Honestly my Hexbear people won't learn much from this, but this is a good resource to beat libs over the head with.
-
Long COVID is an often debilitating illness that occurs in at least 10% of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections.
-
At least 65 million individuals worldwide are estimated to have long COVID,
-
...[occurs in] 10–12% of vaccinated cases
Yes that's right, 10% of vaccinated cases
-
With significant proportions of individuals with long COVID unable to return to work, the scale of newly disabled individuals is contributing to labour shortages.
-
Six months after breakthrough infection, increased risks were observed for cardiovascular conditions, coagulation and haematological conditions, death, fatigue, neurological conditions and pulmonary conditions
-
A higher prevalence of long Covid has been reported in certain ethnicities, including people with Hispanic or Latino heritage. Socio-economic risk factors include lower income and an inability to adequately rest in the early weeks after developing COVID-19
Rich people don't have to give a fuck about COVID
-
Long COVID impacts children of all ages [with symptoms] 2 to 36 times more likely [with children who had COVID]
-
Studies looking at immune dysregulation in individuals with long COVID who had mild acute COVID-19 have found T cell alterations, including exhausted T cells [and other immune reductions]
-
A long-lasting reduction in vascular density, specifically affecting small capillaries, was found in patients with long COVID compared with controls, 18 months after infection.
-
Cardiac MRI studies revealed cardiac impairment in 78% of 100 individuals who had a prior COVID-19 episode
-
70% of [long COVID] patients had damage to at least one organ and 29% had multi-organ damage... The organ damage experienced by patients with long COVID appears durable
-
... fatigue was found in 32% and cognitive impairment was found in 22% of patients with COVID-19 at 12 weeks after infection. Cognitive impairments in long COVID are debilitating, at the same magnitude as intoxication at the :ukkk: drink driving limit or 10 years of cognitive ageing
-
Viral persistence in the penile tissue has been documented, as has an increased risk of erectile dysfunction, likely resulting from endothelial dysfunction. In one study, impairments to sperm count, semen volume, motility, sperm morphology and sperm concentration were reported in individuals
:alex-aware:
-
Several imaging studies that included non-hospitalized individuals with long COVID demonstrated pulmonary abnormalities including in air trapping and lung perfusion
-
Few people with long COVID demonstrate full recovery, with one study finding that 85% of patients who had symptoms 2 months after the initial infection reported symptoms 1 year after symptom onset
There's lots of good links to studies if you need to debate libs
I don’t know how to live my life like this, I just want to break down screaming every day that everyone’s just given up on doing anything to prevent these millions of unnecessary deaths.
I don’t know anyone besides me that wears a mask anymore. Not even my girlfriend does. Most of my friends haven’t even bothered to get the bivalent booster despite me telling them how important it is and it taking 20 fucking minutes. My workplace has been actively discouraging taking any measures to slow or stop it since like day 1.
The fucking DOCTORS here are discouraging people from getting additional boosters.
It's fucking infuriating.
I'm often the only one on public transport or at work wearing a mask.
My rheumatologist told me I could "get another booster if you feel like it, but it's not necessary" back in APRIL. This doctor works exclusively with chronically ill immunocompromised people, most of which are old, and started a rant about how "they keep changing how many are recommended"
like... jesus christ, you went to med school!
“they keep changing how many are recommended”
That is part of the problem though. You can try and stay on top of things and go insane, or just follow the pack. Most doctors are going with the latter, it seems.
Doctors are still people I guess and people are famously lazy with things like this.
Yup. Our jobs would be a lot easier if that weren't the case, but it's an uphill battle we're facing.
But if there’s one group of people I don’t think it’s too much to expect for them to keep up with those updates it’s fucking doctors
I am shocked that doctors and other medical professionals are so blasé about this, but it also perfectly conforms to many of my experiences with doctors being totally useless and occasionally contemptuous of patients. Like the second anything doesn't go exactly like it does in their textbooks they become totally lost and retreat in to arrogance and dismissal to protect their egos. Not every doctor, but when you're dealing with quality of life destroying chronic illnesses it doesn't take many for you to be suspicious of all of them.
I mean, you'd also expect them to not be right wingers. And yet.
I know so many people who went to med school and a lot of them are the dumbest fucking people I’ve ever met
One of my dumbest customers when I was a bartender before the pandemic was this right wing boomer lib doctor who just started shitting on Bernie for no reason and could never take the polite hint that I didn't want to talk to him
I think the primary qualifications of getting through med school are being smart in a few specific competencies, and after that having an enormous tolerance for stress and sleep deprivation that serve no educational purpose but are used as a form of sadistic hazing for no useful or justifiable reason. Having residents pull 24 hour shifts is just measurably, provably bad for everyone involved including patients, and they continue to do it purely for hazing.
