Three years into the global COVID-19 pandemic, an estimated four million Americans report that long COVID is severely impacting their daily lives. Scientists are still trying to better understand the condition that brings with it severe brain fog, blood clots, and a whole host of awful medical conditions that don’t go away. Now, a study published August 21 in the journal Nature Medicine found fallout from COVID-19 can persist even two years after infection.
Biden is cleverly increasing regular workers bargaining power by letting covid disable millions!
The team also tallied the risks for over 80 different complications that are associated with long COVID and turned it into a health metric called a disability adjusted life year (DALY). Each DALY stands for one year of typically healthy life lost to illness. The team found that long COVID created over 80 DALYs, for every 1,000 people who weren’t hospitalized due to their initial infection.
Based on the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation’s Global Burden of Disease study, long COVID creates a higher burden of disability per every 1,000 Americans than cancer (roughly 50 DALYs) or heart disease (about 52 DALYs).
“Our findings highlight the substantial cumulative burden of health loss due to long COVID and emphasize the ongoing need for health care for those faced with long COVID,” said Al-Aly. “It appears that the effects of long COVID for many will not only impact such patients and their quality of life, but potentially will contribute to a decline in life expectancy and also may impact labor participation, economic productivity, and societal well-being.”
Oh wait, some good news:
The team noted one encouraging note that the risks of death or hospitalization to those who were not sent to the hospital—the majority of people infected with the virus— declined and became insignificant at six and 19 months.
I'm glad covid is over and we don't have to worry about reinfections!
Decreasing the risk of long COVID should be a focus of public health policy, according Al-Aly. “Reducing the risk of infection and transmission with updated vaccines — including vaccines that block transmission — may be a critical strategy to reduce the risk of long-term health problems,” he said. “We also need an urgent, coordinated approach that matches the scale and gravity of long COVID to find treatments as soon as possible.”
I'm sure our new leadership at the CDC will get right on it!
Vaccines won't do shit at this point. Almost nobody is taking boosters; 17% have an "updated bivalent" according to the CDC, though I'm not sure if that means 3rd dose or more recent.
SURE AM GLAD WE CANCELLED MASK MANDATES YOU FUCKS
17% with an updated bivalent is a misleading statistic. Only a small percentage of the population is eligible for/in need of two bivalent vaccines.
For most people, a single bivalent vaccine is enough. Bivalent in this case doesn’t refer to the # of shots in a series, but a specific form of the booster.
There will be another rollout shortly in the US, starting in September, with a new vaccine. If you haven’t gotten a bivalent vaccine yet you might as well wait for that one.
Not many people bothered with the bivalent booster at all. Everyone was told an infection was just as good and "hybrid immunity" was robust. I got one, and it's been almost a year at this point. My coworker got infected around this time last year, and was up to date on available vaccinations, and now they can't tolerate caffiene and were having heart issues for several months after. Antibodies from vaccinations, and infections, don't typically last a full year. We are relying on t-cell immunity to keep infections from doing too much harm, against a virus that's getting better at evading the immune system and can burn through t-cells. There is a 1 in 10 chance that you'll get long term health issues after infection. It's not ideal.
The chance of getting long Covid is actually closer to 1 in 5
I disagree with your description of fading humoral immunity and general characterization of the immune response to covid. For a more thorough explanation of Covid immunity I recommend https://www.microbe.tv/immune/immune-66/
I think you may be confused about memory B cells.
“After SARS‐CoV‐2 infection, activated SARS‐CoV‐2‐specific BMem cell frequencies are initially high, but decline over the course of 7 months, with a reciprocal increase in resting BMem cells.”
The immune system creates memories. If it doesn’t see something for a while, it starts to shut down active surveillance while increasing the number of cells that are “biding their time” in case the infection shows back up. This happens (almost) for all infections.
“Human BMem cells can be exceptionally long‐lived, with smallpox vaccine BMem lasting >50 years, and BMem cells generated from infections during the 1918 pandemic lasting at least 90 years. BMem cells are re‐activated upon an infection and are the source of classic anamnestic antibody responses. BMem cells serve two purposes. The first is a cellular source for the anamnestic antibody response. BMem cells can plausibly reactive and generate an anamnestic antibody response within 3–5 days. The second important value of BMem cells is to serve as a library of predictions by the immune system of possible future viral variants. The COVID‐19 pandemic has dramatically demonstrated the importance of BMem cell diversity in the recognition of a pathogen and variants, also highlighting the brilliance of the immune system at predicting viral mutations, embedding those predictions in the BMem cell repertoire. BMem cells likely play a role in protective immunity against SARS‐CoV‐2 infection by both of the mechanisms above.”
Memory B cells are cool. They do their job.
“BMem cells are generated in response to COVID‐19 vaccines. Similar frequencies of RBD‐binding IgG+ BMem cells are generated after 2‐dose RNA vaccines or SARS‐CoV‐2 infection. SHM levels are also substantial, and comparable between 2‐dose RNA vaccines and SARS‐CoV‐2 infection at 5 months. A substantial fraction of RBD‐binding IgG+ BMem cells from 2‐dose RNA‐vaccinated individuals also bind to VOC RBDs. Thus, 2‐dose RNA vaccines generate substantial affinity matured BMem cells.”
