If it makes anyone feel better (?), we probably had "long X" for various types of viruses, and even from a relatively nasty flu season. Viruses can really run amuck and cause all sorts of systemic problems. This novel virus, and the rate at which it spread, with the initial body count, just generated all this extra scrutiny. Myself? My sense of smell has never fully returned. That's easy to test ... b/c I have a dog. And before COVID, I could always smell X, Y, and Z each time they cropped up. And now I don't ever smell Y and Z. But this doesn't seem like a big deal. I still have a good appetite and mostly enjoy food. [EDIT]: And it's kind of nice to not smell dog farts, all things considered.
The Dubious Origins of Long Covid Echoes of chronic fatigue in the effort to blame the coronavirus for a host of questionable symptoms. https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-dubious-origins-of-long-covid-11616452583 ‘Long Covid,” or post-Covid syndrome, is an emerging condition that has attracted great media attention—and now federal funding. The National Institutes of Health last month announced a $1.15 billion initiative to research the “prolonged health consequences” of Covid-19 infection. The topic deserves serious study. Some patients, particularly older ones with co-morbidities, do experience symptoms that outlast a coronavirus infection. But such symptoms can also be psychologically generated or caused by a physical illness unrelated to the prior infection. Long Covid is largely an invention of vocal patient activist groups. Legitimizing it with generous funding risks worsening the symptoms the NIH is hoping to treat. The concept of long Covid has a highly unorthodox origin: online surveys produced by Body Politic, which launched in 2018 and describes itself atop its website’s homepage as “a queer feminist wellness collective merging the personal and the political.” In March 2020, the group’s co-founders created the Body Politic Covid-19 Support Group, and as part of their mission of “cultivating patient led research,” the organization coordinated a series of online surveys on persistent symptoms. Based on the results of these, Body Politic produced the first report on long Covid in May. But many of the survey respondents who attributed their symptoms to the aftermath of a Covid-19 infection likely never had the virus in the first place. Of those who self-identified as having persistent symptoms attributed to Covid and responded to the first survey, not even a quarter had tested positive for the virus. Nearly half (47.8%) never had testing and 27.5% tested negative for Covid-19. Body Politic publicized the results of a larger, second survey in December 2020. Of the 3,762 respondents, a mere 600, or 15.9%, had tested positive for the virus at any time. Why include the reported symptoms of those who never had a confirmed infection? “Due to the severe lack of testing available in many areas and the prevalence of false negatives, we do not believe people’s experiences with COVID-19 symptoms should be discounted because they did not receive a positive test result,” the survey authors wrote in their first report. “We believe future research must consider the experiences of all people with COVID-19 symptoms, regardless of testing status, in order to better understand the virus and underscore the importance of early and widespread testing.” This didn’t perturb NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins, who has repeatedly supported the Body Politic Covid-19 Support Group’s patient-led research initiatives, promoting the surveys in a series of official blog posts. In the announcement of the NIH’s decision to commit $1.15 billion to long Covid research, Dr. Collins explicitly referred to the Body Politic research surveys. This subjugation of scientific rigor to preconceived belief reflects a common dynamic encountered in clinical practice. Patients who struggle with chronic and vague symptoms often vehemently reject a physician’s diagnosis that suggests an underlying mental-health issue, in part because of the stigma around mental illness and the false belief that psychologically generated symptoms aren’t “real.” By relinquishing the need for objective serological confirmation, and by claiming that long Covid can manifest in a mind-boggling 205 different symptoms, the Body Politic Covid-19 Support Group offered its readership exactly this attractive alternative, leading patients away from treatments that could actually ease their symptoms. Body Politic wasn’t the only patient advocacy group that drove the NIH funding commitment. Solve ME/CFS (which stands for myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome) was founded in 1987 by patients who felt their chronic and numerous medical complaints—including fatigue, “brain fog,” and an inability to exert themselves physically or mentally—were being dismissed by their physicians and neglected by the medical community. Since its inception, the organization has insisted, contrary to the prevailing view among medical practitioners, that a variety of ever-changing biological disease mechanisms explain their membership’s chronic symptoms and disability. The organization is fundamentally resistant to the idea that chronic fatigue is a symptom of an underlying mental-health issue—which mainstream medicine would assert is often the case. This is obvious from its website, where one “myth” the group claims to debunk is that ME/CFS is caused