getting the shot to become fully protected. Two weeks from now, my body will be a little like Superman. I will have a layer of built in protection. So if you have any fears about this new and improved vaccine, I will tell you that so far I have seen no bad side effects from it.

Now here is the second point. Generally in the northern states of the U.S., COVID reaches pandemic levels around the NOVEMBER timeframe each year. If that happens again this year, everyone who has not gotten this shot or has not become infected with the OMICRON variant will probably get it. It will probably not kill them but they will be in a MIND FOG BANK for around 2 to 4 weeks. Since it takes around 2 weeks for the shot to become fully energized, time is running out. Also the U.S. government made an interesting decision. It decided to not make enough copies of the new OMICRON resistant variant shot. There is not enough for the entire population. So if everyone decides to get the shot, they will be short and this will occur right in the middle of the surge.

Now I do not think this shortfall will happen because many people have decided that the latest variant of COVID is something they no longer fear and as a result will just learn to LIVE WITH IT. So all in all, it probably doesn't make much difference either way. But if you do wish to provide yourself the added protection and avoid several weeks of Brain Fog, go forth now and get the new and improved COVID Shot.


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19 Sep 2022, 11:06 am

jimmy m wrote:
I received my new and improved COVID shot four days ago. This one protects me from the latest variant of COVID called the Omicron variant. Nothing bad to report. Life is returning to normal. So you might say I am acting like a guinea pig by being one of the first in line to get the new shot. So that is why I am providing feedback.

It will take me two weeks after getting the shot to become fully protected. Two weeks from now, my body will be a little like Superman. I will have a layer of built in protection. So if you have any fears about this new and improved vaccine, I will tell you that so far I have seen no bad side effects from it.

Now here is the second point. Generally in the northern states of the U.S., COVID reaches pandemic levels around the NOVEMBER timeframe each year. If that happens again this year, everyone who has not gotten this shot or has not become infected with the OMICRON variant will probably get it. It will probably not kill them but they will be in a MIND FOG BANK for around 2 to 4 weeks. Since it takes around 2 weeks for the shot to become fully energized, time is running out. Also the U.S. government made an interesting decision. It decided to not make enough copies of the new OMICRON resistant variant shot. There is not enough for the entire population. So if everyone decides to get the shot, they will be short and this will occur right in the middle of the surge.

Now I do not think this shortfall will happen because many people have decided that the latest variant of COVID is something they no longer fear and as a result will just learn to LIVE WITH IT. So all in all, it probably doesn't make much difference either way. But if you do wish to provide yourself the added protection and avoid several weeks of Brain Fog, go forth now and get the new and improved COVID Shot.

Here are the side effects to expect from your omicron-specific Covid booster shot
Quote:
If you’re thinking of getting an omicron-specific Covid booster shot, you might be wondering what its side effects are — and how severe they might be.

Rest assured: They’re not expected to be much different from what you may have experienced with previous vaccine and booster doses.

We just don’t have any data on this [yet], essentially giving two vaccines in one shot — but biologically, I just wouldn’t expect the side effects, severity or the safety profile of the shots to be different from the current mRNA vaccines and boosters,” Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and member of an independent advisory group to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, tells CNBC Make It.

Side effect data isn’t available yet because the new boosters were approved by the FDA and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before fully completing their clinical trials.

The federal agencies based their approvals off several other pieces of safety data, including evidence from the original Covid vaccines — the updated formulations are merely a tweak to those originals — and lab data on the shots’ BA.5 element in mice.

They also examined clinical trial data on earlier versions of bivalent boosters targeting omicron’s BA.1 subvariant. Those shots were never released to the public, because BA.1 was quickly surpassed by other omicron subvariants — but their design is extremely similar to the shots now available at pharmacies and clinics nationwide.

In Pfizer and Moderna’s clinical trials for the BA.1 shots, participants who were already fully vaccinated with a booster shot received an updated booster dose. In both clinical trials, the most commonly reported side effects within seven days of receiving the shot were:

Pain
Fatigue
Headache
Muscle pain
Chills
Joint pain
Redness and swelling at the injection site
Fever
That’s a familiar list: It’s the same group of side effects that came with the original formulations. But notably, in those clinical trials, the severity of the side effects was very mild.

Pfizer’s trial found that about 52% of participants that received the BA.1 shot experienced mild pain at the injection site, 8% experienced moderate pain and only 0.3% experienced severe pain. Roughly 26% of participants experienced a mild or moderate headache, while only 0.3% experienced a severe one.

Moderna’s trial found that nearly 59% of participants experienced fatigue, but only about 4% experienced that at a Grade 3 level, which is defined as significant fatigue that prevents daily activity.

Severe side effects are “generally” most common after receiving a second dose of a vaccine, not after receiving a third or fourth dose, says Offit. You’re only eligible for the new boosters if you’ve completed a primary vaccination series, meaning most people will have already received at least two doses ahead of time.

The same concept held true during the last round of booster shots. The new shots have the same dosage amounts as the original vaccines, which further suggests that their safety profiles could be similar, Offit says.

A single dose of Pfizer’s monovalent vaccine contains 30 micrograms of mRNA targeting the original Covid strain. The updated booster shots contain the same number of micrograms, with 15 targeting the original strain and the other 15 targeting BA.4 and BA.5.

Moderna’s monovalent shot contains 50 micrograms of mRNA per dose targeting the original strain. Its updated booster has 25 micrograms targeting the original strain, and 25 targeting the omicron subvariants.

The BA.1 trials only tested a few hundred people, which is a relatively small sample size compared to the thousands of Americans set to receive the new BA.5 doses, Offit notes. You can still be confident going in, he says — just don’t be 100% sure what to expect.

“We should keep our eyes wide open to what side effects and adverse events might occur, and still keep in mind that this is a new product,” Offit says.


