As someone with long COVID, I can vouch the debilitating mental effects. I was teaching math to 4th through 8th grade students when I got it. I can remember standing in a classroom talking about a lesson and just having my mind go blank in mid sentence. I couldn't function. Not knowing what I was talking about or even where I was. Thankfully the students where very understanding and someone would finish my point I was making. I still suffer from it yet today, nearly 2 years later.

I have respiratory issues despite every CT scan showing nothing more than a couple of small pneumonia scars form long ago. I should be able to breathe just fine with no reduction of lung capacity. It stems from a lack coordination with my diaphragm - It runs backwards when I exert myself causing shortness of breath. Another sign of probable brain injury. And despite using a therapy tool to try and fix the issue, at best it just helps a little.

The upshot is I have pretty much stopped doing a lot of things I used to do because of the difficulties breathing and I spend a lot more time away from people due to an unreasonable fear of COVID.

It has caused me to retire earlier than I wanted to. And my life has greatly changed - and not for the better either.

[–] just_another_person@lemmy.world 9 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Sorry you're going through all of that. There obviously aren't any long term studies on it yet, but hopefully things will improve more and more over time.

[–] bluewing@lemm.ee 9 points 3 days ago (2 children)

According to my Pulmonolgist - Nope. Her observations of all her patients over the years is that if you don't get over it in about a year, you don't get better. And she has been seeing more COVID patients than her "normal" patients for several years now. Long term care is going to be a real problem for society going forward.

load more comments (2 replies)

[–] jaggedrobotpubes@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

*a reasonable caution of encountering people with an unreasonable response to covid

[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 147 points 4 days ago (28 children)

All those people who refused to take COVID seriously have a lot of blood on their hands.

[–] Wogi@lemmy.world 89 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Shout out to Physics Girl Dianna. Who is still bedridden.

[–] onyxjet@lemmy.world 27 points 4 days ago (2 children)

STILL? I haven't checked in months. That's crazy.

[–] pyre@lemmy.world 32 points 4 days ago

yeah her YouTube channel still posts updates from time to time. shoutout to her husband too. they got married and almost immediately became patient/caretaker. it's probably exhausting for both but they're both resilient, hopefully they'll get out of it and live a stress free happy life. sure deserve it after going through this.

[–] Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 17 points 3 days ago

She has shown small improvements, but it's excruciatingly slow.

[–] Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 11 points 3 days ago

But fortunately a lot of them don't care about such things as the quantity of blood on their hands, so news like this won't worsen their lives or self-image.

[–] fibojoly@sh.itjust.works 26 points 4 days ago (1 children)

They don't remember. On account of their brain injury.

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 19 points 4 days ago

No, not everyone who got long covid didn't take it seriously. But the people who were super spreaders or spread misinformation are certainly to blame.

[–] AnxiousOtter@lemmy.world 19 points 4 days ago

They don't give a shit, unfortunately.

load more comments (24 replies)

[–] Suavevillain@lemmy.world 83 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I wish people cared about dealing with covid still. Once corporate America got that sign off not to care there was no going back.

[–] SOB_Van_Owen@lemm.ee 30 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Seriously. I spent 2 days in the hospital last week with bilateral pulmonary embolisms after having COVID the middle of last month. I was NOT otherwise at risk for clots. A terrible surprise that I'll no doubt be recovering from for some time. I'm on a blood thinner for 6 months.

[–] Anti_Face_Weapon@lemmy.world 7 points 3 days ago

Fixed your ED at least 😊👍🏻

[–] MaxPow3r11@lemmy.world 74 points 4 days ago (2 children)

great.

remember when all the politicians and people who control things got covid?

What a totally normal and cool planet this is.

[–] Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world 35 points 4 days ago (1 children)

They were already shitheads.

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 29 points 4 days ago

If it makes you feel any better, those demographics were already suffering from lead gas exposure.

[–] walter_wiggles@lemmy.nz 87 points 5 days ago (3 children)

Ooo interesting. The parallels with CFS are fascinating.

[–] Varyk@sh.itjust.works 54 points 5 days ago (10 children)

I wasn't even aware of that. chronic fatigue syndrome was actually real.

I thought I was just like side- depression.

is there anything known about CFS?

what causes it or how long it lasts or anything?

I know nothing about it except for like a comedy sketch from the 2000s at some point.

[–] FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone 67 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (13 children)

Lifelong disease usually triggered by viral infections. Very functionally disabling.

Known immune abnormalities which seem to affect the brain and mitochondria. I think @Neurologist@mander.xyz is specialised in it.

Also “chronic fatigue syndrome” was the name back when it was classified as psychological. Now that it’s classified as neuroimmune the name has been changed to Myalgic Encephalomyelitsis (ME) (Or ME/CFS).

As usual though for a medium quality source like ScienceAlert, the article is written by someone who has no specialisation in Long COVID/ME, or even medicine. So there’s a bit of oversimplification and overstating findings from one study in that article. Very few researchers think it’s a brain injury. Most think the immune system has been compromised (with some deficiencies and abnormalities) and it’s affecting the brain in unknown ways (hence the abnormalities found. It’s weird though because the immune system problems seem to cause some immunodeficiencies but also autoimmune reactions. They’ll need to be quite a bit more studies before we get a clear picture.