by depression and anxiety. In 2017, frustrated by the lack of mainstream recognition of their condition, Solve ME/CFS hired a lobbyist to pressure federal agencies to commit more funds to research. Then, in December 2020, likely sensing an intuitive link with the emerging idea of long Covid syndrome, this same organization spearheaded a letter—also signed by Body Politic—to congressional leaders urging more federal funding be dedicated to investigating long Covid. The government listened and now will further perpetuate patient denial of mental illness and psychosomatic symptoms. Two days after the NIH’s funding announcement, Solve ME/CFS announced it was launching the Long COVID alliance, which Body Politic shortly joined. Its mission: “to transform the current understanding of Long COVID and related post-infectious illnesses”—including ME/CFS. A central feature underlying many psychosomatic-symptom disorders is a fixed belief that one is ill and unlikely to recover. By drawing attention to and legitimizing the ever-present threat of long Covid, medical authorities will lead a large group of impressionable patients to believe that their Covid-19 symptoms have not resolved and that they are helpless victims of an unrelenting sickness. In the past century, the media has played a critical role in perpetuating psychogenic illnesses—chronic brucellosis in the 1940s, chronic Epstein Barr virus in the 1980s, and today (although scientifically debunked) chronic Lyme disease. It is therefore alarming to witness the recent proliferation of uncritical and sensational media stories about long Covid. The NIH’s decision is a victory for pseudoscience and will do more to harm than help patients. Dr. Devine is a resident psychiatrist at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.
The smell thing also happened to my best friend. I think she said for the first 1-3 months after catching COVID, she couldn't smell things correctly. Like she'd smell stuff burning when nothing was burning or smell nat gas all the time, I think. As time went on, I believe she said it got better, but I never asked her if she fully recovered.
With the election right around the corner, expect more of these COVID articles to help the left's agenda.
You mean like agendas where you interrogate Faucci just SEVEN days ago. That type of agenda? I'll always buy a good conspiracy theory. Let's pretend Marjorie is right. But then you want to belittle all the people that died and got sick by contradicting that it didn't exist? Or that it was no big deal? You can't have your bat and eat it too. Protocol for viruses have been in place pre November 9th, 2016. They should even be more extreme if it is believed that another country created it and leaked it. Dorks will be dorks. On the long covid thing, other than the one month fatigue after testing positive nothing more came of it. But I'm sure if you were hospitalized and managed to survive there will always be long term effects like any other serious ailment.
Viral infections can result in chronic diseases. It's not just the rate of infection but also the virus's capacity to damage multiple systems and organs. Long flu and long COVID are both real. While the flu tends to be more isolated, COVID attacks are much more widespread. Even mild COVID infections can lead to chronic symptoms. https://medicine.wustl.edu/news/long-flu-has-emerged-as-a-consequence-similar-to-long-covid-19/ Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, extensive research has emerged detailing the virus’s ability to attack multiple organ systems, potentially resulting in a set of enduring and often disabling health problems known as long COVID. Now, new research from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care System indicates that people hospitalized with seasonal influenza also can suffer long-term, negative health effects, especially involving their lungs and airways. … However, the overall risk and occurrence of death, hospital admissions, and loss of health in many organ systems are substantially higher among COVID-19 patients than among those who have had seasonal influenza, Al-Aly said. “The one notable exception is that the flu poses higher risks to the pulmonary system than COVID-19,” he said. “This tells us the flu is truly more of a respiratory virus, like we’ve all thought for the past 100 years. By comparison, COVID-19 is more aggressive and indiscriminate in that it can attack the pulmonary system, but it can also strike any organ system and is more likely to cause fatal or severe conditions involving the heart, brain, kidneys and other organs.”
Brain fog and long term loss of smell are the long symptoms I have seen in close friends who had mild COVID. People who had pneumonia from their COVID typically have residual lung scarring which may or may not be symptomatic. Chronic fatigue syndrome, long COVID, depression, etc all result in similar fatigue and reduced mental capabilities and are invisible to onlookers hence the stigma in our culture. And people do malinger to get attention and benefits. Dismissing COVID is revisionist.
Jeremy Devine wrote this in March 2021. We didn’t hit our peak in infections until Dec 2021. He wouldn’t be able to publish this article today because he was ultimately wrong.
This was all discussed in late 2020 (if I recall correctly). There is nothing overly interesting about Covid. Its a new virus. Thats it. Any new virus that is highly contagious will do the same thing.