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jimmy m
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19 Sep 2022, 12:17 pm

As far as reported side effects from receiving the new booster shot, it is probably too soon to tell. This is because very few people have actually received it thus far. I reported my side effect (fever blister in mouth) to the appropriate authorities. But it was really a very minor effect. Probably not worth noting. The only reason why I passed it on was because I never had a fever blister that last for only 2 hours.

I have had many shots over my lifetime. In general, I rarely experience any adverse reaction. There was only one shot that I received during my lifetime that I considered to have severe side effects. About 55 years ago I had a shot for the bubonic plague. That shot produced a very severe reaction that almost knocked me off my feet within minutes after getting the shot. The latest COVID shot with the OMICRON variant was very minor in comparison.


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19 Sep 2022, 9:27 pm

jimmy m wrote:
Interesting that you came across an article on Long Term Covid. Because I just finished reading one about this subject.

For Long-Haul COVID, No End in Sight

The article talked about the subject in very fine detail but like most papers avoided making meaningful analysis that can be used. But the main points that I found interesting were the following:

Some people who become infected with COVID experience long term symptoms. This represents around 15 percent of the people in the U.S. who became infected with COVID.

They experience the following types of long term effects from getting COVID.

* Fatigue (58%).
* Shortness of breath (21%).
* Pain (19%).
* Cough (19%).
* Memory loss (16%).

The data on 4,113 INSPIRE patients show 35% with prolonged symptoms but essentially no further symptomatic changes 3 months after acute infection. [The INSPIRE study is funded by the CDC and the purpose of the INSPIRE Study is to learn about the long-term health effects of COVID-19.]

(Link to image.)
Image


I have got another one for you all
Long COVID Experts and Advocates Say the Government Is Ignoring 'the Greatest Mass-Disabling Event in Human History'
Quote:
Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel is used to feeling like the only person in the country who still cares about COVID-19. He ignores the side-eye he gets for wearing an N95 mask at parties—a self-imposed policy that makes him “look odd” but kept him safe after a recent work dinner turned into a superspreader event. The oncologist, bioethicist, and professor at the University of Pennsylvania provides each of his students with an N95 and runs four HEPA air filters during lectures. He rolls down the windows when he gets in an Uber and goes hungry on planes so he can wear his mask the whole time. He’s given up one of his favorite pastimes—dining at restaurants—even now that many people don’t think twice about eating indoors.

Emanuel, 65, takes these precautions even though he’s vaccinated and boosted and thus well protected against severe COVID-19. The acute disease doesn’t scare him much—but what could come after does. “The only thing that’s preventing me from leading a normal life is the risk that I’ll get Long COVID,” Emanuel says. “I can’t say why people aren’t [reacting like] their hair’s on fire. This is a serious, serious illness.”

Emanuel’s not totally alone. In a July Axios-Ipsos poll, 17% of people said their biggest fear related to COVID-19 is the possibility of getting Long COVID, a potentially disabling condition in which symptoms linger or emerge well after an acute infection. But at a time when the majority of U.S. adults think there’s little risk in returning to normal, mask wearers, test takers, and social distancers walk a lonely road.

In a 60 Minutes interview that aired Sept. 18, President Joe Biden said “the pandemic is over,” even though “we still have a problem with COVID.”

The following day, chronic disease advocates protested in front of the White House, arguing that Long COVID and the related condition myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome constitute a public-health emergency and demanding that the Biden Administration improve its public-education campaigns, financial support for patients, and research efforts.

The CDC says its COVID-19 guidance is meant to prevent “medically significant COVID-19 illness,” which includes both severe acute disease and Long COVID. The agency contends its lighter touch is warranted now that the vast majority of the U.S. population has good protection against severe disease from being vaccinated, contracting COVID-19, or both. “Our emphasis on preventing severe disease will also help prevent cases of post-COVID conditions, as post-COVID conditions are found more often in people who had severe COVID-19 illness,” Dr. Barbara Mahon, who oversees work on coronaviruses and other respiratory diseases at the CDC, said in response to questions from TIME about the agency’s Long COVID guidance.

But even with high levels of population immunity, Long COVID cases continue to pile up. By the CDC’s own estimate from June, one in five U.S. adults with a known prior case of COVID-19 had symptoms of Long COVID.

There is no known cure for Long COVID, and the only way to prevent it is not to get infected at all.

That, a vocal group of experts and advocates say, is why people should resist the U.S.’ collective shrug to the unchecked spread of COVID-19. The virus may not kill or hospitalize as many people as it once did, but it still upends lives every day. Around 1.2 million people in the U.S. became disabled as a result of the virus by the end of 2021, according to the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank. Up to 4 million people in the U.S. are out of work because of Long COVID. Specialists who treat Long COVID report months-long waitlists. And in the current “let it rip” phase of the pandemic, all of that may get worse.

“We’re in the middle of the greatest mass-disabling event in human history,” says Long COVID patient and advocate Charlie McCone. And unless people wake up to the long-term consequences of COVID-19, it is “going to continue taking folks out like fish in a barrel.”

President Joe Biden ran on a promise to defeat COVID-19. And for a while, it looked like he would deliver. In the spring and early summer of 2021, the U.S. was recording about 12,000 cases per day. Vaccines were working. Masks were coming off. Life was good.

Then Delta hit, followed by the tsunami of Omicron, and the path out of the pandemic no longer looked clear. The messaging began to shift: the U.S. would learn to live with COVID-19, rather than defeating it. We couldn’t stop all infections, but we could defang them through vaccines, boosters, and treatments like the antiviral Paxlovid. The masks could stay off, even if the virus wasn’t gone.
Many Americans welcomed the return to normalcy. But to McCone, 32, that approach is “a crime against humanity,” given what we now know about Long COVID.

McCone got sick in March 2020. COVID-19 knocked him flat. He almost went to his local emergency room because he was so short of breath, and it took weeks for his respiratory symptoms to improve. After about a month, he finally felt well enough to ride his bike. “I just fell apart,” McCone remembers. The 15-minute ride left him with unshakeable exhaustion—and a sign that this would be no ordinary recovery.