[–] Neurologist@mander.xyz 27 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Couldn’t have said it better. And yes, science journalism often is basically repeating and dumbing down what a study says, but in science, and especially in medicine, a lot of studies tend to be wrong, make false assumptions, or overstate their findings, while journalists tend to take them for their word. There’s a reason you hear of a new cancer treatment in the news every other week but few actually make it past FDA approval.

load more comments (12 replies)

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 24 points 4 days ago (5 children)

CFS is a syndrome rather than a disease because, until recently, it only presented as symptoms instead of as an identifiable problem with a person. I know that a some people who get diagnosed for CFS get later diagnoses as neurological disorders like multiple sclerosis.

It sounds like the more powerful MRI scanners are seeing inflammation in the rest of those suffering from CFS.

That would mean CFS is a lifelong degenerative condition.

[–] Neurologist@mander.xyz 29 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (11 children)

Hey I’m a researcher who works on ME (in the past called CFS).

ME/CFS is currently classified as a disease/biological illness according to the CDC.

ME is a disease state in itself. We don’t know much about it, but it can’t be explained by other diagnoses, as the defining factor, neuro-immune abnormalities including immune activation showing up post exertion is unique to it. You’re completely right that we don’t yet have a reliable biomarker. We have a test that differentiates from healthy controls, but it was discontinued for ethical reasons because conducting the test leads to a sometimes permanent worsening of the illness.

In the past it’s been mixed up and jumbled a lot, but the picture is getting clearer.

There have been a few case reports of degenerative forms of the illness. But in general it takes a more classical relapsing remitting pattern. Although even in less bad stages some patients are severely functionally disabled, even bedridden and tubefed. It has a really wide range of severities with the least severely affected able to work part time and walk and travel, while the most severe might not even be able to communicate.

load more comments (11 replies)

load more comments (4 replies)

load more comments (8 replies)

load more comments (2 replies)

[–] Stonewyvvern@lemmy.world 9 points 3 days ago

Diana from YT Physics Girl has long COVID. Her very loving husband takes care of her. We all wish them the best and any kind of recovery.

[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 45 points 4 days ago (10 children)

I'm still afraid of long-c. I insisted that we wore masks in airports and on flights when we took a trip last month. We live life in a normal fashion everywhere else (because we're vaxxed and boosted), but I wasn't willing to risk that environment.

[–] Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 17 points 4 days ago (3 children)

Why just planes? Surely this would apply to all public transport.

[–] janNatan@lemmy.ml 85 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (9 children)

If they're US American, a plane is likely the only public transportation they've ever taken. If they live anywhere remotely rural, it's likely the only one available to them.

Signed, -An American

load more comments (9 replies)

[–] leftytighty@slrpnk.net 21 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Airports and planes see a lot of traffic from all over the world constantly rotating through. With some variation depending on the size of the city and your personal schedule, you're running into more of the same people on normal public transport.

load more comments (2 replies)

load more comments (1 replies)

load more comments (9 replies)

[–] Nuke_the_whales@lemmy.world 39 points 4 days ago (1 children)

What turns regular COVID into long COVID? When I got COVID I was better after 2 weeks but I had a nagging cough and chest discomfort for 2 months

[–] just_another_person@lemmy.world 70 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

It's very subjective. You can read more about it by searching around, but the prevailing definition means people who had more severe reactions to the infection than the average patient, which almost unanimously means a severe and prolonged inflammatory response.

What they are finding more and more is that this specific virus triggers undiagnosed or dormant autoimmune responses in patients. If you're familiar with Rheumatism at all, imagine a massive reaction to, say, twisting your ankle, but it goes out of control and causes swelling all over your body including your brain, lungs, heart, and renal system. This is actually what killed the most patients pre-vaccination.

The full body assault of an inflammatory response just makes the body unable to cope, and things start shutting down. It can kill children and older people very easily if you can't get it under control. Many succumbed to Pneumonia, but those that lived had damage to their major internal organs from the inflammatory response. You can also see some had been using the term "Walking COVID", meaning people who had cleared the infection, but had long term sustained symptoms similar to Emphysema. They've since just moved on to calling everything "Long COVID". Some people recover, some people don't.

This study finally identified the specific damage and detection to brain activity.

[–] JustZ@lemmy.world 24 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (4 children)

People don't get it. The inflammatory process can do these sort of thing to any organ or system, or parts of them.

People got a thing called COVID Toe. This is where you and every person already has some fungus that live on their feet and which gets into the skin and toenails. Maybe you have a little yellowing of the toenails or you're just "prone to athletes foot."

Then you get COVID and suddenly your immune system is working overtime. The fungus starts to multiply faster and spreads more aggressively. Your toes start to get itchy and red, more than usual. They swell. They yellow. Then they start to crack and ooze, possibly requiring surgical debridement or in the most severe cases, such as where the patient already had diabetes affecting their peripheral nerves, amputation of the foot to prevent necrosis and sepsis. Imagine dying from athletes foot because your immune system was overwhelmed fighting a coronavirus.

load more comments (4 replies)

load more comments