Long-Term Effects/Risks/Vulnerabilities of Having Had COVID

We have lots of different COVID threads (some on vaccines, some on individual variants, etc.), but none on its long-term effects.

I wasn't sure where to place this recent news item (and others like it), so I thought I'd create a thread solely devoted to it. Here is said recent news article:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/covid-raises-risk-long-term-150329709.html

CHICAGO (Reuters) - People who had COVID-19 are at higher risk for a host of brain injuries a year later compared with people who were never infected by the coronavirus, a finding that could affect millions of Americans, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday.

The year-long study, published in Nature Medicine, assessed brain health across 44 different disorders using medical records without patient identifiers from millions of U.S. veterans.

Brain and other neurological disorders occurred in 7% more of those who had been infected with COVID compared with a similar group of veterans who had never been infected. That translates into roughly 6.6 million Americans who had brain impairments linked with their COVID infections, the team said.

"The results show the devastating long-term effects of COVID-19," senior author Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly of Washington University School of Medicine said in a statement.

One thing that's always creeped me out are stories of long COVID, where people have practically what seems like dementia.

I've read stories of people constantly forgetting basic stuff - some individuals having to quit their jobs (like those in the medical field, law, etc., due to inability to remember stuff).

It's not only mnestic issues. Fatigue is an even more frequent symptom in long (neuro-)CoViD.

And while not knowing what you wanted to fetch from the basement when you're there is annoying and terrifying, it can be remedied by writing notes etc. etc. Not being able to move more than a few metres, and then needing to recover for several minutes to tackle the way back (think e.g. toilet) is pretty damning...

kyphysics said:

We have lots of different COVID threads (some on vaccines, some on individual variants, etc.), but none on its long-term effects.

I wasn't sure where to place this recent news item (and others like it), so I thought I'd create a thread solely devoted to it. Here is said recent news article:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/covid-raises-risk-long-term-150329709.html

One thing that's always creeped me out are stories of long COVID, where people have practically what seems like dementia.

I've read stories of people constantly forgetting basic stuff - some individuals having to quit their jobs (like those in the medical field, law, etc., due to inability to remember stuff).

from this paper
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-02001-z

"Because we aimed to examine outcomes at 12 months, our cohorts were enrolled before 15 January 2021 (before SARS-CoV-2 vaccines were widely available in the US), and less than 1% of people in the COVID-19 group and contemporary control group were vaccinated before T0. Our subgroup analyses were designed to estimate the risk of outcomes in each subgroup, the strength of the association for any specific outcome may not be necessarily comparable across subgroups"

Some figures I saw that were interesting.

kyphysics said:

Some figures I saw that were interesting.

This article in the Guardian yesterday. Estimated 2 million in the UK with long Covid. 200,000 dead since 2020, so 3% and 0.3% of the UK population respectively so far.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/20/long-covid-treatment-symptoms-research-uk

@Bystander I get a calculation wrong? It is over 200,000 dead so far and population about 66 million.
Or do you doubt the numbers? Or source?

pinball1970 said:

Or do you doubt the numbers? Or source?

It's been "the tempest in a tea pot" from day one; "long covid" is a neurotic status symbol/crown of thorns.

Bystander said:

It's been "the tempest in a tea pot" from day one; "long covid" is a neurotic status symbol/crown of thorns.

Ok. I have not read a huge amount on it.
I will follow up.

The numbers around Covid19 are always problematic, the figures for deaths are likely fairly reasonable but in estimates of mortality you can't really work from the overall population, you would need to know the number of people infected, and we don't.
I think regardless of our beliefs about the reaction to Covid19 I really don't see long Covid as a neurotic status symbol, trying to maintain that sort of degree of disability for so long is highly unlikely and it appears to be linked to increased mortality risks. I think its similarity to ME and the rather typical medical responses to conditions they don't understand has muddied the picture, the low numbers of people with ME allowed it to be dismissed and sufferers were treated appallingly. The very large numbers of people with long Covid19 has in fact lead to a flurry of research activity and an increasing number of biomarkers have and are being identified along with identification of differences in immune responses and potential risk factors. There has also been the identification of other long term effects from Covid19 infection, this virus has proven to be a real little bundle of joy and a real education for many in medical research. The viruses ability to selectively target a wide range of tissues has lead to the discovery of a range of long term problems that can be identified in various organs in people who consider themselves recovered, the most worrying being the evidence of damage in the central nervous system. We also know that the effects of the virus on the cardiovascular system appears to increase the risk of cardiovascular events for up to a year following recovery. It is still the case that the background mortality rate remains higher than in the pre-Covid period and this is not readily explainable by reduced screening and medical care nor can it be attributed directly to Covid.
Even if the responses to Covid19 have principally been used to test population control and allow the transfer of money from the pockets of the poor into the pockets of the rich, the increased funding for research has in fact provided a great deal of useful information and highlighted vast areas medical ignorance which might prove to be very useful.