More than two years later, McCone barely leaves the house, except for medical appointments. He still has severe fatigue, chest pain, shortness of breath, and nervous system dysfunction. He can’t work because of his symptoms, and his partner has become his caretaker. His symptoms got even worse after catching COVID-19 again in September 2021, so he’s “petrified” of getting reinfected—a fear he wishes more people shared.

“We’re letting millions of Americans and people across the globe walk, unwittingly, straight into this pit,” he says.

Hannah Davis, a machine learning expert who began researching Long COVID after her own diagnosis, also got sick in March 2020. Davis has testified about Long COVID before Congress and advised federal health officials about the condition. She says those experiences have shown her that health officials understand that Long COVID is a substantial problem, and that, while vaccines reduce the risk of developing it—by some amount between 15% and 50%, studies suggest—they are not failsafe. The U.K.’s Office for National Statistics recently reported that roughly 4.5% of triple-vaccinated adults developed Long COVID after being infected by Omicron. But the government doesn’t seem to want to dwell on these scary stats, Davis says. “It really looks like it’s being hidden intentionally,” she says.

Davis believes that’s because the Biden Administration leaned heavily on vaccines as a ticket out of the pandemic and is wary of walking back that messaging now, even as fully vaccinated and boosted people contract Long COVID.

Health officials are not doing enough to prevent transmission of the virus and help people understand its risks, says Kristin Urquiza, who founded the advocacy group Marked By COVID after her father died from the virus in 2020. “Leaders have thrown their hands up in the air and basically said, ‘You do you,’” she says.

The federal government has taken some action on Long COVID. In late 2020, Congress gave the National Institutes of Health (NIH) more than $1 billion to study it. But so far, this funding has yielded no treatments, no preventative tools, and little research that is immediately useful to patients. The NIH’s cornerstone Long COVID research project aimed to enroll 40,000 people; as of August, it had enrolled only about 8,000. That’s in large part because of the complexity and scope of the trial, according to the NIH.

Lawmakers have introduced bills meant to improve research and support for Long COVID, but they’ve reportedly stalled due to a lack of support in Congress. And in August, HHS released two highly anticipated reports on Long COVID—one describing resources available to patients, the other outlining the government’s research agenda—that were largely panned by Long COVID advocates as more symbolic than substantive.

“Many of the resources provided in the reports seem like cold comforts and temporary Band-Aids when a tourniquet and emergency surgery is needed,” Urquiza said in a statement to Rolling Stone about the reports.

The HHS representative told TIME the reports are just the beginning, and the Administration’s work on Long COVID is ongoing. For people with Long COVID, “It can feel like the world is moving on, while leaving them behind,” the spokesperson wrote in the statement. “The Administration’s message to them is that, ‘We see you, we hear you, and we are taking action to help.'”

Some Long COVID advocates and scientists have called for an initiative like Operation Warp Speed—the Trump Administration program that quickly yielded multiple effective COVID-19 vaccines—for Long COVID treatments. But the NIH hasn’t built anything of the sort, says David Putrino, a Long COVID researcher at New York’s Mount Sinai health system. Despite its $1 billion budget for Long COVID research, “There’s been no process change between how they fund things outside of a health emergency and how they’re funding things in the midst of a health crisis,” he says. “We’re still following the same grant application procedures, the administrative load is the same if not more, and they have not hired additional people to program manage the grants.” In a statement, the NIH said application review is handled by an “ample and diverse set of experts.”

Dr. Eric Topol, founder of the Scripps Research Translational Institute and a prolific parser of COVID-19 research on Twitter, says the NIH is doing good research on the underlying science of Long COVID, but he’d like to see more trials focused on treatments. “You need to do both, because we can’t wait another year or two for the biology to be better defined,” Topol says

Research delays are not for lack of intriguing leads. A tremendous amount of Long COVID research has been published in the last two years, most coming out of independent laboratories, Putrino says. From this work, scientists have found multiple possible explanations for Long COVID symptoms: SARS-CoV-2 virus lingering in the body, abnormal immune system activity, reactivation of other viruses previously lying dormant, tiny blood clots throughout the body, and more. These disparate findings suggest that there may be different root causes or subtypes of Long COVID, which means all patients might not respond to the same therapy. But each one suggests a possible path to treatment worth testing sooner rather than later, Topol says.

Nobody knows exactly how prevalent Long COVID is, and some researchers argue that the CDC’s estimate of one patient per five COVID-19 cases is high. But, even using more conservative prevalence estimates, the volume of infections in the U.S. means the scale of the problem is massive. About 60,000 people in the U.S. currently test positive for COVID-19 daily. Even by more modest estimates, that means the seeds for a possibly debilitating condition are planted in thousands of people every day. During just the first two years of the pandemic, at least 17 million people in Europe developed Long COVID, according to a Sept. 13 report commissioned by the World Health Organization.

“If we have millions of people being infected, we’re going to have millions of people getting Long COVID,” Emanuel says. “That’s going to be an ongoing, serious national problem that is going to weigh down the economy, weigh down the disability insurance system, and be tragic for people.”

Journalist and author Katie Hafner, 64, was one of the unlucky people to develop Long COVID after being vaccinated and boosted. She got infected in May and was left with significant fatigue and brain fog. Her Long COVID symptoms were on the milder end of the spectrum and have improved with time, but Hafner says she can still manage only a few hours of work per day and has to carefully monitor her physical and mental energy levels. Her anxiety has also escalated since getting sick.

Hafner’s husband is Dr. Robert Wachter, chair of the department of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Between his wife’s experience and his close monitoring of COVID-19 research, Wachter is concerned enough about Long COVID to avoid indoor dining and wear a good mask in crowded areas. For people who aren’t immersed in the research, though, “the cognitive load of doing all this three-dimensional chess [around risk calculation] is too much,” he says. “To me, the CDC hasn’t been very vigorous on Long COVID,” providing less guidance about prevention and risks than it did for acute infections.

