This is a beautiful example of why you should be skeptical of long covid.
Basic proof that you even had COVID when this started? Nope.
Atypical description of some medical symptom (in this case, pleuritis)
Secondary gain? Yup.
Utter nonsense (In June, she tried to do 10 minutes of stretching but it left her bed-bound for a week)
Symptoms typical for depression/anxiety (Weight loss, irregular menstrual cycles, acid reflux, an increased heart-rate, palpitations and insomnia)
Multiple negative workups
Medical jargon that is utter horseshit (She learned she had developed a ādysfunctional breathing patternā due to experiencing low oxygen levels.)
Nonsense medical treatments (taking blood thinners for āsmall blood clotsā to clear them - blood thinners donāt clear blood clots)
Likely incidental findings described as serious (fluid around the heart)
The only thing I canāt immediately explain is presumably the DLCO testing she did (the gas transfer stuff). That number is lower than I would have expected, but not close to low enough to explain her symptoms. Not sure what the accuracy of this kind of testing would be or how applicable it is to what theyāre trying to do. Iām not a pulmonologist.
In college, I developed a weird pattern of movement: I would shake my head no ans lift up my elbows involuntarily. I got to the point that would happen a hundred times a day. It was scary, I went to a shrink, MRI, etc. When I finally got to see a neurologist 2 months later, he told me it was a āticā and it was no big deal. Within a day it went away, despite him not doing anything to me.
Psychosomatic illness is real. I try not to judge people experiencing symptoms, though perhaps I failed with my ābullshitā comment.
Well, for that first group of people, the argument is that if you take anybody and give them any super severe respiratory illness that sticks them in the ICU on a ventillator for weeks, then itās not at all surprising that they may never recover their original level of fitness. So itās not really ālong COVIDā. Itās just the long term effects of being really sick and many sicknesses can cause it.
Now if they go from marathon runner to barely able to walk after a lot of rehab, thatās perhaps different.
Same is true with the second category. Post-viral loss of smell has been described after lots of viral respiratory infections. Here is an article from 2004 about it.
So, once again, there is nothing unique about COVID here. Itās something that you can get from lots of different viruses.
So calling these kinds of things ālong COVIDā makes little sense to me. Itās true that they are a result of COVID, but when people say ālong COVIDā what I think they mean to say is that there is something unique about about SARS-CoV-2 that makes these things happen. Itās more useful to think of them as generic symptoms that can happen as a result of lots of different viral illnesses. And if you think of them that way, then ālong COVIDā just feels like a weird way to describe it.
Itās a fine distinction, I suppose, and maybe not even very practical. But Iām pretty sure most of the people who say ālong COVIDā arenāt thinking about it in the way I have just described.
Seems like those are the exact type of guys who are going to notice long lasting effects, exactly because theyāre fanatically measuring their athletic performance and are going to be tuned in to any decrease. Iām not going to notice if my lungs hurt if I try to run a mile because Iām not going to try to run a fuckin mile!
Decreases in athletic performance isnāt what typically being referenced with long covid. That, again, makes sense in someone who has had pneumonia, which makes sense given her history of being pretty sick. Ditto for the shortness of breath.
The hormone stuff makes less sense. That could because they drew a thyroid level when she complained about being tired all the time. That could be covid related, itās also pretty common problem for women in that age group.
You are getting at whatās part of the problem here: thereās no real definition of what ālong covidā is. People taking months to recover fully from pneumonia is normal and makes sense. People who didnāt even provably have covid when symptoms started with all sorts of weird symptoms that are severe yet intermittent like the BBC article above does not make sense.
Well your personal sensibilities aside, I donāt imagine you would really find fault with someone who considered depression, for example, a disease of the brain.
Out of curiosity, what do you personally consider schizophrenia. Disease or brain state?
To my surprise and delight, I was able to make an appointment despite not being eligible until the 19th (since Iām in PA). So I made it for the 19th. Itās about 75 minutes away in a mostly rural area. Pfizer
My friend booked through the same site and it let him book for the 14th, despite him being in the same category as me. I hope they let him in.
I was the only one in the poll who was eligible but unable to find an appointment, but if anyone else is in that category, findashot.org got me an appointment for next week 30 miles away when I was striking out with other searches.
I agree with that. On the other hand, if there exists a widespread notion that depression is not a real ādiseaseā, then I think that harms the afflicted quite a bit.
