Covid infections are up by 68%, over the past two weeks, in my county

[BumRushDaShow]

60. "Permenant? How could that even be known at this point?"

If a COVID-19 patient got a massive viral load that landed on their kidneys, then the potential is there (and it has happened) where they have "permanent" kidney damage and will require dialysis for the rest of their lives (or a transplant).

Kidney Damage Another Consequence of 'Long COVID,' Study Finds

Sept. 2, 2021, at 3:03 p.m.
U.S. News & World Report


By Amy Norton HealthDay Reporter


THURSDAY, Sept. 2, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- People hospitalized for COVID-19, and even some with milder cases, may suffer lasting damage to their kidneys, new research finds. The study of more than 1.7 million patients in the U.S. Veterans Affairs system adds to concerns about the lingering effects of COVID -- particularly among people sick enough to need hospitalization. Researchers found that months after their initial infection, COVID survivors were at increased risk of various types of kidney damage -- from reduced kidney function to advanced kidney failure.

People who'd been most severely ill -- requiring ICU care -- had the highest risk of long-term kidney damage. Similarly, patients who'd developed acute kidney injury during their COVID hospitalization had higher risks than COVID patients with no apparent kidney problems during their hospital stay. But what's striking is that those latter patients were not out of the woods, said Dr. F. Perry Wilson, a kidney specialist who was not involved in the study.

They were still about two to five times more likely to develop some degree of kidney dysfunction or disease than VA patients who were not diagnosed with COVID. "What stood out to me is that across the board, you see these risks even in patients who did not have acute kidney injury when they were hospitalized," said Wilson, an associate professor at Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Conn.

There is some question about the degree to which the kidney problems are related to COVID specifically, or to being sick in the hospital, according to Wilson. It's unclear, for instance, how their kidney function would compare against that of patients hospitalized for the flu. But the study found that even VA patients who were sick at home with COVID were at increased risk of kidney problems.

https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2021-09-02/kidney-damage-another-consequence-of-long-covid-study-finds

One of the earliest articles that I read locally here in Philly about some of the horrid effects that some had with an infection (during the early part of the pandemic when no treatments or vaccines were available) was a middle-aged woman in NY, with no underlying conditions, who experienced kidney failure after her bout -

The coronavirus is damaging kidneys. Doctors worry that some survivors will need dialysis forever.



Sonia Toure's kidneys failed after she got COVID-19. She now needs dialysis. This photo was taken by a nurse at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York on May 6. She went home May 12. She said there is "no hope" that her kidneys will recover.Courtesy of Sonia Toure



by Stacey Burling
Published Aug 23, 2020

When the new coronavirus stormed the Northeast this year, Alan Kliger, a Yale University kidney specialist, thought it would behave like a typical respiratory virus. There had been signals from China that the new disease was hard on kidneys, but nephrologists like Kliger were not prepared for what happened when cases surged in New York. So many patients suffered kidney injury that dialysis supplies ran short. Two studies of New York patients found that 68% to 76% of intensive-care patients with COVID-19 had kidney damage. In one, a third of ICU patients needed dialysis, a process in which a machine performs the kidney’s blood-filtering work.

“The amount of acute injury and failure was unexpected and dramatic,” said Kliger, cochair of the American Society of Nephrology’s COVID-19 Response Team. It is too early to know whether survivors of serious COVID-19 will have long-lasting kidney damage, but doctors are worried. “People are just waking up to the fact that the kidney is an unappreciated manifestation [of COVID-19] but one that is pretty important,” said Girish Nadkarni, a nephrologist and researcher at Mount Sinai Health System in New York. “There might be an epidemic of post-coronavirus kidney disease coming.”

Sonia Toure’s story is what Nadkarni fears. Toure, 54, who worked as a research coordinator for City University of New York in the spring, had no chronic health problems before her first symptom of COVID-19 — a single cough — during a work Zoom meeting on March 25. Within a day, she had a sore throat and 103-degree fever, but no breathing problems. Over the next few days, there was more fever along with aches and pains that made her feel as if a mob had beaten her. For one blessed day, she thought she was getting better, but by April 7, she knew she had to go to the hospital.

At Mount Sinai, doctors discovered she was in kidney failure and started dialysis. She had pneumonia, but never needed a ventilator. After 35 days in the hospital, she went home on May 12 to her two sons, aged 19 and 21, and two German shepherds. The next day, a doctor called with the results of her kidney biopsy. “The doctor said there was absolutely no hope, that my kidneys were so damaged I would never recover,” she said. “I would have to be on dialysis the rest of my life until I could get a transplant.”

https://www.inquirer.com/health/coronavirus/coronavirus-covid-kidneys-dialysis-mount-sinai-northwell-nephrologist-20200823.html

These are just the one-off "feature stories" of people who have been negatively impacted and then their stories get "buried" and they are forgotten except by their family and friends.

The point being - NO ONE should be cavalier about this damn virus. EVER. The "let 'er rip" crowd be damned.