If this was an ordinary disease we could rely t and b cells when antibodies wear off, but this one harms our immune system itself and can harm every organ in our body by the time our bodies figure out they are infected.
All studies that come out indicating that this happens, going back to the first Sars, are being ignored or dismissed as a problem for only a small subset of people who are infected.
So we've been set on a course of repeat infections to "build immunity" with a disease that attacks our immune system and can infect everyone on the planet, and even more wild animals. 8 billion hosts to evolve mutations in, several times a year, and we expect it to burn itself out when its getting better at evading the immune system and binding to our cells. It's fucking madness.
I literally do not know a single person who wears a mask as often as I do, and I don’t even wear one as often as I should largely because of social pressure. The fact that she does wear one sometimes and is up to date on vaccines is literally the most I can expect outside of putting a bullet through my skull.
I cannot understand the reluctance to wear masks. I just can't understand it. It's such an utterly inconsequential ask with such obvious benefits in the face of such obvious risks and people treat it like the labors of hercules.
But then I always wear a helmet when bike riding, always use safety goggles when using almost any tools, always wear earpro when shooting or using power tools, always wear close toed shoes, never get on a ladder unless it's completely stable and always brace ladders when other people are using them, life vests, medical supplies on hand, check both ways before crossing the street, drive the speed limit, and dozens of other things that are breathtakingly easy and not disruptive in any way but for some reason people treat them as huge impositions.
I think it might help that I live one of the few places in the anglosphere where masking is not taboo but I found that dunking on people for their shitty COVID practices has been an effective tactic to get them to mask. Like to tell people to mask and to not take "no" for an answer just because of how dangerous this virus is; I definitely think being that rigid stance wise should be reserved for things regarding being hostile to oppressive actions, but the refusal to mask literally kills lol.
Like I will tell people that their refusal mask gets disabled people killed, like in a manner that where its clear I am not going to back down, and often they throw one on in response lol. "Reactionaries are paper tigers" is one of the best quotes from the last century for a reason, and it def has been true in my experience regarding anti-maskers (especially those who are libs or "leftists").
I just got in a fight with one of my closest friends about this tonight. After having to explain that he’s wrong about how statistics work and how public health policy works, I told him the statistically correct fact that getting a covid vaccine reduces your risk of dying or becoming permanently disabled from covid more than wearing a seatbelt reduced those risks in a car accident, and he just got pissed.
Dude was spouting straight anti-vaxxer talking points in the GC tonight and it was all I could do to not say “Unless one of the other biologists in this chat wants to back you up I need you to shut the fuck up until you get a biology degree”
Damn I'm sorry one of your best friends is being that shitty on COVID. I am glad you tried to hold him accountable for his beliefs though, its better that way than no one speaking up.
Death Panel podcast has been referring to it as a "mass disabling event", thanks for turning everyone into an HIV poz pig, Dr Fauci!
It's been his dream since the 80's :freedom-and-democracy:
So a 1 in 10 chance to get some form of long covid, after vaccination. Cool cool cool. I like those odds.
And if we take no precautions we are essentially guaranteed to catch covid up to 3 times a year, and it's looking like reinfections can make all the risks worse. Awesome.
Pretty cool future we're heading into.
So a 1 in 10 chance to get some form of long covid, after vaccination. Cool cool cool. I like those odds.
This seems to only be true in the case of a breakthrough symptomatic infection though, at least according to the papers that this one cites, at any rate.
Yeah, your risk is higher the sicker you get, so if you are asymptomatic or have minor symptoms you are at less risk of long covid.
I'm sure the timing in-between infections and vaccination effects things, too. Antibodies from vaccination/booster start dropping off after 4-6 months or so. Getting infected within that time frame will likely lower your odds of long covid as well.
They seem to be moving towards yearly boosters, so we'll be at higher risk of symptomatic infection and complications for at at least half the year. Maybe they are expecting infections to act like booster shots? Seems like a bad idea.
They seem to be moving towards yearly boosters, so we’ll be at higher risk of symptomatic infection and complications for at at least half the year. Maybe they are expecting infections to act like booster shots? Seems like a bad idea.
They may be expecting Covid to act like the Flu; which is a very questionable notion.
Yeah, most places have seen a new wave about every three months. That will probably change as we get more and more variants. In the US we had a huge wave in the beginning of 2022, then a bunch of smaller ones starting in May, and it's basically been at a high baseline with various spikes ever since.