Laroxe said:

The numbers around Covid19 are always problematic, the figures for deaths are likely fairly reasonable but in estimates of mortality you can't really work from the overall population, you would need to know the number of people infected, and we don't.
I think regardless of our beliefs about the reaction to Covid19 I really don't see long Covid as a neurotic status symbol, trying to maintain that sort of degree of disability for so long is highly unlikely and it appears to be linked to increased mortality risks. I think its similarity to ME and the rather typical medical responses to conditions they don't understand has muddied the picture, the low numbers of people with ME allowed it to be dismissed and sufferers were treated appallingly. The very large numbers of people with long Covid19 has in fact lead to a flurry of research activity and an increasing number of biomarkers have and are being identified along with identification of differences in immune responses and potential risk factors. There has also been the identification of other long term effects from Covid19 infection, this virus has proven to be a real little bundle of joy and a real education for many in medical research. The viruses ability to selectively target a wide range of tissues has lead to the discovery of a range of long term problems that can be identified in various organs in people who consider themselves recovered, the most worrying being the evidence of damage in the central nervous system. We also know that the effects of the virus on the cardiovascular system appears to increase the risk of cardiovascular events for up to a year following recovery. It is still the case that the background mortality rate remains higher than in the pre-Covid period and this is not readily explainable by reduced screening and medical care nor can it be attributed directly to Covid.
Even if the responses to Covid19 have principally been used to test population control and allow the transfer of money from the pockets of the poor into the pockets of the rich, the increased funding for research has in fact provided a great deal of useful information and highlighted vast areas medical ignorance which might prove to be very useful.

Found a couple of studies

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(22)00491-6/fulltexthttps://www.cochrane.org/CD013877/E...lfactory-dysfunction-after-covid-19-infection

Yes, its certainly an interesting virus and the infection has highlighted a whole range of issues that have been recognised in other diseases but have been largely ignored. Post viral illness is not uncommon but quite a number can be explained with reference to the tissues targeted by the virus, the type of immune responses generated or the heavy metabolic costs of recovery. The virus, called SARS-Cov-2 because it described as causing a sever acute respiratory syndrome, which while true has been rather misleading, most viruses are rather fussy about the cells they target and use to multiply however this virus has been described as "permissive". While it tends to enter the body via the upper respiratory tracts it can rapidly infect the deep areas in the lungs and as it enters circulation it is capable of attacking any cell type the has ACE2 receptors, and there are plenty. In fact its a common receptor type in mammals and this virus seems to readily adapt to other species, in some cases these adapted viruses retain the ability to infect humans. Its perhaps important to recognise that this virus also attacks cells of the immune system, the destruction of the developing germinal centres in lymphatic tissue is clearly associated with sever disease and death. However even without this sort of dramatic damage our immune system creates a number of different sorts of antibodies that act in a coordinated way. It has been noticed that in some people the relative balance of different antibody's and their interaction with various other immune molecules can be quite distorted and reduce their effectiveness. It seems that many people with longer term symptoms have difficulty clearing all the viral remnants, this maintaining the inflammatory responses. Some of these seem to effect very specific parts of body causing dissimilar presentations over variable periods of time, even in the majority of infections, symptoms persist for periods much longer than virus itself in the body. The risks of cardiovascular problems during an acute infection are well known but it appears that increased risks can persist for a year,
https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj.o378#:~:text=After covid, risks of heart,for up to a year.
Relapses in the infection caused by residual virus is relatively common. https://www.medscape.com/viewarticl...lrt_pos1_ous_230223&uac=29315AJ&impID=5189472
and a range of causes have been suggested.
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticl...mrk-OUS_ICYMI&uac=29315AJ&impID=5146130&faf=1
In people who develop long Covid following serious disease the symptoms can be compounded by the psychological effects of suffering a life threatening disease or experience of intensive care.

Bystander said:

It's been "the tempest in a tea pot" from day one; "long covid" is a neurotic status symbol/crown of thorns.

When something is that widespread as Covid was/is you will get all kinds of errors both in numbers etc, you will also get different interests coming out and pushing their agenda in their own preferred direction, but somewhere deep down there is the ordinary "Joe" like me who got Covid, and it took me roughly 3 months to recover, where my symptoms where mostly neurological, and purely physically I was fine already after a month in the tests, but the feeling was that of strong fatigue etc.

So please @Bystander don't throw the baby out with the bathwater , Covid clearly (it seems like the spike protein particularly) can and does create all kinds of issues with a large majority of them being neurological in nature and neurological issues not only sometimes take time to onset but for those that already have them after Covid they are not easy to diagnose medically to have that definite proof on paper.

