"Full recovery" from COVID-19? Read this from WSJ

[cmm3rd]

Doctors Begin to Crack Covid’s Mysterious Long-Term Effects
Severe fatigue, memory lapses, heart problems affect patients who weren’t that badly hit initially; ‘It’s been so long’
Nov. 1, 2020 12:49 pm ET

Nearly a year into the global coronavirus pandemic, scientists, doctors and patients are beginning to unlock a puzzling phenomenon: For many patients, including young ones who never required hospitalization, Covid-19 has a devastating second act.

Many are dealing with symptoms weeks or months after they were expected to recover, often with puzzling new complications that can affect the entire body—severe fatigue, cognitive issues and memory lapses, digestive problems, erratic heart rates, headaches, dizziness, fluctuating blood pressure, even hair loss.

What is surprising to doctors is that many such cases involve people whose original cases weren’t the most serious, undermining the assumption that patients with mild Covid-19 recover within two weeks. Doctors call the condition “post-acute Covid” or “chronic Covid,” and sufferers often refer to themselves as “long haulers” or “long-Covid” patients.

“Usually, the patients with bad disease are most likely to have persistent symptoms, but Covid doesn’t work like that,” said Trisha Greenhalgh, professor of primary care at the University of Oxford and the lead author of an August BMJ study that was among the first to define chronic Covid patients as those with symptoms lasting more than 12 weeks and spanning multiple organ systems.
For many such patients, she said, “the disease itself is not that bad,” but symptoms like memory lapses and rapid heart rate sometimes persist for months.

In October, the National Institutes of Health added a description of such cases to its Covid-19 treatment guidelines, saying doctors were reporting Covid-19-related long-term symptoms and disabilities in people with milder illness.
“You don’t realize how lucky you are with your health until you don’t have it,” said Elizabeth Moore, a 43-year-old lawyer and mother of three in Valparaiso, Ind. Pre-Covid-19 she was an avid skier and did boot-camp workouts several times a week. Since falling ill in March, she has been struggling with symptoms including memory problems and gastrointestinal issues. She has lost nearly 30 pounds.

Estimates about the percentage of Covid-19 patients who experience long-haul symptoms range widely. A recent survey of more than 4,000 Covid-19 patients found that about 10% of those age 18 to 49 still struggled with symptoms four weeks after becoming sick, that 4.5% of all ages had symptoms for more than eight weeks, and 2.3% had them for more than 12 weeks. The study, which hasn’t yet been peer reviewed, was performed using an app created by the health-science company Zoe in cooperation with King’s College London and Massachusetts General Hospital.

Another preliminary study looking mostly at nonhospitalized Covid patients found that about 25% still had at least one symptom after 90 days. A European study found about one-third of 1,837 nonhospitalized patients reported being dependent on a caregiver about three months after symptoms started.

With more than 46 million cases world-wide, even the lower estimates would translate into millions living with long-term, sometimes disabling conditions, increasing the urgency to study this patient population, researchers said. What they find could have implications for how clinicians define recovery and what therapies they prescribe, doctors said.

Doctors say anxiety caused by social isolation and uncertainty surrounding the pandemic may exacerbate symptoms, though that isn’t likely the primary cause.

Other viral outbreaks, including the original SARS, MERS, Ebola, H1N1 and the Spanish flu, have been associated with long-term symptoms. Scientists reported that some patients experienced fatigue, sleep problems and joint and muscle pain long after their bodies cleared a virus, according to a recent review chronicling the long-term effects of viral infections.

What differentiates Covid-19 is the far-reaching nature of its effects. While it starts in the lungs, it often affects many other parts of the body, including the heart, kidneys and the digestive and nervous systems, doctors said.

“I haven’t really seen any other illness that affects so many different organ systems in as many different ways as Covid does,” said Zijian Chen, medical director for Mount Sinai Health System’s Center for Post-Covid Care.