Those risks are substantial. Wachter says he’s worried about Long COVID’s impact on the health care system—not just in already overloaded Long COVID clinics, but system-wide. “If it turns out that it markedly increases the rates of some of the biggest medical hazards we have in life”—including organ failure, heart disease, and dementia, as research currently suggests— “the toll of that over years and years will be tremendous,” Wachter says. “I don’t think [the CDC has] done a good job explaining that at all.”

The economic toll could also be massive. Up to 4 million adults in the U.S. are out of work because of Long COVID, costing the economy at least $170 billion in annual lost wages alone, according to a Brookings Institution report published in August. A Kaiser Family Foundation analysis suggests just 44% of people who worked before they got Long COVID are now fully employed, with the remainder either out of a job or working reduced hours.

Many long-haulers who are unable to work have turned to the disability system. But, anecdotally, many have had trouble getting their claims approved, either because they’re outright denied or forced to jump through hoops to prove they’re truly unable to work. A representative for the Social Security Administration said in a statement that, as of August, it had received about 38,000 applications that mention COVID-19, representing about 1% of recent claims—but since decisions are based on functional limitations, not diagnoses, it’s difficult to say how many people have sought support due to Long COVID.

Experts say there is more that can be done, even before new therapies are discovered or developed. To slow transmission and thus lower rates of Long COVID, Topol says the CDC should tell people to isolate for longer than five days after getting infected and campaign harder for people to get booster shots. Emanuel, meanwhile, would like to see better communication about which masks protect wearers from infection; respirators like N95s are more effective than surgical or cloth masks, but many people still walk around in droopy blue surgical masks. Public indoor spaces, like restaurants and schools, should also have enforceable requirements for ventilation and air filtration, given the virus’ ability to spread in the air.

A return to mask mandates would also be a good step, Davis says. But even if none of those changes are enacted, she says the government should at least emphasize how common Long COVID appears to be and that it can affect vaccinated people. She fears many vaccinated people think they’re in the clear and can’t get Long COVID, because the Administration has sung the shots’ praises so much. “We’re just drowning in this sea of misinformation that is not only causing people to poorly think about their own risk, but also putting other people at risk,” Davis says.

Those with Long COVID often say they feel like they’re screaming into the void, trying to get through to people who either aren’t aware of or don’t care about the condition and the possibility it could affect them, too. In grocery stores, Hafner marvels—and seethes—at the bare faces she sees. Sometimes, when she’s the only person wearing a mask, “I think, ‘Am I a pariah?’” Hafner says. “We’re at that point where the people in masks are the outliers.”

For many people who are done with the pandemic and the caution that came with it, a maskless supermarket may seem like a sign of progress. But for those with an intimate understanding of Long COVID, it feels like a bad omen.

“It’s no way to live,” McCone says of his day-to-day existence since developing Long COVID. His worst fear, and one that looks like it may come true if progress isn’t made soon, is that millions more people will have to learn that the hard way.


This was an excellent article, probably the best that expresses the frustration a number of us feel. It is heartining the mainstream media has been paying attention. But underneath I still think it will make not a damn worth of difference.


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20 Sep 2022, 1:23 pm

ASPartOfMe

Sometimes a person needs to do just what he thinks and not be part of the crowd.

If he seeks to be a little overprotective. That is his right. The people who described the COVID threat were wrong from day one. And they also made sure that NO ONE would divert from following the party line. The Virus can be spread to a distance of 50 feet. Who ever came out and said 6 feet was wrong, dead wrong. And many people got COVID because of that lie.


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20 Sep 2022, 1:58 pm

jimmy m wrote:
ASPartOfMe

Sometimes a person needs to do just what he thinks and not be part of the crowd.

If he seeks to be a little overprotective. That is his right. The people who described the COVID threat were wrong from day one. And they also made sure that NO ONE would divert from following the party line. The Virus can be spread to a distance of 50 feet. Who ever came out and said 6 feet was wrong, dead wrong. And many people got COVID because of that lie.


And as you have pointed out by first saying there was no need for masks, then to this day not emphasizing the need to wear the right masks the right way. And by promising herd immunity despite a long history of vaccines not coming close to doing that. All of this lead a the boy cried wolf situation where all advice good or bad is ignored and the virus can to do to us what it damn pleases. Biden and the other politicians know that any mandate they order will be widely ignored making them look imputant.

In our political atmosphere the first thought is conspiracy to teach us be sheep. IMHO it is no shock scientists are going to be often wrong about a new virus. With incomplete information and exponential growth they are going to go with what has worked in the past and hope for the best. Add bureaucracy and ego to the equation you got what you got continued mandates for ineffectual and harmful mitigation measures.


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21 Sep 2022, 8:39 am

It is now day 6. It takes 14 days for the new COVID booster shot to become fully active and I am on day 6. All seems to be going well. No new adverse side effects. There are two different updated shots available in the U.S. These are the Pfizer and Moderna. I got the Moderna vaccine. These two types are designed a little different from each other.

According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration:

The authorized bivalent COVID-19 vaccines, or updated boosters, include an mRNA component of the original strain to provide an immune response that is broadly protective against COVID-19 and an mRNA component in common between the omicron variant BA.4 and BA.5 lineages to provide better protection against COVID-19 caused by the omicron variant.

The BA.4 and BA.5 lineages of the omicron variant are currently causing most cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. and are predicted to circulate this fall and winter.

“The COVID-19 vaccines, including boosters, continue to save countless lives and prevent the most serious outcomes (hospitalization and death) of COVID-19,” said FDA Commissioner Robert M. Califf, M.D. “As we head into fall and begin to spend more time indoors, we strongly encourage anyone who is eligible to consider receiving a booster dose with a bivalent COVID-19 vaccine to provide better protection against currently circulating variants.”