@kyphysics You can google "Covid N protein" and search for papers that describe how that protein messes with certain mechanisms that can bring forth or accelerate diseases like Parkinsons.
I looked at that a while ago so don't have the links at hand , heres one for sneak peak

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34860005/

This paper is claiming covid deaths have been underreported in the states

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2313661121

It's difficult to make much sense out of the information in the media, while there is a lot of info around increased risk for all sorts of post covid or even post vaccination problems, the whole debate still lacks context. The issue continues to be about risk and the fact remains that simply being alive comes with lots of risks. The interactions between ourselves and all sorts of things in our environment is complex and to be honest not well understood and when this interaction involves another form of life, it becomes even more complicated. In many infections, it is our own immune system that becomes the real danger, and it can be the principal cause of long term problems and even death.

Parkinson's disease is in interesting case in point, the incidence has been increasing across the world for some time now and while we can identify a variety of factors that increase risk, and quite a few that also decrease risk, we still don't understand the mechanisms involved. I've linked to an article which reviews what we know about the effects of a variety of infections and damage to the CNS, this is clearly a well recognised issue but even though the article is recent, I suspect it may already be out of date. Maybe the most important issue is that the strongest association for an infection and Parkinson's disease is with some specific strains of influenza, with many others having stronger associations than Covid 19.

The debate around the number of deaths attributed to Covid has been ongoing since the disease was first recognised. Simply because of the way in which such deaths are identified, it is in fact quite likely that the numbers do represent an underestimate, the same issues also confound the estimates of vaccine effectiveness taken from an ever changing "landscape" of viral strains, immunity, treatments, and population characteristics. It's not really surprising that people are confused, but it has highlighted that most of our confidence about understanding the dynamics of other infectious diseases was probably misplaced. I wonder if the increasing number of deaths from other vaccine preventable diseases, caused by the fall in vaccination rates should be attributed to the effects of Covid 19.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10232873/

Laroxe said:

The debate around the number of deaths attributed to Covid has been ongoing since the disease was first recognised. Simply because of the way in which such deaths are identified, it is in fact quite likely that the numbers do represent an underestimate

I don't know much about this is other countries, but in the US, some state (not federal) governments have blatantly manipulated many kinds of Covid information for their perceived self-serving political gain.

This has then spread to the media leading to even greater confusion.

Another long COVID study and implications for future infections.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07029-4

Cognition and Memory after Covid-19 in a Large Community Sample

I'm still strugglin' with the interpretation, though
Had four or five COVIDs so far

Rive said:

Cognition and Memory after Covid-19 in a Large Community Sample

I'm still strugglin' with the interpretation, though
Had four or five COVIDs so far

Well, it appears you are in good company, particularly when in comes to long covid. I will say I started writing a reply about this which was getting long, but for some unexplained reason it disappeared into the ether. It does seem to be an issue among researchers that the long term effects of Covid may become a significant problem. There is increasing evidence that Covid can have significant long term effects, these are more common among the people who have experienced severe disease, women, the elderly and those with other comorbidities. While people are aware of the existence of a variety of post viral / post disease syndromes this disease does have some fairly unique effects on our immune system, the frequency and range of long term problems leaves other diseases standing. The current estimates from WHO are that somewhere between 7-10% of people who have had severe disease, experience log term effects, but its not limited to those.
It seems some people get stuck in a chronic state of immune activation, and for people with the worst cognitive symptoms, it's possible to identify brain changes with MRI. However, it isn't just the CNS that suffers it appears that there is evidence of an association with a range of chronic diseases it seems that people who have had COVID-19 may be more likely to develop new health conditions such as diabetes, heart conditions, blood clots, or neurological conditions. It seems that long covid increases mortality risk by about 3% but with an estimated 10 million people suffering from long covid the concern is that even following recovery mortality rates are increased.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41584-023-00964-y

Bystander said:

It's been "the tempest in a tea pot" from day one; "long covid" is a neurotic status symbol/crown of thorns.

Thats a very nice opinion. Would you care to supply evidence to back it up, or just bloviate ? Facts would be useful.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu
Global population is ~O(m) greater, mortality is ~2O(m) less, 3O(m) = "Tempest in a Tea Pot;" politics ARE not allowed on PF.

Yes, and we were talking about COVID-19 as I recall. So this is less severe than the "Spanish Flu". Is that really your response?

I ask you about kumquats and you provide a report about loganberries and then fruit in general.
People die from many causes. That will be true whether COVID -19 is a problem or not. I have my own opinions about the COVID response but would not inflict them on everyone here without relevant supporting evidence. "Tempest in a teapot' is not an evidentiary term. The 1918 flu was clearly worse than COVID-19: so was the bubonic plague. So what?

I had a discussion with a work colleague about how bad COVID 19 was now the dust has settled.

How bad was it compared to previous pandemics?

One source put COVID 19 as fifth worst plague in recorded history behind HIV.
CDC, WHO and others sources for the below (my faith in wiki has been shaken a little in the last week or so)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics_and_pandemics

That list makes for some light summer reading.......Jeez I'm going hermit immediately.

hutchphd said:

That list makes for some light summer reading.......Jeez I'm going hermit immediately.

Mostly flu and plague looking down the list.