So a 1 in 10 chance to get some form of long covid, after vaccination. Cool cool cool. I like those odds.
Rolling that dice every time you get COVID, too, most likely. Possibly with increasing chances to get long COVID as subsequent infections accumulate, too, based on recent papers. And it's minimum one in ten chances.
Also if your country is like mine your most recent booster was so long ago the virus has anyway changed enough in the meantime to make it moot - you're basically not vaccinated, or close to it.
And if we take no precautions we are essentially guaranteed to catch covid up to 3 times a year
you are guaranteed to catch covid every other time you go outside*, which prevents your body from ever getting rid of the initial covid infection
I knew every single thing on this list in 2020 or early 2021
Same. I couldn't buy toilet paper and all the hand sanitizers were loaded with benzene and I knew this. I don't know how this shit keeps getting revealed like it's new info.
wait what does toilet paper and benzene have to do with it
on another note, I got yelled at by redditors back in 2020 for saying the European strain was way more contagious than the Chinese one. Then science quietly confirmed it 5 months later lol
wait what does toilet paper and benzene have to do with it
Events that were happening in 2020 during the beginning of the pandemic. Shelves were empty and dubious brands of hand sanitizer were abundant.
They're just establishing the time frame when they feel they knew long COVID was like this.
I'm going to be bloomer and hope that antivirals will make things easier, especially as generics come out. Just ya, be careful.
My immune compromised sibling caught covid from their partner this year. The thought of them having permanent damage from this thing and the system just not giving a fuck is just...
Plus my elderly parents have stopped wearing masks.
This whole thing is so fucked and evil
I might be wrong. But I think it's only if they're in the 10% that get long COVID.
This isn't likely helpful, but the researcher made a table of long COVID treatments.
I'm really sorry for your situation.
Viral persistence in the penile tissue has been documented
CW - sex organ discussion
My junk has been all out of whack since the summer. No official diagnosis. I Just got COVID last week for what I thought was the first time and it's causing a massive flare up downtown. Maybe it all started with COVID and I was largely asymptomatic or maybe COVID is just reigning hell overtop of the undiagnosed issue.
I'm just spitballing, but post infection Paxlovid may help. I'm sorry for you.
I'll look into that.
Luckily I've found some techniques that can manage the pain and dysfunction, but the medical facilities were basically useless aside from ruling out some things.
If anyone else is having unexplained UTI-esque "Pelvic Pain" complications feel free to inquire on said techniques.
I finally felt just ok enough (still feel like shit) to go out to the doctor and it's official, I have covid just like I thought
spoiler
My dick hasn't gotten hard in almost a week and even my piss has been barely been dribbling out
Shit sucks and I hate it, before that everything worked fine and it was normal for me to wake up with morning wood
:doomjak:
Sorry you're going through that. My symptoms aren't an exact mirror of yours but in my research this can play out in several different ways for people - common denominator seems to be a hypertonic pelvic floor (typically caused by infection/surgery/over-exertion/etc).
Actionable things you can try:
-Diaphragmatic Breathing
-Pelvic Floor/Chain stretches (Try all that you can find online and just routinely cycle through the ones that actually feel like they help). Hold them for 2 minutes.
-Hot Baths
-Don't obsess/hyperfocus on the dilemma
Well on the bright side, the volcel police ain't got shit on me
Yeah, sorry ladies, but ElChapoDeChapo and I are for your viewing/sniffing pleasure only.
Wonder how worse all those odds will be 5 years from now after multiple infections.
Hey, for anyone suffering from (or anyone who knows someone suffering from) long COVID, there is some evidence that fasting, either intermittent or continuous for at least 5 days, can fully cure many of the symptoms of long COVID. The evidence is kinda fringe but many successful anecdotal reports and a handful of case studies are emerging. The proposed mechanisms of action are depleting the viral reservoir in the gut and/or "rebooting" the metabolism.
