Whatever you think of Covid, of its origins, or whether serious or not, some one in eight people have long covid impacts. Long covid is described as post-infection symptoms persisting for at least a month. Long covid has been part of the infection from the beginning.
My first view experience was speaking to Prof Joanne who caught covid in the USA in the first days of January 2020. Six months following, her life had been turned upside down with seizures and illness, and to make it worse, as a Professor of Diseases she was dismissed as not having a physician illness but just psychological. Seeing her pain, I have had a full course of vaccines, and had 2 infections, one in India and 5 months later, in Germany. Vaccinations and masks reduce catching of the virus and minimise impacts.
It is estimated that about 1 in 37 Americans have COVID right now – that is about 300,000 people. A recent study shows one in four may have long COVID (Published Nov 19 2024). In Australia, Flu tracking shows the numbers have remained consistent over the past 4 years about 1% of people (“Australia Reports | Flutracking.Net,” n.d.).
Long Covid Impacts – Four Years On
Four years on, and we know a great deal more, and Salvatore Mattera (Salvatore Mattera [@SalvMattera] 2024) says his most controversial take on COVID, and what everyone is getting wrong about this, is that it’s a disease whose burden falls primarily on the young. Not the old.
Conventional wisdom is that COVID is only something old people need to worry about. We see this in revisionist arguments over whether it was wise to close schools, or who should get vaccine booster shots. Or if young people need to get vaccinated in the first place.
Underlying all of this is a very simplistic and very naive view of the data. People are focusing only a single metric: deaths. And to be sure, deaths from COVID are overwhelmingly concentrated among people 65+:
Financial Costs
When people talk about the devastation from COVID, they usually cite the number of people who died (7 million, 20 million, 30 million) or the economic cost ($14 trillion, $35 trillion, etc) but this pales in comparison to the true cost, something most people do not understand or talk about:
Vaccination Works!
NSW Australia data estimated unvaccinated individuals had a 7.7-fold greater mortality rate than those who were fully vaccinated [two doses], with this mortality rate estimated to be 11.2 times higher when compared to vaccinated individuals who received a booster.’ (“newsGP – Modelling Reveals Number of Lives Saved by COVID Vaccine Rollout,” n.d.)
It was once widely believed that children weren’t nearly as affected, but recent research has shown that’s sadly not the case, with a similar share of kids and teenagers having long lasting health problems from their COVID infection.
Long Covid Numbers
But deaths are not the only metric that matters. Any honest reading of the situation needs to also factor in things like disability and chronic illness. Unfortunately, these things are just much harder to measure. And so, they are often just totally ignored.
We do know that somewhere around 25% of people who survive COVID will develop some kind of long-term health issues. These vary in severity from mild fatigue that lasts a few months, to being completely bed-bound and out of work for years or longer:
From University of Nebraska (Published Nov 19 2024)
Children Get Hit The Hardest
And while these symptoms can affect anyone at any age, younger and middle-aged adults actually seem to get hit the hardest:
From Neurologic Manifestations of Long COVID Disproportionately Affect Young and Middle-Age Adults (Choudhury et al. 2024)
Children Long Term Impacts
While they may not be hit as severely on average as middle-aged folks, children are also susceptible to the long term health problems from COVID:
Cumulative Impact
Children and teens are susceptible (Gross et al. 2024)
At this point, it’s widely accepted that people are destined to catch COVID repeatedly throughout their lives. Maybe once a year or even more often.
Imagine you are a kid or middle-aged person who is looking forward to dozens of COVID reinfections over the course of your life. What do we think will happen to you?
Well, we know that the more times you’ve been infected with the COVID, the more likely you are to have longer term health issues from your infection. So maybe you have been fine so far, but the 10th infection you get 5 years from now will be the one that disables you:
Postacute sequelae of COVID-19 at 2 years (“Postacute Sequelae of COVID-19 at 2 Years | Nature Medicine,” n.d.)
Long Covid – ME/CFS
Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome is a complex disease and long covid appears similar. Maybe you already have some lingering issues from your prior COVID infections. Well, now we know that you’re at least susceptible to getting them. Based on surveys of patients, it’s likely that your symptoms will get worse. Or if you recovered from them, they may come back
A lot of people with these issues meet the diagnostic criteria for ME/CFS, maybe as many as half and we know from prior research that ME and Chronic Fatiqu (McManimen et al. 2016)
Unfortunately, while ME/CFS is not considered a terminal illness, people with ME/CFS have a lower life expectancy, perhaps as much as 20 years less.
Decline in Health from Repeat Infections
And so as time passes, and young and middle-aged people are infected with COVID again and again, their health (or at least the health of a large minority of them) will slowly decline. It won’t happen overnight, and unlike a death, it won’t be easy to measure
But you should be able to see it in various statistics:
- the number of people with chronic illnesses.
- The number of people who are disabled.
- Life expectancy.
Fortunately for those with a vested interest in denying this is happening, this will all be quite messy.
But whenever you see someone arguing that it was a mistake to close schools in 2020, see if they factor in any long term health consequences to the kids who were infected in their calculations. It is almost guaranteed that they will not.