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26 Sep 2022, 9:20 am

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jimmy m wrote:
Interesting that you came across an article on Long Term Covid. Because I just finished reading one about this subject.

For Long-Haul COVID, No End in Sight

The article talked about the subject in very fine detail but like most papers avoided making meaningful analysis that can be used. But the main points that I found interesting were the following:

Some people who become infected with COVID experience long term symptoms. This represents around 15 percent of the people in the U.S. who became infected with COVID.

They experience the following types of long term effects from getting COVID.

* Fatigue (58%).
* Shortness of breath (21%).
* Pain (19%).
* Cough (19%).
* Memory loss (16%).

The data on 4,113 INSPIRE patients show 35% with prolonged symptoms but essentially no further symptomatic changes 3 months after acute infection. [The INSPIRE study is funded by the CDC and the purpose of the INSPIRE Study is to learn about the long-term health effects of COVID-19.]

(Link to image.)
Image


I have got another one for you all
Long COVID Experts and Advocates Say the Government Is Ignoring 'the Greatest Mass-Disabling Event in Human History'
Quote:
Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel is used to feeling like the only person in the country who still cares about COVID-19. He ignores the side-eye he gets for wearing an N95 mask at parties—a self-imposed policy that makes him “look odd” but kept him safe after a recent work dinner turned into a superspreader event. The oncologist, bioethicist, and professor at the University of Pennsylvania provides each of his students with an N95 and runs four HEPA air filters during lectures. He rolls down the windows when he gets in an Uber and goes hungry on planes so he can wear his mask the whole time. He’s given up one of his favorite pastimes—dining at restaurants—even now that many people don’t think twice about eating indoors.

Emanuel, 65, takes these precautions even though he’s vaccinated and boosted and thus well protected against severe COVID-19. The acute disease doesn’t scare him much—but what could come after does. “The only thing that’s preventing me from leading a normal life is the risk that I’ll get Long COVID,” Emanuel says. “I can’t say why people aren’t [reacting like] their hair’s on fire. This is a serious, serious illness.”

Emanuel’s not totally alone. In a July Axios-Ipsos poll, 17% of people said their biggest fear related to COVID-19 is the possibility of getting Long COVID, a potentially disabling condition in which symptoms linger or emerge well after an acute infection. But at a time when the majority of U.S. adults think there’s little risk in returning to normal, mask wearers, test takers, and social distancers walk a lonely road.

In a 60 Minutes interview that aired Sept. 18, President Joe Biden said “the pandemic is over,” even though “we still have a problem with COVID.”

The following day, chronic disease advocates protested in front of the White House, arguing that Long COVID and the related condition myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome constitute a public-health emergency and demanding that the Biden Administration improve its public-education campaigns, financial support for patients, and research efforts.

The CDC says its COVID-19 guidance is meant to prevent “medically significant COVID-19 illness,” which includes both severe acute disease and Long COVID. The agency contends its lighter touch is warranted now that the vast majority of the U.S. population has good protection against severe disease from being vaccinated, contracting COVID-19, or both. “Our emphasis on preventing severe disease will also help prevent cases of post-COVID conditions, as post-COVID conditions are found more often in people who had severe COVID-19 illness,” Dr. Barbara Mahon, who oversees work on coronaviruses and other respiratory diseases at the CDC, said in response to questions from TIME about the agency’s Long COVID guidance.

But even with high levels of population immunity, Long COVID cases continue to pile up. By the CDC’s own estimate from June, one in five U.S. adults with a known prior case of COVID-19 had symptoms of Long COVID.

There is no known cure for Long COVID, and the only way to prevent it is not to get infected at all.

That, a vocal group of experts and advocates say, is why people should resist the U.S.’ collective shrug to the unchecked spread of COVID-19. The virus may not kill or hospitalize as many people as it once did, but it still upends lives every day. Around 1.2 million people in the U.S. became disabled as a result of the virus by the end of 2021, according to the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank. Up to 4 million people in the U.S. are out of work because of Long COVID. Specialists who treat Long COVID report months-long waitlists. And in the current “let it rip” phase of the pandemic, all of that may get worse.

“We’re in the middle of the greatest mass-disabling event in human history,” says Long COVID patient and advocate Charlie McCone. And unless people wake up to the long-term consequences of COVID-19, it is “going to continue taking folks out like fish in a barrel.”

President Joe Biden ran on a promise to defeat COVID-19. And for a while, it looked like he would deliver. In the spring and early summer of 2021, the U.S. was recording about 12,000 cases per day. Vaccines were working. Masks were coming off. Life was good.

Then Delta hit, followed by the tsunami of Omicron, and the path out of the pandemic no longer looked clear. The messaging began to shift: the U.S. would learn to live with COVID-19, rather than defeating it. We couldn’t stop all infections, but we could defang them through vaccines, boosters, and treatments like the antiviral Paxlovid. The masks could stay off, even if the virus wasn’t gone.
Many Americans welcomed the return to normalcy. But to McCone, 32, that approach is “a crime against humanity,” given what we now know about Long COVID.

McCone got sick in March 2020. COVID-19 knocked him flat. He almost went to his local emergency room because he was so short of breath, and it took weeks for his respiratory symptoms to improve. After about a month, he finally felt well enough to ride his bike. “I just fell apart,” McCone remembers. The 15-minute ride left him with unshakeable exhaustion—and a sign that this would be no ordinary recovery.

More than two years later, McCone barely leaves the house, except for medical appointments. He still has severe fatigue, chest pain, shortness of breath, and nervous system dysfunction. He can’t work because of his symptoms, and his partner has become his caretaker. His symptoms got even worse after catching COVID-19 again in September 2021, so he’s “petrified” of getting reinfected—a fear he wishes more people shared.

