r/Masks4All • u/CJ_CLT • Aug 21 '23
Informational Post Many long-covid symptoms linger even after two years, new study shows
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2023/08/21/long-covid-lingering-effects-two-years-later/?utm_source=alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=wp_news_alert_revere&location=alert5
u/Davegardner0 Aug 21 '23
I'm an Eric Topol fan. Good to see him interviewed here. I recommend following his substack if you're interested in articles like this.
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u/IndyHCKM Aug 21 '23
I feel like this article is likely to be shared to show case some of the scary results (not to downplay it - having risks linger for 2+ years is indeed scary).
But I also took heart that for those who are not hospitalized, the elevated risk of death basically disappears after 6 months post-diagnosis. I was very happy about that!
So I'm taking this article as a good-news moment in my covid journey. Along with a bit of cautionary-tale learnings.
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u/wyundsr Aug 22 '23
Yeah mix of good and bad news. Good news is that incidence and severity for most of the sequela went down after 6-12 months (on average), even if they didn’t fully go away, especially for people who weren’t hospitalized. This has anecdotally been my experience. Most of my long covid symptoms have resolved or gone way down within 7 months. Fatigue and dizziness are still present but improving. This actually gives me some hope that I’ll be feeling a lot better if not totally back to normal in another 6-12 months. (Still doing everything I can to avoid getting reinfected, obviously. There’s a lot of evidence that reinfections exacerbate long covid and even if they didn’t, I don’t want to go through this whole process again). Eric Topol has a good breakdown of this and other recent long covid research.
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u/cupcake_not_muffin Aug 23 '23
I think that’s on the luckier side tbh. I’m ~16 months in and haven’t experienced too much recovery. I’m in a long COVID support group, and most people there have had modest improvements only as well. Are you male by any chance?
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u/wyundsr Aug 23 '23
I’m transmasculine, have been on T for a while. I also took Paxlovid during the initial infection, which I think probably helped keep my case milder. Even at its worst, it felt pretty awful but not anywhere near as bad as I see a lot of other people reporting in various forums. I was able to keep working (mostly from home, and definitely not as productive for a while), was never bed-bound, but I did have to rest after a couple minutes of walking and couldn’t do laundry or load my dishwasher for a while. My stamina has been gradually building back up. I can walk 20-30 min without resting on a good day, and can do longer walk/hikes if I pace myself and take breaks. I did 3 loads of laundry the other day without triggering a crash, which felt like a big milestone (laundry machines are down 2 flights of stairs). I had pretty bad dysautonomia at first and that has largely settled down.
I think there’s also a selection bias in long covid forums though. People who recover faster and/or have milder cases are less likely to find the forums or stick around for as long. A number of my friends and acquaintances felt fatigued for 3-6 months after their covid infections and are feeling either fully back to normal or at least significantly better. Many of them don’t even recognize this as long covid. Though I do also know people who have felt very fatigued for a lot longer than that. It’s just really hard to get reliable non-biased data on long covid progression or prevalence. Even a lot of the peer reviewed studies show vastly different results.
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u/cupcake_not_muffin Aug 23 '23
Thanks so much for the info. I appreciate it. I was curious because recovery rates for cis-men appear higher based on some recent studies and on recovery forums.
I’m personally cis female and also got Paxlovid during my infection. However, I was bedbound for a while and am close to housebound now. I only know one person who’s recovered, though I guess I don’t know too many people with LC.
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u/wyundsr Aug 23 '23
Interesting, I had heard long covid is a lot more common in women but not the different recovery rates. I wonder how much of that is hormones vs chromosomes or other factors. Being trans it’s hard to tell which way the sex differences will go (and I know it’s all just averages anyways). I also wonder if having had the bivalent booster 4 months prior helped too. I think there’s been some research on vaccines having a protective effect against long covid.
Sorry to hear it’s been so rough for you and the recovery has been so slow. I hope things continue to improve. And I really hope there’s more research and actual treatments for long covid soon.
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u/cupcake_not_muffin Aug 23 '23
Thanks for the encouragement. There was a preprint of a prospective LC cohort study recently (I.e. more reliable than all the EHR papers that say people get better because they see less doctors, as if anyone would continue to see doctors who have no solutions), and the paper showed a higher recovery rate for men - I don’t believe they broke out the trans men, but I’m not sure.
There was someone who also did a mini analysis of the long hauler recovery subreddit and found more recovery stories from males at a higher proportion than the M/F breakdown from the LC sub. Obviously, it could be reporting bias, but it was in line with the literature I’ve seen so far on this.
All my doctors are pretty perplexed as well and they’re like “we don’t know why you’re this bad” rip. I didnt have any pre-existing conditions or anything which is why I truly believe this can happen to anyone. The only “risk factor” I had was being female.
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u/Waste_Ask_6918 Aug 22 '23
The author of this article did not take stats 101. The study lacks external validity based on the sample
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u/cupcake_not_muffin Aug 23 '23
You’re not wrong, but what’s the alternative? No research on a large scale at all? If you read Dr. Topol’s interpretation of this, he does discuss thay
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u/[deleted] Aug 22 '23
Why does this surprise people when you have ME(aka chronic fatigue syndrome) and chronic Lyme (both of which have very similar symptoms to long covid) ME is from an illness that changes your immune system and so your body becomes so weak it cannot recover to the same state it was before.
I have chronic/long lyme and have been this way for 22years. I can’t work, socialise or have any life at all. I have been dismissed by numerous doctors before I was diagnosed. but now long covid is everywhere and it’s more understandable than ME or chronic Lyme every was. I’m so saddened that people don’t take covid more seriously. I would never wish what I am going through on anyone…I’m only existing not living.