https://www.buchinger-wilhelmi.com/en/long-covid-fasting/
It's kind of a hail mary but it's one of the only ideas on the table for curing long COVID, sooooo
Aggregated evidence below:
Roughly 1 in 3 people in Utah fast from time to time – higher than in other states. This is partly because more than 60% of people in Utah belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and roughly 40% of them fast – typically skipping two meals in a row. Those who fasted, on average, for a day a month over the past 40 years were not less likely to get COVID, but they were less likely to be hospitalized or die from the virus. (source)
r*ddit post:
I recently came down with a cold (possibly COVID, but I'm awaiting my test results). It was very mild -- just a day or so of a slight cough and then a few days of congestion and a runny nose. But the weird thing is that this was the first time I lost my sense of smell and taste as a result of an illness. I can still taste whether something is sweet, salty, bitter or sour, but I can't test any flavors or seasonings. I feel no other symptoms at the moment. However, today I fasted for about 20 hours. It wasn't a dry fast since I had a small swig of water while taking some zinc, but I noticed an immediate improvement in my sense of smell. I can now smell coffee, peanut butter, vanilla, peppermint essential oil, detergent and bleach if I hold them all up to my nose, which I couldn't do before. I was worried that this progress was maybe a fluke of hunger (extreme hunger tends to increase our senses), but I ate a cookie and can still smell the above items.(source)
Study on outcomes of long-term fasters
Subjects engaging in periodic fasting (n=73, 35.6%) did so for 40.4±20.6 years (max: 81.9 years) prior to COVID-19 diagnosis. The composite outcome [of hospitalization and mortality] occurred in 11.0% of periodic fasters and 28.8% of non-fasters (p=0.013), with HR=0.61 (95% CI 0.42 to 0.90) favouring fasting. Multivariable analyses confirmed this association. Other predictors of hospitalisation/mortality were age, Hispanic ethnicity, prior MI, prior TIA and renal failure, with trends for race, smoking, hyperlipidaemia, coronary disease, diabetes, heart failure and anxiety, but not alcohol use. In secondary analysis, COVID-19 was diagnosed in 14.3% of fasters and 13.0% of non-fasters (p=0.51). (source)
Nature article
SARS-CoV-2-induced anorexia triggers systemic metabolic alterations. In a study published in Nature, Karagiannis et al. show that the ketone body β-hydroxybutyrate (BHB) improves COVID-19 disease outcomes. Further, BHB metabolically and functionally reprograms CD4+ T cells, highlighting immunometabolic tuning of immunity in COVID-19. (source, this one is more nuanced than I could fit in one excerpt)
fasting
austerity neoliberalism smh
depleting the viral reservoir in the gut and/or “rebooting” the metabolism.
DO NOT EAT LEST THE ENEMY OF THE BOURGEOISIE WIN
I've been right about literally everything regarding COVID, and months/years before the scientists, so I'll just lathe one out for you here
Fasting works, because antibiotics worked for me. Both starve bacteria. Also, long-COVID killed my appetite
2nd layer of lathing: COVID resides in gut bacteria. It attacks gut bacteria and hides in them as a reservoir. That's why it takes years to go away.None of these claims are scientifically proven, but neither were my 30 other claims about covid which ended up getting confirmed
Also, loss of smell is associated with loss of brain function. Loss of smell is a very typical symptom among Europeans, and deductively so is loss of brain function. This is very obvious if you browse long-COVID subreddits. Latinos being more affected by long-COVID in general was also very obvious.
I wouldn't be surprised if it's just that a lot of the North American standard working class diet causes chronic inflammation, and getting your gut to stop inflamming for a week can calm the inflammatory response elsewhere that might be contributing to long covid.
a lot of the North American standard working class diet causes chronic inflammation
which foods do/don't cause chronic inflammation?
Low glycemic index, cut down on saturated and trans fats, more fruit and veg, cut down on red meat, more fiber, basically the Mediterranean diet.
There is still some other stuff that's separate from the gut bacteria, but it's more mild. The virus-riddled gut bacteria were 70% responsible for my long-COVID.
Perhaps it also resides in other non-bacterial places, or perhaps the antibiotic just couldn't kill everything. After the 70% improvement from antibiotics, I saw incremental changes that just came with time. THIS WAS ONLY POSSIBLE BECAUSE I ISOLATED--if you go outside you will just breathe in more COVID and never recover.
This October 3 years after March 2020 I recovered 120%, and stayed that way for 2 months, then got reinfected
So what is causing brain impairment in european cases and why are latinos so affected?
I'm guessing it's linked to class, hours worked, and availability of resources. Being poorer is deadly.
Being poorer causes chronic stress and negatively impacts immune system function.
I saw an article saying that the poorest 1% of men in america have a 72 year life expectancy. Richest 1% have an 89 year life expectancy. Difference in Euro Symptoms is probably down to different strains
All these medical sources are 🤮. Maybe fasting works, but I'm not loving this data.
"I'm going to put an enormous amount of stress on my body by starving it for a week. This will definitely help me with a syndrome typified by multiple organ system damage, vascular damage, brain damage, and other severe symptoms".
Doesn't pass the smell test.
Gosh it could be true. I've just learned to be careful of blogs and WebMD. Keeping to high quality medical research keeps us sane and gives us a one up over the libs.