“We’re letting millions of Americans and people across the globe walk, unwittingly, straight into this pit,” he says.

Hannah Davis, a machine learning expert who began researching Long COVID after her own diagnosis, also got sick in March 2020. Davis has testified about Long COVID before Congress and advised federal health officials about the condition. She says those experiences have shown her that health officials understand that Long COVID is a substantial problem, and that, while vaccines reduce the risk of developing it—by some amount between 15% and 50%, studies suggest—they are not failsafe. The U.K.’s Office for National Statistics recently reported that roughly 4.5% of triple-vaccinated adults developed Long COVID after being infected by Omicron. But the government doesn’t seem to want to dwell on these scary stats, Davis says. “It really looks like it’s being hidden intentionally,” she says.

Davis believes that’s because the Biden Administration leaned heavily on vaccines as a ticket out of the pandemic and is wary of walking back that messaging now, even as fully vaccinated and boosted people contract Long COVID.

Health officials are not doing enough to prevent transmission of the virus and help people understand its risks, says Kristin Urquiza, who founded the advocacy group Marked By COVID after her father died from the virus in 2020. “Leaders have thrown their hands up in the air and basically said, ‘You do you,’” she says.

The federal government has taken some action on Long COVID. In late 2020, Congress gave the National Institutes of Health (NIH) more than $1 billion to study it. But so far, this funding has yielded no treatments, no preventative tools, and little research that is immediately useful to patients. The NIH’s cornerstone Long COVID research project aimed to enroll 40,000 people; as of August, it had enrolled only about 8,000. That’s in large part because of the complexity and scope of the trial, according to the NIH.

Lawmakers have introduced bills meant to improve research and support for Long COVID, but they’ve reportedly stalled due to a lack of support in Congress. And in August, HHS released two highly anticipated reports on Long COVID—one describing resources available to patients, the other outlining the government’s research agenda—that were largely panned by Long COVID advocates as more symbolic than substantive.

“Many of the resources provided in the reports seem like cold comforts and temporary Band-Aids when a tourniquet and emergency surgery is needed,” Urquiza said in a statement to Rolling Stone about the reports.

The HHS representative told TIME the reports are just the beginning, and the Administration’s work on Long COVID is ongoing. For people with Long COVID, “It can feel like the world is moving on, while leaving them behind,” the spokesperson wrote in the statement. “The Administration’s message to them is that, ‘We see you, we hear you, and we are taking action to help.'”

Some Long COVID advocates and scientists have called for an initiative like Operation Warp Speed—the Trump Administration program that quickly yielded multiple effective COVID-19 vaccines—for Long COVID treatments. But the NIH hasn’t built anything of the sort, says David Putrino, a Long COVID researcher at New York’s Mount Sinai health system. Despite its $1 billion budget for Long COVID research, “There’s been no process change between how they fund things outside of a health emergency and how they’re funding things in the midst of a health crisis,” he says. “We’re still following the same grant application procedures, the administrative load is the same if not more, and they have not hired additional people to program manage the grants.” In a statement, the NIH said application review is handled by an “ample and diverse set of experts.”

Dr. Eric Topol, founder of the Scripps Research Translational Institute and a prolific parser of COVID-19 research on Twitter, says the NIH is doing good research on the underlying science of Long COVID, but he’d like to see more trials focused on treatments. “You need to do both, because we can’t wait another year or two for the biology to be better defined,” Topol says

Research delays are not for lack of intriguing leads. A tremendous amount of Long COVID research has been published in the last two years, most coming out of independent laboratories, Putrino says. From this work, scientists have found multiple possible explanations for Long COVID symptoms: SARS-CoV-2 virus lingering in the body, abnormal immune system activity, reactivation of other viruses previously lying dormant, tiny blood clots throughout the body, and more. These disparate findings suggest that there may be different root causes or subtypes of Long COVID, which means all patients might not respond to the same therapy. But each one suggests a possible path to treatment worth testing sooner rather than later, Topol says.

Nobody knows exactly how prevalent Long COVID is, and some researchers argue that the CDC’s estimate of one patient per five COVID-19 cases is high. But, even using more conservative prevalence estimates, the volume of infections in the U.S. means the scale of the problem is massive. About 60,000 people in the U.S. currently test positive for COVID-19 daily. Even by more modest estimates, that means the seeds for a possibly debilitating condition are planted in thousands of people every day. During just the first two years of the pandemic, at least 17 million people in Europe developed Long COVID, according to a Sept. 13 report commissioned by the World Health Organization.

“If we have millions of people being infected, we’re going to have millions of people getting Long COVID,” Emanuel says. “That’s going to be an ongoing, serious national problem that is going to weigh down the economy, weigh down the disability insurance system, and be tragic for people.”

Journalist and author Katie Hafner, 64, was one of the unlucky people to develop Long COVID after being vaccinated and boosted. She got infected in May and was left with significant fatigue and brain fog. Her Long COVID symptoms were on the milder end of the spectrum and have improved with time, but Hafner says she can still manage only a few hours of work per day and has to carefully monitor her physical and mental energy levels. Her anxiety has also escalated since getting sick.

Hafner’s husband is Dr. Robert Wachter, chair of the department of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Between his wife’s experience and his close monitoring of COVID-19 research, Wachter is concerned enough about Long COVID to avoid indoor dining and wear a good mask in crowded areas. For people who aren’t immersed in the research, though, “the cognitive load of doing all this three-dimensional chess [around risk calculation] is too much,” he says. “To me, the CDC hasn’t been very vigorous on Long COVID,” providing less guidance about prevention and risks than it did for acute infections.

Those risks are substantial. Wachter says he’s worried about Long COVID’s impact on the health care system—not just in already overloaded Long COVID clinics, but system-wide. “If it turns out that it markedly increases the rates of some of the biggest medical hazards we have in life”—including organ failure, heart disease, and dementia, as research currently suggests— “the toll of that over years and years will be tremendous,” Wachter says. “I don’t think [the CDC has] done a good job explaining that at all.”

