Don't just look at covid-19 fatality rates. Look at people who survive -- but don't entirely recover.

[SunSeeker]

Anecdotal reports of these people abound. At least seven elite college athletes have developed myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle that can have severe consequences, including sudden death. An Austrian doctor who treats scuba divers reported that six patients, who had only mild covid-19 infections, seem to have significant and permanent lung damage. Social media communities sprang up of people who are still suffering, months after they were infected, with everything from chronic fatigue and “brain fog” to chest pain and recurrent fevers.

Now, data is coming in behind the anecdotes, and while it’s preliminary, it’s also “concerning,” says Clyde Yancy, chief of cardiology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. A recent study from Germany followed up with 100 recovered patients, two-thirds of whom were never sick enough to be hospitalized. Seventy-eight showed signs of cardiac involvement, and MRIs indicated that 60 of them had ongoing cardiac inflammation, even though it had been at least two months since their diagnosis.

If these results turned out to be representative, they would utterly change the way we think about covid-19: not as a disease that kills a tiny percentage of patients, mostly the elderly or the obese, the hypertensive or diabetic, but one that attacks the heart in most of the people who get it, even if they don’t feel very sick. And maybe their lungs, kidneys or brains, too.

It’s too early to say what the long-term prognosis of those attacks would be; with other viruses that infect the heart, most acute, symptomatic myocarditis cases eventually resolve without long-term clinical complications. Though Leslie Cooper, a cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic, estimates that 20 to 30 percent of patients who experience acute viral myocarditis end up with some sort of long-term heart disease including recurrent chest pain or shortness of breath, which can be progressive and debilitating. When I asked whether the risk of long-term disability from covid-19 could potentially end up being greater than the risk of death, Cooper said: “Yes, absolutely.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dont-just-look-at-covid-19-fatality-rates-look-at-people-who-survive--but-dont-entirely-recover/2020/08/14/3b3de170-de6a-11ea-8051-d5f887d73381_story.html?hpid=hp_opinions-for-wide-side_opinion-card-e%3Ahomepage%2Fstory-ans

[at140]

1. That is true of all serious diseases

I had smallpox at age 8 in India. It affected my entire digestive system.
After 72 years I still have a stomach full of ulcers.

My wife has cancer in lungs and rib bones diagnosed 2.5 years ago.
She is never without some pain.

[Kablooie]

2. I know a girl in her 20's, in England, who had it in April and is still suffering

She posted a video report on Facebook when she first got it and a week or so ago posted an update.
It sounded awful originally and it still is terrible for her.

[at140]

3. Anecdotal example. Look at total stats from CDC

Less than 1% of people under age 30 have serious effects remaining after recovery.
I will take chances with coved-19 over small pox, Parkinson's , tb , polio, cancer, yellow fever, Ebola, plague, typhoid, and many other more serious diseases. Small pox at age 8 ruined my digestive system for life.

[dawg day]

5. I don't think we get a Choice, alas.

Those who make it through life without serious illness should thank their lucky stars.

[SheltieLover]

4. K&R!

[appalachiablue]

6. Did you see this? The truth, for patients & care givers

> 'Our Healthcare System Is Not Remotely Ready For 'Post-Covid' America,' Aug. 15, 2020.
https://democraticunderground.com/1016265920

*Following the 1918 Influenza epidemic there were lingering effects including encephalitis & others although it's difficult to find much info. - Encephalitis, usually related to viral infections, measles, polio, herpes simplex, more
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encephalitis

[Hestia]

8. I'm trying to find the article, but buried within was a statement that after 1918 flu,

women gave birth to a number of people who developed schizophrenia as adults and there was no family history up until then of schizophrenia in their families. The article stated it was info gleaned from doctors and medical charts at the time with no ability for long term research done at that time. Now long term research can and will be done to understand the long term impact of this viral disease. We really don't know the ongoing, long term effects; until then, it will be a guessing game.

[appalachiablue]

9. JAMA, Jan. 2009 Excerpt:

Can Influenza “Cause” Schizophrenia?

Although Menninger considered many avenues by which the Spanish Influenza of 1918 could lead to the development of dementia praecox, neither he nor any of his contemporary investigators raised the possibility that the influence of influenza on the etiology of schizophrenia could occur in utero. Although this idea has been debated in the scientific literature, many studies have documented that schizophrenia occurs more frequently in children born in winter and early spring when viral infections are more prevalent.12

Among 25 investigations of the incidence of schizophrenia in the offspring of women who were thought to have contracted influenza during pregnancy, approximately 50% reported positive associations.13 Reliably documenting maternal influenza exposure in these studies has been challenging because viral exposure has been generally based on participants' self-reports of infection or on occurrences of influenza epidemics contemporaneous with their pregnancies. To counter this problem, Brown et al assayed for influenza antibodies in sera drawn from pregnant women whose children later developed schizophrenia, and compared these samples with ones from a matched control group of women whose children did not develop schizophrenia.14

> The study population was derived from 170 cases judged to have schizophrenia or “schizophrenia spectrum disease” from a cohort of 12 094 live births enrolled in the California Child Health and Development Study.15 The results of the study by Brown et al14 revealed a dramatic 7-fold increase in the risk of schizophrenia among the offspring of women who were exposed to influenza during their first trimester of pregnancy. Further analysis suggested a 3-fold increase of risk in women who were exposed to influenza from the midpoints of their first and second trimesters.14

The finding that exposure to influenza during pregnancy may be an etiologic factor for schizophrenia may lead to new understanding of the pathogenesis, treatment, and prevention of this devastating condition.
> For example, vaccinating women of childbearing age against influenza might help prevent some forms of schizophrenia. In carrying to fruition this remarkable line of research, the 90 years of progress in improving psychiatric diagnosis and classification since the original Menninger study2 have been as important as the advances in modern laboratory techniques used to assay the influenza antigens in the sera of the cohorts. It certainly seems reasonable to speculate that Kraepelin, Bleuler, and Karl Menninger would be excited by this progress and pleased with their seminal roles in the evolution of the diagnosis and classification of psychiatric disorders...

Continued with footnotes on interesting studies, and a reference to COVID-19:

Full Article, https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/183226
_____________________

- NCBI, Front Psychiatry. 2020; 11: 72. Published online 2020 Feb 26. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2020.00072

Schizophrenia and Influenza at the Centenary of the 1918-1919 Spanish Influenza Pandemic: Mechanisms of Psychosis Risk

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7054463/#:~:text=Converging%20evidence%20demonstrates%20that%20infection,or%20acute%20psychoses%20in%20adulthood.

[appalachiablue]

10. If you ever locate that article pls. let me know. Tx.

These scientific articles from JAMA and NIH are important but so is other info. like what you read.

The Dutch Famine Winter, 1944-45 was also examined at for impacts on health, children and adults and including mental illness. But from all I read there wasn't real definite info. re schizophrenia incidence.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

7. Also look at the deaths per million of population.

That's far more revealing than simply raw death rates.

Give India a few more months. It's going to be a blood bath there that will make the U.S. look like nothing. And for all of the justified complaints about how Trump didn't take this seriously, the U.S. does not have the very worst death rate out there.