I edited in a source from Nature investigating the mechanism of action a little more closely, give it a peep
Comrade, I apologise in advance for being super pedantic. I appreciate you taking the time to find research on this.
The BMJ article only compared long COVID with people who did IS vs those who didn't. There was no control group and no random experiment group. Therefore, potentially other variables followed those who did IS. Maybe they exercised more or had better health. Who knows.
The Nature article just seemed to discuss a possible mechanism for resolving COVID, for which Is could play a role.
These studies on their own lead to the need to study further the role of IS and long COVID, ideally with a random control trial. Potentially IS helpful. I'm not a medical professional, but I wouldn't advice this DIY treatment personally. But I'm not privy to enough info to specifically advise against it.
I wholeheartedly agree, it's fringe at best, but a minor fast executed safely is not likely to cause harm and the potential upshot is large, plus I've heard of it anecdotally several times. I don't want to promise anyone a cure but the cost/benefit pans out to me sharing the concept
Hey just as a heads up I added two more sources that are of significantly higher quality
I recently came down with a cold (possibly COVID, but I’m awaiting my test results). It was very mild – just a day or so of a slight cough and then a few days of congestion and a runny nose. But the weird thing is that this was the first time I lost my sense of smell and taste as a result of an illness. I can still taste whether something is sweet, salty, bitter or sour, but I can’t test any flavors or seasonings.
Psilocybin works well with the smell/taste recovery. I watched it firsthand in my ex. Everything post-COVID tasted salty to the point that it was inedible, even without any salt or traditionally salty foods. With a relatively low 2g dose she recovered normal senses for the duration. Some get long-term recovery, others for a few weeks or months. I'm not sure if microdosing or larger doses have different levels of impact.
I'm willing to try anything at this point and I just got this shit
for me there were two main phases of COVID: the "acute" phase and the "long" phase
The acute phase can last 1-2 months, with varying symptoms. for me the biggest was deathly fatigue. Vitamin C helped this the most, I took 500 mg
The "long" phase was milder but still horrible with a still-very-reduced appetite. Antibiotics were what eliminated this for me. Fasting might have done it too, since logically both would kill gut bacteria.
After the "main" "long" phase, I had a 2 year phase which was "90% recovered" but I still felt off and somewhat tired. This went away with time and isolating myself in my house/backyard. I did not even go to grocery stores, and the one time I did, I got reinfected.
After this 2 year phase though, I completely recovered, and a number of "healthy" things happened to my body. Scars that I had from BEFORE covid started going away, my hair density increased, energy went through the roof, etc. This lasted for 2 months before I got reinfected again--if I hadn't it's possible it would have lasted forever.
In my case it was possible to not only COMPLETELY recover from long-COVID, but also to FEEL BETTER than I did before COVID. However, it required living with my parents in a house where my working parent isolated in the bottom half of the house. This is probably not achievable for most people.
As a result of this, I know that the only true solution for long-COVID is to find other like-minded people who agree with me, and buy land together, and earn a living by selling produce/livestock etc. It legitimately requires a parallel and mostly self-sufficient Amish-type society. Otherwise you will just breathe in COVID your entire life and never get better, and probably also die a much earlier death.
Scars that I had from BEFORE covid started going away, my hair density increased, energy went through the roof, etc.
how did these things happen?
As a result of this, I know that the only true solution for long-COVID is to find other like-minded people who agree with me, and buy land together, and earn a living by selling produce/livestock etc. It legitimately requires a parallel and mostly self-sufficient Amish-type society. Otherwise you will just breathe in COVID your entire life and never get better, and probably also die a much earlier death.
This is the only solution I really come up with as well; Zero-Covid Communities are gonna have to be a thing in the future, but it's gonna be a wealthy people-Elysium sorta thing.
So quick question cuss I don't sort through the specific article but I'm geussing the 10-12% vaccinated means of the vaccinated covid cases (people that got covid but were vaccinated) 10-12% of them later developed long covid. If so then dear god what's the rate of long covid for this without the vaccination?
To be honest, that's a difficult question to answer as the research is still very new and the definitions of "is this long COVID" isn't clear. May I quote one of the studies that this paper cites:
Long Covid symptoms were reported by 294 double-vaccinated participants (prevalence 9.5%) compared with 452 unvaccinated participants (14.6%)
So 15%, maybe. Although I've seen studies where it goes up to 20%. Potentially (this is a big maybe, I'm not sure) vaccination makes it less likely that you'll catch Covid in the first place, so it's bigger than just the difference between 15% and 10%.