Over 30000 peer-reviewed articles on PubMed about long COVID so I am sure you can find whatever you want but below are reputable resources for learning more about long COVID. 1. The neurobiology of long COVID. Monje M, Iwasaki A. Neuron. 2022 Nov 2;110(21):3484-3496. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2022.10.006. Epub 2022 Oct 7. PMID: 36288726Free PMC article. Review. 2. Distinguishing features of long COVID identified through immune profiling. Klein J, Wood J, Jaycox JR, Dhodapkar RM, Lu P, Gehlhausen JR, Tabachnikova A, Greene K, Tabacof L, Malik AA, Silva Monteiro V, Silva J, Kamath K, Zhang M, Dhal A, Ott IM, Valle G, Peña-Hernández M, Mao T, Bhattacharjee B, Takahashi T, Lucas C, Song E, McCarthy D, Breyman E, Tosto-Mancuso J, Dai Y, Perotti E, Akduman K, Tzeng TJ, Xu L, Geraghty AC, Monje M, Yildirim I, Shon J, Medzhitov R, Lutchmansingh D, Possick JD, Kaminski N, Omer SB, Krumholz HM, Guan L, Dela Cruz CS, van Dijk D, Ring AM, Putrino D, Iwasaki A. Nature. 2023 Nov;623(7985):139-148. doi: 10.1038/s41586-023-06651-y. Epub 2023 Sep 25. PMID: 37748514Free PMC article. 3. Long COVID: 3 years in. The Lancet. Lancet. 2023 Mar 11;401(10379):795. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(23)00493-2. PMID: 36906338Free PMC article.No abstract available. 4. Persistent complement dysregulation with signs of thromboinflammation in active Long Covid. Cervia-Hasler C, Brüningk SC, Hoch T, Fan B, Muzio G, Thompson RC, Ceglarek L, Meledin R, Westermann P, Emmenegger M, Taeschler P, Zurbuchen Y, Pons M, Menges D, Ballouz T, Cervia-Hasler S, Adamo S, Merad M, Charney AW, Puhan M, Brodin P, Nilsson J, Aguzzi A, Raeber ME, Messner CB, Beckmann ND, Borgwardt K, Boyman O. Science. 2024 Jan 19;383(6680):eadg7942. doi: 10.1126/science.adg7942. Epub 2024 Jan 19. PMID: 38236961 5. Solving the puzzle of Long Covid. Al-Aly Z, Topol E. Science. 2024 Feb 23;383(6685):830-832. doi: 10.1126/science.adl0867. Epub 2024 Feb 22. PMID: 38386747
I agree, but to soften the statement, I think it's true to say: Any novel virus has the potential to do something very similar or even worse in human populations.
Dismissing COVID is definitely foolish, but it does seem intuitive that COVID augmented underlying issues that were already present in a lot of people. People are also generally more aware of their health and well-being now and don't overlook as many symptoms as they might have in the past. The reality is a vast majority of people do not eat healthy, well-balanced diets, exercise regularly, or supplement accordingly. In most cases, improving these aspects of your life will alleviate symptoms like fatigue, brain fog, etc. I do acknowledge the bizarre smell/taste lingering affects, because I'm pretty sure I have some of that going on myself, although it's transient and hard to pinpoint exactly.
The irony being the poster that said those moronic things is the biggest attention w**** on this board.
I am just glad to find a forum where some of the smartest individuals on earth share their thoughts. What a treasure trove of scientific literature I have stumbled upon.
By no means do I want to ridicule actual health concerns someone has experienced, and I am sure that a small percentage of people has some long-term problems after a viral infection. That said, I do believe that a high percentage of "long covid" cases are actually psychological problems, or made up.
From Physician's UptoDate guidelines: "..... Several terms have been used to describe persistent or new symptoms following acute COVID-19 illness, including "long COVID" (our preferred term in this topic), "post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection (PASC)," "post-acute COVID-19," "chronic COVID-19," "long hauler syndrome," and "post-COVID syndrome."(See 'Terminology and stages of recovery' above.) ●Prevalence, risk factors, and prevention – The true prevalence of long COVID is unknown, but data suggest that approximately 6 percent of patients may experience prolonged symptoms following acute infection. Risk factors are poorly defined but may include older age, higher body mass index, comorbidities, female sex, and severe illness. (See 'Prevalence' above and 'Risk factors' above.)...". however, I remember an early study that mentioned that some would go into loops cycles
