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!
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.
I'm so sorry. I can tell you that you aren't supposed to feel like that in your 30s.
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.