I have COVID-19 and No, It's Not the Flu

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An interesting article on our local news website today about Covid "long haulers" and some studies being undertaken, and rehabilitation programs being started, in Europe.

"For much of Europe, the peak of Covid-19 infections has passed. But while hospitals are no longer awash with acute cases, there are thousands of people who had either confirmed or suspected Covid and, weeks or months later, say they are far from fully recovered.

In the United Kingdom, communities of "long Covid" sufferers have spring up online, as people try to manage what appear to be long-term effects of a virus about which much remains unknown."


https://www.wral.com/coronavirus/br...email&utm_campaign=newsletter&utm_source=wral
 
AR - maybe you've seen this. There is a part where Dr. Marik is talking about possible treatments for people who experence ongoing problems/symptoms of COVID-19.

 
Another Reader,
Please count me among all the others who greatly appreciate your posts here. Some are very painful to read but I think each one is invaluable to our knowledge of this subject. I will be hoping and praying for you and wish you the very best.
 
Gulfbeach said:
Another Reader,
Please count me among all the others who greatly appreciate your posts here. Some are very painful to read but I think each one is invaluable to our knowledge of this subject. I will be hoping and praying for you and wish you the very best.
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Thank you.
 
Have you ever a bad case of the flu. I had my last severe case in around 2002. It was a doozy. Never went to the doctor and had to struggle thru work (milking cows) for all but a day or two. Got it very early April ,(late flu season that year) and felt under the weather or not myself until at least mid May. My daughters wanted to drive to the farm for MD and I told them I wanted to sleep instead.

So if you ask people two or three weeks after a major flu episode (and I know COVID is not the flu and I'm not saying it is) there is a good chance many will say they don't feel back to normal. For good long haul date they probably need to push that timeframe out to at least a month plus. We need good data on this issue to try and help the long haulers like the poor lady that was sick for over four months. Not sure of the best way to get it since good data standardized is very hard to come by for anything.
 
harllee said:
Wow this article says one-third of Covid patients (who are not hospitalized!) have long term issues. I have also read that some younger patients with no symptoms have lung scarring which show up on X-rays/MRIs. This is one serious-scary virus.
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Note the author also writes for the TODAY show which is biased in their coverage in my opinion.

Erika Edwards is a health and medical news writer and reporter for NBC News and "TODAY."

Agreed though this virus is something else. Very frustrating that China lied in late 2019 about it, could of saved many lives and been months closer to a vaccine!
 
ivinsfan said:
So if you ask people two or three weeks after a major flu episode (and I know COVID is not the flu and I'm not saying it is) there is a good chance many will say they don't feel back to normal. For good long haul date they probably need to push that timeframe out to at least a month plus. We need good data on this issue to try and help the long haulers like the poor lady that was sick for over four months. Not sure of the best way to get it since good data standardized is very hard to come by for anything.
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Yes, and while I know it's true, it would have been more helpful if they'd asked for a longer period - how do you feel 6 weeks later? That might reduce some of the numbers, but the publication would have more weight with the general public who can dismiss the "2-3 weeks" characterization as within-normal.

When the headlines start saying "25% of these mild cases are still symptomatic after 6 weeks," and you'll get better attention.
 
This article informative and in my mailbox today. This phenomenon is finally in the mainstream. The following quote caught my eye as it states "One early study..." If it was an early study, I certainly was not aware of the ongoing symptoms. The reported "X" number of cases recovered imply recovered. I think of recovered as back to normal.

"One early study by Italian researchers, published in July 2020 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that two months after falling ill, 88 percent of people who had been hospitalized for COVID-19 complained of at least one lingering symptom. More than one-half had three or more, which many said had impacted their quality of life."

https://www.everydayhealth.com/coronavirus/meet-the-covid-19-long-haulers/
 
Rianne said:
This article informative and in my mailbox today. This phenomenon is finally in the mainstream. The following quote caught my eye as it states "One early study..." If it was an early study, I certainly was not aware of the ongoing symptoms. The reported "X" number of cases recovered imply recovered. I think of recovered as back to normal.

"One early study by Italian researchers, published in July 2020 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that two months after falling ill, 88 percent of people who had been hospitalized for COVID-19 complained of at least one lingering symptom. More than one-half had three or more, which many said had impacted their quality of life."

https://www.everydayhealth.com/coronavirus/meet-the-covid-19-long-haulers/
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There again they have picked hospitalized people who may have been on a vent or had some underlying conditions which would prolong the recovery period. ... an electrician who we know in the next town over spent well over a month in the hospital with a solid 3 weeks on a vent. That's going to take a long time to recover from.
 
ivinsfan said:
There again they have picked hospitalized people who may have been on a vent or had some underlying conditions which would prolong the recovery period. ... an electrician who we know in the next town over spent well over a month in the hospital with a solid 3 weeks on a vent. That's going to take a long time to recover from.
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Not entirely. This quote follows the point about hospitalized patients. This article is focusing on mild or moderate symptomatic patients.

"But even patients with moderate cases, like Kephart, can become “long haulers,” as they are calling themselves, with ongoing medical issues. Long haulers may experience a range of symptoms, from shortness of breath to muscle weakness, joint pain, ringing in their ears, mental fogginess, and word-recall issues."
 
Rianne said:
Not entirely. This quote follows the point about hospitalized patients. This article is focusing on mild or moderate symptomatic patients.

"But even patients with moderate cases, like Kephart, can become “long haulers,” as they are calling themselves, with ongoing medical issues. Long haulers may experience a range of symptoms, from shortness of breath to muscle weakness, joint pain, ringing in their ears, mental fogginess, and word-recall issues."
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I was talking about your AMA link but there a lot data from a lot of places out there.
 