He described colleagues who were energetic, but after getting sick, had trouble getting through the day. He said he has seen up close how Covid-19 still affects their ability to do the things they love.
“We thought it was a virus that, once it does what it does, you recover and you go back to normal,” he said. Sometimes that isn’t the case, and that “is really scary,” he said.

A leading explanation for long-Covid symptoms is that immune-system activity and ensuing inflammation continue to affect organs or the nervous system even after the virus is gone, researchers said.

Some of the most compelling evidence for the inflammation theory comes from Covid-19 patients with signs of heart inflammation and injury months after illness. One study looking at 100 Covid-19 patients two months after getting sick found that 78 had abnormal findings on cardiac magnetic resonance imaging, while 60 had cardiac MRIs indicating heart-muscle inflammation. The study included hospitalized, nonhospitalized and asymptomatic patients.

“Even those who had no symptoms and were young and fit…even in those patients we saw abnormalities,” said Eike Nagel, one of the lead authors and director of the Institute for Experimental and Translational Cardiovascular Imaging at the University Hospital Frankfurt in Germany.
Some patients had scarring on their heart imaging, he said, which worried him. The scarring wasn’t too serious, he said, but “we know from other studies that this is related to worse outcomes.”

Doctors also are reporting cases of long-Covid patients with gastrointestinal issues. Recent work has found the new coronavirus, known as SARS-CoV-2, in fecal matter and intestinal lining of some Covid-19 patients, suggesting the virus can infect and damage the cells of the gut. The intestines have a high density of ACE2 receptors, a type of protein on the surface of cells, which SARS-CoV-2 uses to infiltrate cells.

Nervous System
Many patients report issues with concentration and memory, sometimes referred to as “brain fog.” Some say they forget what they’re trying to say or do. Neurologists seeing such patients say cognitive problems are among the most common symptoms.
Some neurologists say they are seeing patients with signs of dysautonomia, or dysregulation of the autonomic nervous system. The autonomic nervous system regulates involuntary functions such as breathing, digestion and heart rate.

Taste and Smell
Patients say it can take weeks or months to regain their senses of smell and taste. They say the loss of these senses affects not just their diet but their mental health.

Lungs
Some patients report persistent shortness of breath. Doctors often prescribe asthma inhalers and breathing exercises to help improve lung function. The exact cause is unknown. It could be related to aberrant nervous system function, lung injury or a compromised cardiovascular system.

Cardiovascular System
Many patients experience a racing heartbeat, or tachycardia, as well as extreme blood pressure changes. Some physicians think this could be related to an issue with the nervous system, particularly the autonomic arm, which deals with involuntary functions like heart rate and blood pressure.
Some patients have signs of heart-muscle inflammation weeks or months after infection, doctors and researchers say. In some cases, they don’t report any symptoms, while others say they have shortness of breath and chest pain.

Digestive System
Patients report issues with abdominal pain and diarrhea weeks or months after coming down with Covid-19. Some physicians are recommending avoiding certain foods, such as dairy and gluten.

Musculoskeletal System
Some patients report mild muscle and joint aches. Others have more severe pain.
Many patients also report persistent fatigue weeks or months after coming down with Covid-19, even when they had a mild or moderate course of illness and didn’t require hospitalization. The fatigue can be debilitating and get in the way of regular daily activities, like work and spending time with family.

The virus also might cause changes in gut bacteria, said Brennan Spiegel, a gastroenterologist and director of health services research at Cedars-Sinai Health System, who has had patients come in with abdominal pain and diarrhea weeks or months after coming down with Covid-19.