When you hear someone saying young adults or kids don’t need COVID boosters, listen closely to see if they’ll mention these long-term health issues. They won’t.
Resources
If you have long COVID, Mattera has put together a catalog of long COVID doctors for the USA community. If you’ve seen any doctors recently you’d like to recommend (or naturopaths, or other practitioners), please fill out the form :
Politics
If you’re someone who thought COVID was over and the vaccine saved the day, then the appointment of RFK Jr in the USA might come as a surprise or a shock to you. But it’s what MatteraI expected. He assumed the COVID vaccines will eventually be banned in some areas.
This is because COVID is not over. It’s given about a quarter of the population a new chronic health condition, and with every reinfection, it gets a little worse. People know their own bodies, and understand that their health is in decline.
But most of them don’t know why. Largely because the government and the media has sold a story that COVID is over – that as long as you’re vaccinated, you have nothing to worry about. To sell this lie, they have created an increasingly complex web of propaganda.
The idea that COVID ended is a mass delusion
People want it *so badly* but sorry, it’s just not. Literally the only way you can think that is if you just don’t look at the data. Which most people don’t. Because they don’t want to.
Many have given up on other people masking. It would be nice if they did, but it’s hard to see it happening at this point, at least until they’re personally affected by long COVID, and even then, maybe not.
Mattera has seen dozens of doctors for his long COVID symptoms. Most of them in California. See his google Sheet document.
Few people take COVID seriously anymore. Part of this may be from experience – people got COVID a couple times, recovered, and think they’re fine – but a lot can be blamed on the media. Here are some tactics the media continues to use to downplay COVID and mislead the public:
- Referring to it in the past tense. Most headlines will use the word “during” when referring to COVID, such as “during the pandemic”.
- Explicitly declare that we are living in a “post-pandemic” world.
Recent Studies on Long Covid
As Danilo Buonsenso in his substack blog says the bad news is that
- As patients well know, Long Covid and ME/CFS are real organic immune metabolic conditions. Something in the sera, probably antibodies, really screw up tissues and metabolisms.
- Secondly, the longer patients are ill and without any treatment, the lower is the possibility to recover. One of the papers referenced shows longer exposures to sera damages patients tissues further.
He points out some good news:
- Stop stating that Long Covid and ME/CFS are not real diseases!
- Researchers can now now focus on trials targeting seriously the possible antibodies being in the sera.
- There is no need to continue to fund observational studies. That money needs to go to studies and trials!!!!
User Stories of Long Covid
I was diagnosed with long COVID shortly after my third COVID infection in early 2023. This is despite getting all the vaccines and all the boosters, and despite taking paxlovid. I was 33 years old, with no major health problems. Only time I saw a doctor was at my annual physical
I worked out 5-6x/wk, sometimes 2x/day. I had a personal trainer at Equinox. The day I found out I had COVID for the 3rd time, I had booked a hot yoga class for that night. I had to call and cancel, “sorry I have COVID,” I said. I didn’t know it would probably be the last time I ever booked a hot yoga class.
More Reading
“Australia Reports | Flutracking.Net.” n.d. Accessed December 13, 2024. https://info.flutracking.net/reports/australia-reports/.
Choudhury, Natasha A., Shreya Mukherjee, Tracey Singer, Aditi Venkatesh, Gina S. Perez Giraldo, Millenia Jimenez, Janet Miller, et al. 2024. “Neurologic Manifestations of Long COVID Disproportionately Affect Young and Middle-Age Adults.” Annals of Neurology, November. https://doi.org/10.1002/ana.27128.
Gross, Rachel S., Tanayott Thaweethai, Lawrence C. Kleinman, Jessica N. Snowden, Erika B. Rosenzweig, Joshua D. Milner, Kelan G. Tantisira, et al. 2024. “Characterizing Long COVID in Children and Adolescents.” JAMA 332 (14): 1174–88. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2024.12747.
“newsGP – Modelling Reveals Number of Lives Saved by COVID Vaccine Rollout.” n.d. NewsGP. Accessed December 13, 2024. https://www1.racgp.org.au/newsgp/clinical/modelling-reveals-number-of-lives-saved-by-covid-v.
“Postacute Sequelae of COVID-19 at 2 Years | Nature Medicine.” n.d. Accessed December 13, 2024. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02521-2.
Published Nov 19, 2024. 2024. “Study Finds 1 in 4 Americans May Have Long COVID.” The Transmission. November 19, 2024. https://www.unmc.edu/healthsecurity/transmission/2024/11/19/study-finds-1-in-4-americans-may-have-long-covid/.
Salvatore Mattera [@SalvMattera]. 2024. “I Think My Most Controversial Take on COVID, and What I Think Nearly Everyone in Is Getting Wrong about This, Is That It’s a Disease Whose Burden Falls Primarily on the Young. Not the Old.” Tweet. Twitter. https://x.com/SalvMattera/status/1863125028080144473.
Substack. n.d. “Major Evidence from 3 Studieson Something Wrong in the Serum of Long Covid-ME/CFS Patients.” Accessed December 13, 2024. https://substack.com/home/post/p-150149104.473.
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