Long COVID is finally brought to light
Before 2020's horrifying initial wave of COVID-19 deaths receded, reports began to emerge alerting to a deadly second punch: some people were experiencing symptoms following a minor infection that persisted or even worsened in the weeks and months that followed, as opposed to simply going away.
Long COVID is the name given to the condition. Everything about it was unknown in those early stages, including the symptoms it produced and their duration and severity. Some people believed that the symptoms would be essentially incurable and that a significant portion of people who contracted SARS-CoV-2 would end up dying from this serious illness. "Months of illness might morph into years of infirmity," Ed Yong of the Atlantic said. With the growing number of bodies in makeshift
Anecdotal experiences and exploratory research were pieced together to provide the first reports of how COVID appeared to radically alter people.
They painted a terrifying picture: A study released a year after the epidemic started found that up to a third of all individuals who had tested positive later reported having lengthy COVID. Few of them had fully recovered, and many of them were incapacitated and unable to work or go to school. One early and significant account was written by the British epidemiologist Paul Garner, who described how he was flattened by a "roller coaster of ill health, strong emotions, and complete fatigue" in the medical journal BMJ. He experienced a parade of "constantly shifting, odd symptoms" that rendered him bedridden, including unrelenting, excessive weariness, a "muggy brain," dyspnea, muscle discomfort, and a "funny sensation in the skin".
Long COVID is a rare disorder due to its wide range of symptoms as well as the fact that it wasn't first recognised by clinicians who saw patients with related sets of symptoms. Instead, COVID patients who found themselves curiously unable to improve in the early months of the epidemic recounted it. Activists then took up and reinforced the grievances of the early "long-haulers," and through their lobbying, they succeeded in getting the government to commit more than $1 billion to research. Long COVID "has a strong claim to be the first sickness produced through patients finding one another on Twitter," researchers Felicity Callard and Elisa Perego stated in the journal Social Science & Medicine.
Patients were understandably disappointed to discover no explanation from the medical profession about their peculiar ailment despite their desperation for answers.
Three years later, a fuller picture of extended COVID has formed as the study is now catching up to the anecdotal stories and the early data. It turns out that many of our first assumptions regarding COVID-19 were significantly off, much like COVID-19 itself. Thankfully, this time around, most of the surprises are pleasant. Long COVID is not as prevalent or harmful as once thought. Another encouraging evidence that, as President Biden stated in his State of the Union speech, "COVID no longer exists" is that the U.S. government is working to lift the nation's state of emergency.
Researchers at the Mayo Clinic examined the symptoms of 108 people who had come for post-COVID care as vaccines began to be distributed nationwide in 2021. Their findings revealed that these patients could be divided into two groups. Other people, particularly men, had severe illnesses and were nevertheless bothered by symptoms like shortness of breath and chest pain. Others, especially women, who had relatively minor illnesses or no symptoms at all later had "widespread discomfort, weariness," and "cognitive impairment, including the frequently observed "brain fog." The authors highlighted that this group of symptoms resembled a class of generally comparable illnesses like POTS (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome), fibromyalgia, and chronic fatigue syndrome, all of which can render victims disabled for years.
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