Long COVID is no different than long flu …
… we just don’t usually use the term “long flu,” or talk about it much.
So many things about COVID resemble other contagious illnesses, including common ones such as the flu. Some of these resemblances involve the possibility of serious consequences such as heart problems from the disease – or from the vaccine; see this for one of many posts where I discuss the issue. In that post I wrote:
From the start of the COVID phenomenon I’ve been reporting on things and crunching the numbers, and one thing I’ve noticed (both in the official releases and in the people who don’t trust them) is a great deal of failure to acknowledge the fact that all diseases and all vaccines can cause rare and troublesome reactions. That’s part of the risks of life, disease, and vaccination. …
… [I]t’s illustrative of something I noticed early on, which is that all phenomena relating to COVID have been treated as somehow uniquely awful. And yet the evidence is that they are not uniquely awful. The distrust engendered by the lies and exaggerations told by the CDC and government around COVID has resulted in a backlash that in my opinion is also an exaggeration, although an understandable one.
Which brings us to long COVID. From the start it has struck me that this phenomenon seems no different from what happens in certain cases with many other viruses. Once or twice in my life I’ve experienced a flu with symptoms that seem to drag on for many months, for example. In addition, I had a friend who was felled by H1N1 years ago, and it took well over a year before she felt completely better.
Therefore this news comes as no surprise:
Long COVID appears to manifest as a post-viral syndrome indistinguishable from seasonal influenza and other respiratory illnesses, with no evidence of increased moderate-to-severe functional limitations a year after infection, according to new research being presented at this year’s European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID 2024) in Barcelona, Spain (27-30 April). …
The findings add to previous research by the same authors and published in BMJ Public Health, which found no difference in ongoing symptoms and functional impairment when COVID-19 was compared with influenza 12 weeks post-infection.
As I said, unsurprising.
It’s called Post-Viral Syndrome and has been known about for decades.
A friend had her butt kicked by Influenza A; of course she had the vax, at the same time as her 5th corona vax. It somehow affected some nerves and/or tendons in her left leg and couldn’t walk without a cane for three weeks. It also affected her vocal chords, could barely talk for weeks, and now after 2.5 months her voice is almost back to normal.
When one notes, “They’re lying about EVERYTHING”, it also covers this.
And as the casualties mount….e.g.,
“Martin Kulldorff was wrongly fired from Harvard Medical School;
“He was broadly correct about COVID-19 policy and should be reinstated as faculty. Firing him is proof the academy is broken. Sign the petition to reinstate him.”—
https://www.sensible-med.com/p/martin-kulldorff-was-wrongly-fired
+
https://wpde.com/news/nation-world/former-harvard-professor-blasts-university-over-covid-claims-truth-can-get-you-fired-martin-kulldorff-great-barrington-declaration-coronaviruspandemic-vaccines-vax-stanford-boston-cambridge-public-health-freedom
The truly funny part (& I do mean laughable funny) is that no sooner did the Queensland Chief Health Officer do his news conference about these findings (blessed careful to remind people that “their symptoms are REAL”), than the New South Wales CHO blasted the study from multiple angles…complete with brow furrowing & harrumphing. Truly blue-on-blue horizontal violence.
Quite enjoyable really.
I have had trouble remembering things. I don’t know if it’s COVID, or some other condition, or just natural aging. The fears about long COVID involve more than persistent flu symptoms. People are worried about long term conditions and disruptions, and organ damage. I have no idea how well-grounded those fears may be.
Abraxas:
Flu can cause long-term symptoms just as COVID can; that’s the point I’m making. Flu also can cause myocarditis, as can COVID.
I have to say this even though I’ve said it before: COVID tried very hard to kill me and nearly succeeded. As it was it triggered a massive heart attack that severely damaged my heart and caused kidney sepsis that severely damaged my kidney. I’m still very much in recovery and it is difficult. Very suddenly within the space of less than two weeks I went from being a very active and athletic individual to being a physical wreck. I am improving but I feel varying degrees of shitty much of the time and the extent of my recovery remains uncertain.
I’m very very very angry about this. I know that I should be thankful to be alive but it’s hard to feel thankful.
Its a nasty bug that daszak should be suffering mightily for creating
IrishOtter:
It might take a year or two, but as long as the basic trajectory is improvement that’s at least something.
As I said, a friend of mine nearly died – and I mean, came within a hair of death – from H1N1. She was only about 50 at the time but it took her at least a year to recover and maybe more. But she did ultimately recover. She couldn’t climb stairs or anything like that for a long time; all her hair fell out but then grew back, etc..
Sorry to hear it’s been such a struggle. Hope things improve more quickly for you.
IrishOtter49 (7:51 pm) said: “COVID tried very hard to kill me and nearly succeeded.”
A very good friend of mine was very nearly done in by covid.
Otter, we’ve got your back here. You take care now, get well.
M J R
Neo, thank you for bringing this up. When I was in college, in the winter I had the flu. In the spring I had mono. In the summer I had an autoimmune disorder. And in the late fall I finally started to feel like myself again. Viruses can indeed have long-term effects. Since antibiotics arrived on the scene, we’ve forgotten that infectious diseases can affect our health in the long term. Read classic novels to see that in the past people understood the need for convalescence and recovery time.
M J R and neo:
Thank you so much for your encouraging words!
IrishOtter: your co-morbidities (massive heart attack, damaged kidneys) make teasing out any “long covid” / post-viral syndrome diagnosis impossible.
Having said that, Godspeed with your recovery.
IrishOtter49,
Anger and frustration are appropriate emotions after what you have been through.
God bless you!
When I was 17 I came down with a very bad case of chicken pox. It was during track season and I had almost no extraneous body fat, yet I still lost 10lbs. I was quarantined from school for two weeks, but once I was allowed back I went right back to running in meets. I managed to run similar times in my races, but it was an incredible struggle. Almost exactly one year later I was running and felt something I hadn’t felt in so long I nearly didn’t recognize it. Running felt effortless again.
It was then that I pieced together what had been going on. The chicken pox had taken so much out of me that it took a year for me to build back the muscle, lung capacity, red blood cells… that I had prior to the disease. No person looking at me would have thought anything was wrong, or that I was ill. I appeared to be a healthy teen who was competing fairly well. Nothing would have showed up on any diagnostic test or medical exam. But I had been feeling subpar for a year. I didn’t have “long chicken pox.” But the chicken pox had devastated me to an extent that it took me 12 months to get back to where I had been before the illness.
I had the Hong Kong flu in 1968 when I was in high school. After I got over the flu itself, I felt tired and dragged out for weeks. In 1998, I got the flu again and went through the same thing only the tired out achy feeling lasted for a couple of months. I have a friend who had COVID and it affected her badly and she still has residual effects. She also has asthma, diabetes and is obese. I wonder how many long COVID sufferers have co-morbidities?
Well, the subject that Neo probably doesn’t want to hear about, but it appears, at least from some studies, that the rate of Long COVID-19 may be higher in the over Vaxed. We do know that Vaxing statistically appears to increase the frequency that you can get COVID-19. Fauci, for example, has caught it at least 5 times. Of course, he’s old, with a weaker immune system… The ModRNA vaccines often appear to exhaust immune systems (by expending their resources fighting the spike proteins produced by the ModRNA). So, increasing the frequency of Long COVID-19 with over Vaxing doesn’t appear to be an unreasonable hypothesis.
We shall see.