For those who have been scratching your heads wondering why there are so many negative antibody tests, you will want to read today's article in the New York Times. In summary, the Abbott and Roche tests look for antibodies to the nucleocapsid, not the spike protein.

A quote:

"The most powerful antibodies recognize a piece of the coronavirus’s spike protein, the receptor binding domain, or R.B.D. That is the part of the virus that docks onto human cells. Only antibodies that recognize the R.B.D. can neutralize the virus and prevent infection.

But the Roche and Abbott tests that are now widely available — and several others authorized by the Food and Drug Administration — instead look for antibodies to a protein called the nucleocapsid, or N, that is bound up with the virus’s genetic material."

The antibodies to N decline more rapidly.

The test developed at Mt. Sinai looks for antibodies to the spike protein.

If you want good information on research, follow some of the virologists and epidemiologists on Twitter. My top choice is Dr. Florian Krammer at Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai in New York. It was his lab that first isolated and distributed the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein and he was also involved in the antibody test development.


Link (free, because it's COVID related): https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/26/health/coronvirus-antibody-tests.html
 
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On the COVID side, I'm having trouble finding a new neurologist. Apparently the gaslighting doctor at PAMF has marked me as an anxiety case. The Stanford people have access to some of the PAMF files through a common portal. My PCP sent an urgent referral to Stanford, which has been misclassified and sent to the wrong group. They can see me in October. I tried for PAMF urgent care, and they referred me to the ER.

The reality is a lot of long haul patients are being ignored or are receiving substandard care. If your condition cannot be diagnosed through tests, you are not sick. A number have died because they cannot get appropriate care.
 
Finally, one of the support groups had a curated Q and A last week with Dr. David Putrino of the Mt. Sinai COVID recovery group. Dr. Putrino has a PhD in neuroscience, but is not an MD. He is also Director of Rehabilitation at Mt. Sinai.

Dr. Putrino stated that the virus can be difficult to clear and that it can reactivate. The pattern they see in some patients supports this theory. He compared it to herpes, the chickenpox virus, and EBV in how it reactivates. However, it is a flu-like virus, and at this point, they expect it to clear eventually, unlike the others.
 
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AR, I appreciate your relaying the research and news on the long haul situation. My understanding of LH comes almost exclusively from you, and I don't recall seeing anything about where the virus resides and what the counts are in LH sufferers. I think maybe I heard herpes resides in the spine or something, which is why most of us are at risk for shingles. Do they know where (or if) Sars-CoV-2 is residing somewhere? I say "if" because one theory is that there's a bunch of damage to organs and tissues from clotting, and that's what's causing symptoms.

Also, are there any trials with LH'ers and N-acetyl cysteine?
 
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sengsational said:
AR, I appreciate your relaying the research and news on the long haul situation. My understanding of LH comes almost exclusively from you, and I don't recall seeing anything about where the virus resides and what the counts are in LH sufferers. I think maybe I heard herpes resides in the spine or something, which is why most of us are at risk for shingles. Do they know where (or if) Sars-CoV-2 is residing somewhere? I say "if" because one theory is that there's a bunch of damage to organs and tissues from clotting, and that's what's causing symptoms.

Also, are there any trials with LH'ers and N-acetyl cysteine?
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At this point, no one knows where the virus is residing or how much of it there is. It's just a theory. Testing protocol limits where and how you look. I think the assumption is that the nature and intensity of the symptoms are consistent with reactivation. The "relapses" can be as bad as or worse than the original disease and can go on for weeks or months. However, there are a lot of anecdotal cases where virus has been discovered weeks or even months after it "should" have cleared.

Once we get monoclonal antibodies and it's possible to "cure" people, it may be feasible to conduct virus "hunts" on individual patients. That will require expansion of testing to other areas of the body. We made a huge mistake by putting all of our testing resources into the viral pneumonia presentation. I understand the Chinese make use of at least three tests, stool, saliva, and the throat swabs.

I'm not aware of trials of any medications or disease treatment protocols for Long Haulers. A lot of focus is on disautonomia in the recovery programs. A lot of people are taking supplements on protocols they devised, and NAC is a common supplement choice.
 
Here’s a study just released by JAMA Cardiology of 100 Germans recovered COVID, 2/3 not hospitalized, median age 49. Subsequent exams have detected heart problems in 78 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/ca...16/jamacardiology_puntmann_2020_oi_200057.pdf

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE In this study of a cohort of German patients recently recovered from COVID-19 infection, CMR revealed cardiac involvement in 78 patients (78%) and ongoing myocardial inflammation in 60 patients (60%), independent of preexisting conditions, severity and overall course of the acute illness, and time from the original diagnosis. These findings indicate the need for ongoing investigation of the long-term cardiovascular consequences of COVID-19.
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This contributes to the growing body of research that points to longer term effects resulting from COVID infection.
 
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Double yikes!! This is one bad bad virus. I am going to continue to do everything I can so that my loved ones and I do not catch this awful thing.
 
MichaelB said:
Here’s a study just released by JAMA Cardiology of 100 Germans recovered COVID, 2/3 not hospitalized, median age 49. Subsequent exams have detected heart problems in 78 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/ca...16/jamacardiology_puntmann_2020_oi_200057.pdf



This contributes to the growing body of research that points to longer term effects resulting from COVID infection.
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I read this before signing on this morning. Sent a chill up my spine...as I read aloud to DH heading to Chicago to play golf and overnight tomorrow.


Edit: The article I read was not the PDF from Jama but quoted the results.
 
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Holy cow. But let's open schools, bars, whatever.

I really don't want to get this stuff.
 
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