I’m grateful for your informative articles that are easy to digest & share. I’m also angry that 5 years into the pandemic that people (including health care providers) are unaware & uneducated about the risks of Covid. It frightens me that I’m the only one masked in busy medical practices.
"Our government’s instructions could not be more clear: wait your turn to experience the inevitable consequences." Indeed, our government could not be more clear what they value (money) and who they value (those who have the most), and this informs every decision they announce and every action they take. Thanks for writing this piece.
In addition to Elsa Perego, I also always like to shout out Amy Watson, an early long COVID patient and founder of multiple Facebook support groups, for coining the term “long hauler,” based on a trucker hat she was wearing when she went to get tested. They both deserve a lot of credit for naming us and putting us on the map.
Great piece Julia. I have been following LC since the summer of 2020 and your work is perfect. We are now living in a sick society, literally and figuratively. Big business prefers mass sickness to mass profit reduction. Political leaders prioritize big business over public health.
This was an excellent overview of what the mechanisms are through which the covid virus debilitates people and what long covid means. Thank you for taking the time and energy to write this out <3
thank you so much for putting this together! it's going to be a really helpful ressource to share. I appreciate the time and energy you've put into it. ✨️
Thank you for your invaluable reports. One thought about this line: "It’s critical to note that Long COVID can affect any and all organ systems in the body." Would it be more accurate to say "COVID can affect any and all organ systems in the body' ? (I have read other writers on the subject who argue that *all* COVID is LC.)
I think either statement- “COVID can affect” and “Long COVID can affect” would be an accurate statement. There are people who believe we may yet discover organ damage or viral persistence in people who have not been found to have damage and/or persistence as of yet; however, I try to stick to what studies have demonstrated as of now. Studies consistently find double digit percentages of ppl suffering symptoms of Long COVID after COVID. But those effects, including serious stuff like organ damage and viral persistence, haven’t been found to be universal, at least not with the number of infections we’ve suffered to date. At the same time, I want to acknowledge there is still so much we don’t know and encourage people to practice the precautionary principle. How many infections can a single person tolerate before they sustain some type of long-term damage? Nobody can answer that question, and anyone who claims they can is speaking from one assumption or another, because COVID has only existed for a handful of years. I also encourage people to stop assuming that they will be in the lucky batch of people who don’t experience long-term consequences after their next infection when there’s no reason to assume that. COVID doesn’t need to have an organ damage or viral persistence rate of 100% to be dangerous, as some people seem to believe (for some reason).
I do agree with what you're saying though, in the sense that Long COVID is ultimately just COVID, and I think it can perhaps be psychologically confusing to people when they hear that people are suffering from "Long COVID" and they automatically put us into a basket of people with a disease that is somehow different from the disease they are continually contracting. In some ways it creates the illusion of a distance which does not actually exist. It allows them to believe they're not at risk when they're constantly at risk.
That's not a critique of the term as I agree there needed to be a term to refer to the illness, but I've noticed that whenever papers come out talking about damage from COVID, people are quick to say "but that's just in Long COVID". So, for example, let's say a study finds immune damage after COVID infections. Someone will see the study and say, "oh but that's just in Long COVID". But Long COVID just means "lasting damage after COVID".
So the translation of their claim is "the study found lasting damage after COVID but it was only in people who had lasting damage after COVID". It's a tautology!
Yes, I hear constantly that lasting damage is "only" found in people with Long Covid and/or who had severe acute illnss. People are ignorant and/or in denial that all Covid infections can do lasting damage, and so they repeatedly expose themselves and others, and shrug off the constant infections. That's why I'd like to show them writing like yours that emphasizes that every bout of Covid is damaging.
This is a lot of great info. Thank you. This is the crucial part for me. People can't really observe with their own eyes what's happening. It reminds me of people not realizing their friends and family getting cancer and dementia and not being able to connect it with the processed food and meats they are routinely eating, but the science in the studies proves these increase the risks of such diseases:
"So, while you say you “don’t know anyone with Long COVID”, it’s not always possible for you to separate out what is Long COVID versus what is aging, and what is from other risk factors like smoking, drinking, genetics, poor eating habits, or bad luck. It’s only possible to know that by looking at large populations of people, and each time we do that, we get the same result: COVID makes all of these health conditions worse, accelerates aging, damages organ systems, and causes the onset of new health conditions."
Thank you for spending your energy to carefully collate this information. I appreciate how well you articulate complex issues. Thanks so much.
