Long Covid in the media and social media 2022

them Long COVID is More Common in Bisexual and Trans People. The Reasons Why Are Complicated

quotes:

In a world where transgender people are more likely to live with chronic illness in the first place, this may not seem so surprising. “Of course [trans people] have higher rates of long COVID,” says JD Davids, co-founder of the advocacy and policy group The Network for Long COVID Justice. “We have lower rates of being treated as humans. People who are denied access to health care, resources, or bodily safety are at higher risk of ill health outcomes, including this massive disabling event known as long COVID.” Davids has lived with long COVID since March 2021, and has also lived for decades with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), also known as chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), a similarly debilitating condition.

...

Ultimately, despite the groundbreaking research of many scientists and the observations of activists and advocates, there has been a sluggish response from the U.S. government to treat long COVID with the same urgency as they developed vaccines. #MEAction, which advocates for people living with ME and their caregivers, has also called upon the Biden administration to incorporate feedback from people most affected by chronic illness when making plans to address it. “The government’s forthcoming action plan must make a complete break with the decades-long pattern of neglect and marginalization of the ‘millions missing’ who are living with complex chronic illness,” the organization’s U.S. advocacy director Ben HsuBorger said in a statement.

 

Has COVID-19 caused an increase in [UK] Income Protection claims?

"The financial value of Covid claims paid to date is small relative to the value of claims otherwise paid by Income Protection insurers. Most Covid claims have arisen on policies with short waiting periods and most of the people claiming have returned to work rapidly.

There is little evidence of increases in premiums resulting from Covid.

The insured population is not representative of the general population. It is certainty plausible that in the general population there is higher prevalence of Long Covid that is severe enough to affect ability to work.

But for the hundreds of people who have received insurance benefits to date, the money and other support services will have relieved some of the worry that comes with suffering from Covid-related health issues."

https://covidactuaries.org/2022/07/26/has-covid-19-caused-an-increase-in-income-protection-claims/

Which all assumes that the insurers are 'playing fair' with any claim that gets submitted to them. Claims paid is not necessarily equal to claims made.

 

"The majority of long-COVID patients suffer from chronic fatigue syndrome, a disease entity very similar to ME/CFS"

From:
Long COVID and the cardiovascular system – elucidating causes and cellular mechanisms in order to develop targeted diagnostic and therapeutic strategies. A joint Scientific Statement of the ESC Working Groups on Cellular Biology of the Heart and Myocardial & Pericardial Diseases

From:
https://academic.oup.com/cardiovascres/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cvr/cvac115/6649450

 

Thread here, Long COVID and the cardiovascular system – elucidating causes and cellular mechanisms in order to (...), 2022, Gyöngyösi et al

 

An opinion piece published today, commenting on Kjöller's most recent opinion piece.

Elsa Kugelberg: Vi vill gå vidare, men lidandet för dem med postcovid kan inte viftas bort
https://www.dn.se/kultur/elsa-kugel...t-for-dem-med-postcovid-kan-inte-viftas-bort/

 

I've read some tweets from doctors that are now referring to M.E as 'now called CFS'.

 

Bronze John updated to Yellow Fever
Black Dog updated to Depression
Domestic Malady updated to depression or another sort of emotional breakdown
Jail Fever updated to Typhus
Change of Life updated to puberty or menopause
The Shakes updated to Parkinson's Disease

Imagine all the possibilities

 

Bit random because I just saw a similar discussion, but this is a flaw in human nature, and it's that different disciplines handle it better than some depending on how rigorous they are, medicine probably the worst of all. It depends on biases and incentives, whether getting things right even matters, whether it's easy to assess after the fact.

There's been a lot of discussion lately on social media over the SSRI hypothesis, and I can't help but see that in response to a major error being corrected, most people default to doing the same thing. All over all I see is people basically rolling their eyes at how obvious it is that all of this is caused by lifestyle choices, by not eating well and not exercising enough.

For which the evidence is just as poor as the serotonin hypothesis. It's too easy to ascribe failure to not doing something basic right. The answer is so damn easy, so basic, it's so evident and everyone is basically guilty of not doing simple things right. The main consequence of this is that being guilty of doing simple things wrong obviously has a simple fix: you. You are doing it wrong. So just do it right. Right? Poor? Make more money. Sick? Don't be sick. Exhausted? Just stop being exhausted and move. Discriminated? Don't be discriminated. It's so simple a child could think of it. Literally, it's childish thinking after all.

This isn't just the general public, because medicine, surprise, comes from the general public as well. They represent the whole population and culture, more or less. We see generally the same over Covid's shortness of breath, and how the immediate default, and somehow going strong, was that the obvious answer to people not being able to breathe right... is that they aren't breathing right. Duh. Your breathing patterns are just wrong. You are literally breathing wrong, unlike people who breathe right and have no breathing problems. Idiot.

The same with us and the generic MUS model of thinking too much. Or too little. Or wrong. Essentially though, we're thinking wrong. And not moving right. All simple things that a child does naturally, and we kind of just "forgot" how to do it right, I guess.

Medicine is every bit as guilty of this as any random person. It comes from the same place, from having lived 99% of our species' existence without the knowledge that there is such a thing as actual knowledge. Science is very unnatural to us and it's simply too easy to fall back to our default algorithm of blaming vague shadows out there, somewhere.

 

Article in National Gdographic
How multiple COVID-19 infections can harm the body

 

This is a good article by Marie-Claire Seeley from The Australian POTS Foundation:

 

This early on, changes in working patterns will very much be an underestimate. Some with mild conditions will manage by severely curtailing their other activities to stay in full time work. Some will succeed in this struggle to continue working but others in the next few years will recognise the struggle is futile.

I did not go part time at work until after some four or five years, and then I was only forced to finally take ill health retirement some four or five years after that. This included a final six months of sick leave, before the retirement was agreed.

[for some mysterious reason I managed to publish this post before I had written the content, so edited to include my actual post.]

 

Long covid symptoms will be permanent for for many, says study
"Loss of smell and taste adversely affects quality of life by depriving those affected of several everyday pleasures and social bonds"
https://www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/health-news/long-covid-symptoms-permanent-many-27624633

A permanent loss of smell is known as parosmia. Other potential consequences of Covid such as heart palpitations or chronic fatigue syndrome, meanwhile, are deemed more serious.

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1554220658913153024

 

Three Distinct Types of Long-COVID Identified

The authors said that classification may be useful to understand "distinct mechanisms of the post-COVID syndrome", as well as subgroups of individuals "at risk of prolonged debilitation".

https://www.medscape.co.uk/viewarticle/three-distinct-types-long-covid-identified-2022a1001wsc

 

Here's the study.

 

Today 19.32
'The Guardian view on long Covid: an unknown enemy'
Editorial

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...-guardian-view-on-long-covid-an-unknown-enemy