Ms. Moore, the Indiana lawyer, got Covid-19 in March and initially felt better by the end of April. “I thought I beat this thing. I was ecstatic,” said Ms. Moore, who tested positive for coronavirus antibodies in May.
That month, her health took a sharp turn for the worse. She struggled with tachycardia, or a racing heartbeat, and blood-pressure fluctuations. Those symptoms improved, but she still has gastrointestinal problems. A recent test found stomach-lining inflammation. Pepcid, antihistamines and avoiding dairy products have provided some relief, but other symptoms such as memory deficits persist.
“I feel like there has to be some sort of next step,” she said, “because I’m not ready to accept this as my new reality.”
She enrolled in a research study at the Neuro Covid-19 Clinic at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago, one of several clinics across the country aiming to find solutions for patients.

Some symptoms could be collateral damage from the body’s immune response during the acute infection, researchers said. Some patients might harbor an undetectable reservoir of infectious virus or have bits of noninfectious virus in some cells that trigger an immune response, they said.

Another possibility is that the virus causes some people’s immune systems to attack and damage their own organs and tissues, researchers said. A June study found roughly half of 29 hospitalized ICU patients with Covid-19 had one or more types of autoantibodies—antibodies that mistakenly target and attack a patient’s own tissues or organs.

Doctors say some patients appear to be developing dysautonomia, or dysregulation of the autonomic nervous system, the part of the nervous system that regulates involuntary functions like breathing, digestion and heart rate, some researchers and doctors said.
David Putrino, director of rehabilitation innovation at Mount Sinai Health System in New York City, said the majority of the more than 300 long-Covid patients being seen at its Center for Post-Covid Care appear to have developed a dysautonomia-like condition. About 90% of such patients report having symptoms of exercise intolerance, fatigue and elevated heartbeats. About 40% to 50% also report symptoms such as gastrointestinal issues, headaches and shortness of breath.

Dr. Putrino said inflammation from the virus might be disrupting the normal functioning of the vagus nerve—the body’s longest cranial nerve—which relays messages to the lungs, gut and heart.

As a member of the Johns Hopkins University varsity cross-country team, 19-year-old Christopher Wilhelm used to run 10 miles a day. Now, there are days he can’t even walk a quarter mile with his mom around their Maitland, Fla., neighborhood without feeling wiped out.
Mr. Wilhelm, who tested positive for Covid-19 in June, said his heart rate shoots up during those walks, ranging from 130 to 170 beats a minute. He was diagnosed recently with a form of dysautonomia characterized by fluctuations in blood pressure and heart rate when patients sit or stand up, a condition known as postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, or POTS. His doctors also are evaluating him for cardiac issues. Medications he has tried haven’t yet helped his heart-rate spikes.
“After I tested positive, I was just expecting it to be two weeks of flulike symptoms, and then I’d pretty much be back to normal,” he said. “It’s been so long already, it’s kind of daunting.”

Six months after getting sick with Covid-19, Jennica Harris, 33, said she has persistent fatigue and problems with memory and concentration. She struggles to find simple words during conversations, often loses her train of thought and has developed a stutter.
“I usually know what I want to say when I want to say it, and I usually don’t hold back,” she said. “When I try to get my point across and I can’t, that hurts my confidence, my sense of self.”

The constellation of such neurological symptoms, along with persistent fatigue, joint pain and headaches, resembles myalgic encephalomyelitis, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome, said Anthony Komaroff, a Harvard Medical School professor of medicine who has studied the syndrome for decades. The condition can follow certain viral and bacterial infections, he said. He thinks the condition likely follows Covid-19, too, at least in a portion of patients. A 2009 study of 233 SARS survivors found 27% met criteria for chronic fatigue syndrome four years after getting sick.

It still isn’t known whether the new coronavirus gets into the brain itself, or if Covid-19’s neurological symptoms stem from a body-wide inflammatory response, scientists say.

In autopsies of some Covid-19 patients, doctors have observed encephalitis, or inflammation of the brain. Small autopsy studies also have found preliminary evidence of coronavirus particles in regions of the brain important for smell. With other infections, viral particles have been found in the brains of patients with encephalitis, though it is rare, said Walter Royal, a neurovirologist and director of Morehouse School of Medicine’s Neuroscience Institute. What is more common is that the virus infects the lining of the blood vessels, causing damage and inflammation that in turn affects the brain.