I’m grateful for your informative articles that are easy to digest & share. I’m also angry that 5 years into the pandemic that people (including health care providers) are unaware & uneducated about the risks of Covid. It frightens me that I’m the only one masked in busy medical practices.
"Our government’s instructions could not be more clear: wait your turn to experience the inevitable consequences." Indeed, our government could not be more clear what they value (money) and who they value (those who have the most), and this informs every decision they announce and every action they take. Thanks for writing this piece.
That last sentence - POW! 💥 Says it all.
In addition to Elsa Perego, I also always like to shout out Amy Watson, an early long COVID patient and founder of multiple Facebook support groups, for coining the term “long hauler,” based on a trucker hat she was wearing when she went to get tested. They both deserve a lot of credit for naming us and putting us on the map.
Thank you for this 🙏🏻 my 5 year Covid anniversary will be in March. Long Covid is a living torture every day.
I'm so sorry Pepper. I hope that hope is on the way. Sometimes hope for hope is the best we have.
Great piece Julia. I have been following LC since the summer of 2020 and your work is perfect. We are now living in a sick society, literally and figuratively. Big business prefers mass sickness to mass profit reduction. Political leaders prioritize big business over public health.
Thank you for this.
This was an excellent overview of what the mechanisms are through which the covid virus debilitates people and what long covid means. Thank you for taking the time and energy to write this out <3
thank you so much for putting this together! it's going to be a really helpful ressource to share. I appreciate the time and energy you've put into it. ✨️
Thank you for your invaluable reports. One thought about this line: "It’s critical to note that Long COVID can affect any and all organ systems in the body." Would it be more accurate to say "COVID can affect any and all organ systems in the body' ? (I have read other writers on the subject who argue that *all* COVID is LC.)
I think either statement- “COVID can affect” and “Long COVID can affect” would be an accurate statement. There are people who believe we may yet discover organ damage or viral persistence in people who have not been found to have damage and/or persistence as of yet; however, I try to stick to what studies have demonstrated as of now. Studies consistently find double digit percentages of ppl suffering symptoms of Long COVID after COVID. But those effects, including serious stuff like organ damage and viral persistence, haven’t been found to be universal, at least not with the number of infections we’ve suffered to date. At the same time, I want to acknowledge there is still so much we don’t know and encourage people to practice the precautionary principle. How many infections can a single person tolerate before they sustain some type of long-term damage? Nobody can answer that question, and anyone who claims they can is speaking from one assumption or another, because COVID has only existed for a handful of years. I also encourage people to stop assuming that they will be in the lucky batch of people who don’t experience long-term consequences after their next infection when there’s no reason to assume that. COVID doesn’t need to have an organ damage or viral persistence rate of 100% to be dangerous, as some people seem to believe (for some reason).
I do agree with what you're saying though, in the sense that Long COVID is ultimately just COVID, and I think it can perhaps be psychologically confusing to people when they hear that people are suffering from "Long COVID" and they automatically put us into a basket of people with a disease that is somehow different from the disease they are continually contracting. In some ways it creates the illusion of a distance which does not actually exist. It allows them to believe they're not at risk when they're constantly at risk.
That's not a critique of the term as I agree there needed to be a term to refer to the illness, but I've noticed that whenever papers come out talking about damage from COVID, people are quick to say "but that's just in Long COVID". So, for example, let's say a study finds immune damage after COVID infections. Someone will see the study and say, "oh but that's just in Long COVID". But Long COVID just means "lasting damage after COVID".
So the translation of their claim is "the study found lasting damage after COVID but it was only in people who had lasting damage after COVID". It's a tautology!
Yes, I hear constantly that lasting damage is "only" found in people with Long Covid and/or who had severe acute illnss. People are ignorant and/or in denial that all Covid infections can do lasting damage, and so they repeatedly expose themselves and others, and shrug off the constant infections. That's why I'd like to show them writing like yours that emphasizes that every bout of Covid is damaging.
This is a lot of great info. Thank you. This is the crucial part for me. People can't really observe with their own eyes what's happening. It reminds me of people not realizing their friends and family getting cancer and dementia and not being able to connect it with the processed food and meats they are routinely eating, but the science in the studies proves these increase the risks of such diseases:
"So, while you say you “don’t know anyone with Long COVID”, it’s not always possible for you to separate out what is Long COVID versus what is aging, and what is from other risk factors like smoking, drinking, genetics, poor eating habits, or bad luck. It’s only possible to know that by looking at large populations of people, and each time we do that, we get the same result: COVID makes all of these health conditions worse, accelerates aging, damages organ systems, and causes the onset of new health conditions."