The economic toll could also be massive. Up to 4 million adults in the U.S. are out of work because of Long COVID, costing the economy at least $170 billion in annual lost wages alone, according to a Brookings Institution report published in August. A Kaiser Family Foundation analysis suggests just 44% of people who worked before they got Long COVID are now fully employed, with the remainder either out of a job or working reduced hours.

Many long-haulers who are unable to work have turned to the disability system. But, anecdotally, many have had trouble getting their claims approved, either because they’re outright denied or forced to jump through hoops to prove they’re truly unable to work. A representative for the Social Security Administration said in a statement that, as of August, it had received about 38,000 applications that mention COVID-19, representing about 1% of recent claims—but since decisions are based on functional limitations, not diagnoses, it’s difficult to say how many people have sought support due to Long COVID.

Experts say there is more that can be done, even before new therapies are discovered or developed. To slow transmission and thus lower rates of Long COVID, Topol says the CDC should tell people to isolate for longer than five days after getting infected and campaign harder for people to get booster shots. Emanuel, meanwhile, would like to see better communication about which masks protect wearers from infection; respirators like N95s are more effective than surgical or cloth masks, but many people still walk around in droopy blue surgical masks. Public indoor spaces, like restaurants and schools, should also have enforceable requirements for ventilation and air filtration, given the virus’ ability to spread in the air.

A return to mask mandates would also be a good step, Davis says. But even if none of those changes are enacted, she says the government should at least emphasize how common Long COVID appears to be and that it can affect vaccinated people. She fears many vaccinated people think they’re in the clear and can’t get Long COVID, because the Administration has sung the shots’ praises so much. “We’re just drowning in this sea of misinformation that is not only causing people to poorly think about their own risk, but also putting other people at risk,” Davis says.

Those with Long COVID often say they feel like they’re screaming into the void, trying to get through to people who either aren’t aware of or don’t care about the condition and the possibility it could affect them, too. In grocery stores, Hafner marvels—and seethes—at the bare faces she sees. Sometimes, when she’s the only person wearing a mask, “I think, ‘Am I a pariah?’” Hafner says. “We’re at that point where the people in masks are the outliers.”

For many people who are done with the pandemic and the caution that came with it, a maskless supermarket may seem like a sign of progress. But for those with an intimate understanding of Long COVID, it feels like a bad omen.

“It’s no way to live,”McCone says of his day-to-day existence since developing Long COVID. His worst fear, and one that looks like it may come true if progress isn’t made soon, is that millions more people will have to learn that the hard way.


This was an excellent article, probably the best that expresses the frustration a number of us feel. It is heartining the mainstream media has been paying attention. But underneath I still think it will make not a damn worth of difference.


The following article by Noah Rothman for Commentary Magazine is a response to this and other articles of the same ilk. While the the author disagrees with these articles he is not coming from COVID is a fake nothing burger position.
The Long March of ‘Long Covid’
Quote:
For people who suffer from prolonged symptoms associated with a Covid infection, so-called “long Covid,” the Biden administration knows that “it can feel like the world is moving on, while leaving them behind.” That was the verdict rendered in a statement provided by the Department of Health and Human Services. “We see you, we hear you, and we are taking action to help.” To hear the avatar of the nation’s public health apparatus tell it, moving on from “long Covid” is not an option. Indeed, “long Covid” may justify dragging everyone back.

“What is your metric for success?” Texas Tribune CEO Evan Smith recently asked Dr. Anthony Fauci. “How do you analyze the numbers and say this is heading in the right direction?”

In responding, Fauci twice said that placing a “heavy emphasis” on “death and severe disease” is the most practical way to gauge the level of menace Covid represents. “However, there’s one wild card in there,” he added. “That is that infection—even mild to moderate infection—can lead to a syndrome called ‘long covid’ in a certain percentage of people. So, getting [an] infection for a certain proportion of people—we don’t know whether that’s 5 percent, 10 percent, some studies show as high as 20 percent—who have a residual of impairment of normal function that can last for months if not longer.” It, therefore, remains a public health imperative “to get such a control over this that even the infection rate is very low.”

While the doctor did not expressly advocate restoring or preserving Covid-related mitigation measures as a response to “long Covid,” it’s hard to avoid interpreting his comments in any other way. As a rationale for extraordinary public-sector interventions into American private life, the existence of “long Covid” is entirely unsatisfying. What little we know about this syndrome shouldn’t frighten the general public. Just the opposite, in fact.

Researchers have struggled to pin down this little-understood malady because its symptoms run the gamut of the human experience.

The complexity and scope of the condition helps to explain why the National Institutes of Health has struggled to secure a fraction of the 40,000 subjects it needs to enroll in its lavishly funded ($1 billion) study on the subject.

The study in JAMA did, however, identify a feature that suggests an individual is at higher risk of suffering the residual effects of a Covid infection: “preexisting psychological distress.” People who struggled with a variety of psychiatric issues—anxiety, depression, loneliness, dysmorphia, and so on—were as much as 50 percent more likely to experience long-term Covid-related complications.

This study isn’t breaking new ground. An April study posted on medRxiv preliminarily found that “the odds of self-reported long COVID augmented by [an odd ratio of] 1.25 with every added worry about adversity experience, such as job loss,” and “worries about adversity experiences emerged as a persistent predictor of long COVID.” Even the analysis of who is more likely to be stricken with this malady suggests stress is a common thread. A Census Bureau survey found that trans and bi-sexual adults are far more likely to report experiencing “long Covid” symptoms compared with people who are either straight or gay and lesbian. Younger (and, therefore, healthier) people are more likely to identify as long haulers. There is no medical data to suggest that one’s gender identity or preference for both sexes increases one’s risk from Covid. By contrast, there’s plenty of psychological data to suggest that, like young adults, the process of formulating one’s identity is a stressful condition.