How long it will take long-Covid patients to recover remains unknown. Dr. Putrino said most of them won’t get better on their own, and will need at least six months of structured rehabilitation.
“What tends to happen to people who don’t get treatment and don’t get the recognition they need is they slump down to a new normal of function,” he said.

[dan_s]

Survival Rate of COVID Now Estimated to be 99.8%, Similar to Flu, Prior T-Cell Immunity

The survival rate of COVID-19 has been upgraded since May to 99.8% of infections. This comes close to ordinary flu, the survival rate of which is 99.9%. Although COVID can have serious after-effects, so can flu or any respiratory illness. The present survival rate is far higher than initial grim guesses in March and April, cited by Dr. Anthony Fauci, of 94%, or 20 to 30 times deadlier. The Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) value accepted by Yeadon et al in the paper is .26%. The survival rate of a disease is 100% minus the IFR.

Dr. Yeadon pointed out that the "novel" COVID-19 contagion is novel only in the sense that it is a new type of coronavirus. But, he said, there are presently four strains which circulate freely throughout the population, most often linked to the common cold.

https://discover.hubpages.com/politics/ ... ic-is-Over

[cmm3rd]

Although COVID can have serious after-effects, so can flu or any respiratory illness.

If you are suggesting that the incidence, breadth, and severity of long term complications following recovery from COVID-19 are comparable to those for "flu or any respiratory illness," you would be guessing in the absence of any supporting data.

I posted the WSJ article in response to the repeated, misleading, sometimes hyperbolic posts here that those who recover from the acute phase of COVID-19 are "recovered" or "fully recovered." As this in-depth article shows, many "recovered" Covid patients, while no longer in the acute phase, are not "fully recovered." The true incidence of "long Covid" is still not known, but the statistics for "long Covid" cited in the article (did you read them?) are significant (far higher than mortality rates) and therefore concerning from a pubic health perspective.

Whether we like it or not, some people (if informed) will choose to factor the possibility of being affected by "long Covid" into their risk assessment when deciding what risks to take and to not take and what mitigation measures to follow or not follow. They deserve accurate information.

Your persistent minimizing of the seriousness of COVID-19 (and, here, implicit dismissal of long Covid risk as relevant to risk assessment) is as misinforming as would be exaggerations of its seriousness that you condemn.

Early on, you compared COVID severity to flu. You repeat that mistake here. At 250,000 U.S. Covid-19 deaths over the last 10 months, we are well ahead of the numbers of flu deaths for comparable periods in recent years. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2019-2020.html That Covid mortality number of course does not count the many patients who "recovered" but who have (or will develop) significant, long term sequellae that in some cases are life-altering.

I am not advocating for lockdowns, cancellation of Thanksgiving, or any particular policy response. Rather, just for accuracy, so that people can make their judgments based on their own risk assessments that are fact-based, not based on hyperbole on either side of the issue.

[dan_s]

That statement you quote is not from me. It comes from the former Chief Science Officer of Pfizer. Read the article at the link I posted. There are "experts" on both sides of this. Most of them have been wrong, including Dr. Fauci. Do you remember when they said 2.5 million Americans will die from Covid-19?

Each of us are going to die. As we age most of us will loose memories. Serious illness and surgery speed up the aging process. Susan had major back surgery 1.5 years ago and her energy level has not fully recovered. My sister had "minor" surgery that caused an infection and it has aged her by ten year.

I'm sure a lot of people will never recover from a serious case of Covid-19. I'm also sure NONE of us will recover from old age.

MY OPINION (in CAPS for a reason) is that more lockdowns won't solve anything, but they will create more poverty and poverty is terrible. Millions of young people have lost their jobs and many families are heading into poverty. FEAR is being used by the government to control us and that scares me a lot more than this virus.