It’s ok that your circulating antibody levels decline. It’s normal. The memory B cells are there to help make antibodies ASAP if they are needed again.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9349657/
Edit: Left out a link and wefwef is buggy so it posted twice lol
The problem with b-cells is that the virus is mutating quite rapidly and our immune response isn't that great at recognizing the new variants depending on a whole bunch of factors, and the virus itself is putting out a chemical signal to avoid detection from the immune respone.
"Omicron seemed to evade a very large share of the memory B cells pool," researchers said, adding that it "seems to still be efficiently recognized by 30% of total antibodies and close to 10% of all potent neutralizing antibodies," said Matthieu Mahevas and Pascal Chappert of Universite de Paris in a joint email. Memory B cells' robust ability to proliferate and produce antibodies might compensate "in less than two days" for those antibodies' reduced effectiveness, they speculate.
Studying the Alpha variant, his team found a mutation at a non-spike site that causes infected cells to ramp up their production of a protein called Orf9B. Orf9b in turn disables a protein called TOM70 that cells use to send signals to the immune system. With higher levels of Orf9B disabling TOM70, the immune system does not respond as well and the virus can better evade detection, the researchers said.
So once it's in the bloodstream we're rolling the dice on how far the infection spreads before our immune system figures out what's going on, and as far as I understand it, at that point t-cells need to help clean up any infected cells.
I am extemely uncomfrotable with the idea that we are repeatedly infecting people with a virus that can infect and damage every part of the body and can also actively harm the immune system.
Since we are "living with the virus" and not doing even minor things to slow the spread, we are basically training it on billions of hosts to become more immune evasive and we have no idea how it's going to play out in the future. Right now there's a new variant (2.86) that's radically different from the original omicron and it's showing up rapidly across the world and our response is "don't panic, it might fizzle out". Not good. The acute phase of the disease is a lot more managable and less deadly, but It certainly doesn't fill me with confidence that we have a handle on the situation.
the virus itself is putting out a chemical signal to avoid detection from the immune respone.
Most viruses do this, as well as most parasites and bacteria. The flu, the strep bacteria, and most hookworms (for example) all engage in immunomodulation to evade detection.
I am extemely uncomfrotable with the idea that we are repeatedly infecting people with a virus
Do you mean vaccinating them or do you mean people becoming infected by the wild type? Because vaccines are not infecting anyone with covid, and also wild type immunity is different than vaccine immunity for a variety of reasons and it's not a great idea to generalize between the two.
we are basically training it on billions of hosts to become more immune evasive
This is an oversimplification at best, but yeah I think vaccines that allow more escape are problematic for all kinds of reasons - including worse clinical outcome. On the other hand, viruses mutate no matter what, and vaccinated individuals are less likely to shed at all so even if the virus does somehow become stronger in them it is more likely to die out before spreading to someone else. You could argue that vaccination slows the rate that viruses evolve.
Like I said, there's an updated vaccine rolling out in the next few months. It's probably a good idea to get jabbed, but you do you. Of course covid is a shitshow, and long covid is a nightmare that you should do anything you can to avoid - so it's worth considering the facts about how to do that.
Most viruses do this, as well as most parasites and bacteria.
Most common viruses don't easily bind to our brain and vital organs. If our immune response doesn't detect covid before it spreads everywhere we are risking some level of organ damage, among many other issues they're still studying.
Do you mean vaccinating them or do you mean people becoming infected by the wild type?
People who are vaccinated are getting infected, just less often, which is good. I am pro vaccination, I just don't think our vaccine schedule with the current vaccines is adequate. The virus is too contagious and mutating too quickly to follow a yearly seasonal schedule. The latest covid wave started a couple weeks ago, almost across the entire country, and we still have about a month before anyone can get the latest vaccines.
I think I might actually have Long COVID...I've had it 3 times, and each time has been extremely mild (like the most mild colds I've ever had), but at some point I realized I seem to have "lost a step" mentally...basically if I'm telling a story/giving a point etc that is multiple sentences long, I almost always have to stop because I lose my train of thought/can't think of a word for second, and this never happened before. It's relatively benign (and I'm 32 and in great physical shape) but I definitely have just noticed I'm a little slower...I also every couple of months have a day/afternoon where I'm just like "I need to lay on the couch, thinking hurts" which again never happened before....unless all this stuff is quasi-expected to happen in your 30s, kinda like the extreme beginning signs of aging.
My body started going downhill a bit at 30, but my mind was still pretty sharp. 40 on the other hand...😅 Days where you need to lie down and thinking hurts sounds like chronic fatigue syndrome tbh.
I'm so sorry. I can tell you that you aren't supposed to feel like that in your 30s.
Based on the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation’s Global Burden of Disease study, long COVID creates a higher burden of disability per every 1,000 Americans than cancer (roughly 50 DALYs) or heart disease (about 52 DALYs).
Reminder IHME has been all over the place. If you do a search on hexbear for IHME you'll find they've published a bunch of research that was used to downplay oncoming waves.
Yes but have you considered the fact that it is ableist to make me wear a mask because then I will not be able to enjoy my treats as easily. /s