There’s also a chicken/egg debate over whether a negative psychological disposition begets “long Covid” or vice versa. A study published in the Lancet earlier this year observed that non-hospitalized patients were more likely to develop depression and experience prolonged symptoms associated with infection. A subsequent study in the May issue of Experimental and Therapeutic Medicine observes much the same. It noted, though, that the “neuropsychiatric manifestations of ‘long COVID’” may be exacerbated by the suboptimal environmental conditions that prevailed in the pandemic, “such as social isolation and uncertainty concerning social, financial and health recovery post-COVID.”

None of this is to say that this condition simply isn’t real. “There could be an underlying personality disorder or major depressive disorder that could be informing the cognitive symptoms from COVID or making them worse,” said University of Colorado psychiatry instructor Dr. Heather Murray. A bad outlook can contribute to bad outcomes, and the pandemic was accompanied by a lot of depressing circumstances that surely contributed to a more severe experience for many. All this concedes, however, that psychological disposition is a major contributing factor for those who suffer from this condition. There is little evidence to suggest “long Covid” is a wholly epidemiological phenomenon and quite a lot of evidence to the contrary.

If the public health bureaucracy committed itself to advocating, if not outright enforcing, policies designed to mitigate what is at least in large measure a psychological condition, it would open the door to a lot of social engineering. For the activists who dominate the reporting on this subject, that seems to be the goal.

The Kaiser Family Foundation estimated last month that, based on survey data, anywhere from 10 to 35 million working-age Americans may have at one point struggled with the malady’s many symptoms. As of late August, according to the Brookings Institution, about 16 million Americans between the ages of 18 and 65 are similarly afflicted, and roughly 2 to 4 million of them cannot work as a result. It is not at all clear that these Americans would return to the labor market if the other 163 million in the workforce observed Covid mitigation protocols. Even if they did, such an indiscriminate remedy for such a discriminating condition isn’t justified by any rational assessment of the scale of this problem.

As anyone can attest, a Covid infection isn’t anything to take lightly. Even the vaccinated can experience a severe symptomatic response to the disease, and there’s evidence that symptoms can linger in some. But the totality of the evidence suggests there is a psychological component to this infirmity, which renders it difficult to nail down and even harder to mitigate via public policy. The global outbreak of a little-understood, airborne respiratory disease no one had yet encountered at least arguably justified extraordinary remedies, even if public health policy hands know they are a last resort. By contrast, using “long Covid” to justify the extension or readoption of those same remedies is a flimsy pretext.

The author does not seem to realize that his view about public policy won months ago. There are and will be a few holdout locales with mitigation measures but they will be increasingly ignored. The author’s viewpoint remains relevant to personal mitigation decisions. For us there are similarities in that autism is not well understood thus leaving us open to the accusation that our problem is “in our head”.

It is true that when one is mentally not well one can get conditions one would not get and makes “real” illnesses worse. IMHO the author is wrong to conclude that Long Covid is largely psychosomatic. Most of us have experienced real conditions that were dismissed as “all in our head”. In fairness the author did not go there but readers inclined that way will feel validated. The evidence while not conclusive so far is closer to COVID causing Long Covid then a psychological cause. With so many cases of Long Covid it strains credulity to say that some cases of Long Covid are not purely psychosomatic. But in my amateur opinion the best way not to get Long Covid is not to get it in the first place and if you have gotten it probably not to get it again.

My advice has not changed, take Long Covid into consideration when deciding how much or if to mitigate. Yes, if you decide to wear a mask you are an outlier and possibly subject to scorn or worse. What else is new?

While not mentioned in the article it has become conventional wisdom to say the mask mandates do not work. It is pointed out that studies usually not linked show the same if not more rates of cases, infection, and deaths in locales with mask mandates. This does not take into account that the vast majority of people wore the less effective cloth masks and many wore them incorrectly. Also not taken into consideration is that locales that held on to mask mandates and had stricter mask mandates tend to be locales with greater population densities.


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“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman


Last edited by ASPartOfMe on 26 Sep 2022, 10:31 am, edited 4 times in total.

kraftiekortie
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26 Sep 2022, 9:25 am

I had COVID recently.

I had very mild, cold-like symptoms for about 5 days.

I have lingering effects that are mild, and come and go. I got over COVID about a week ago.

I've had, since I became negative again:

Mild headaches.

Slight fatigue.

Mild chest congestion after walking fast or running.

Mild chest congestion in the morning.

Some feeling of apathy. An enhancement of depressed feelings at times.



It's unfortunate that many people seem to be having more severe symptoms.



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26 Sep 2022, 10:32 am

kraftiekortie wrote:
I had COVID recently.

I had very mild, cold-like symptoms for about 5 days.

I have lingering effects that are mild, and come and go. I got over COVID about a week ago.

I've had, since I became negative again:

Mild headaches.

Slight fatigue.

Mild chest congestion after walking fast or running.

Mild chest congestion in the morning.

Some feeling of apathy. An enhancement of depressed feelings at times.



It's unfortunate that many people seem to be having more severe symptoms.

Sorry about that and Happy New Year.


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Professionally Identified and joined WP August 26, 2013
DSM 5: Autism Spectrum Disorder, DSM IV: Aspergers Moderate Severity

“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman


kraftiekortie
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Gender: Male
Posts: 87,510
Location: Queens, NYC

26 Sep 2022, 10:43 am

Happy New Year to you, too.

I hope you are well.



ASPartOfMe
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Joined: 25 Aug 2013
Age: 66
Gender: Male
Posts: 34,245
Location: Long Island, New York

26 Sep 2022, 10:45 am

kraftiekortie wrote:
Happy New Year to you, too.

I hope you are well.

I am, thanks.


_________________
Professionally Identified and joined WP August 26, 2013
DSM 5: Autism Spectrum Disorder, DSM IV: Aspergers Moderate Severity

“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman