Thought it was gone? COVID is on the rise again in Florida

[Ms. Toad]

23. Yeah, because as long as you live through the acute stage everything is hunky dory

There are a significant number of people living with long COVID. I have a mild version, but I am one of them.

I was vaccinated (max number allowed) 2-3 weeks before I acquired COVID. COVID itself was nothing. Then long COVID hit. Pancreatitis (requiring several days' hospitalization), some sort of gall bladder crud that doesn't have an accurate diagnosis when tied to COVID, three immune deficiencies (which have now resulted in 2 severe respiratory infections in a little over a month - despite masking), and persistent GI disruption going on a year now. I'm lucky - my symptoms are manageable.

A minimum of 10% of people who have COVID end up with long COVID - and some studies indicate as many as 50%. At one year post-COVID, in a comprehensive study of people at no particular risk for COVID, 59% had organ damage.

And, most damning, while children are acquiring long COVID at a somewhat lower rate than adults, the symptoms are serious - and may end up living with it for a substantial period of their lives - if not the rest of their lives.

The NIH says that while the prevalence of Long Covid in children is lower than adults, “given the high overall rate of SARS-CoV-2 infection in children, the burden of post-COVID conditions in children may be quite large.”

The NIH advises that, “The incidence of post-COVID symptoms in children appears to increase with age. The most common symptoms reported include persistent fatigue, headache, shortness of breath, sleep disturbances, gastrointestinal symptoms, and an altered sense of smell.”

The NIH also states that, “Cardiopulmonary injury, neurocognitive impairment, and new-onset diabetes may occur.”

https://johnsnowproject.org/primers/ni-updated-guidelines-on-long-covid-in-children/

We are only just now beginning to estimate the economic toll of long COVID - and the estimates are staggering.

Interestingly, recent data estimated that one million individuals being out of work due to the post-COVID-19 condition would cost approximately US$50 billion annually in the USA only because of the resulting reduction in labour supply. This estimation does not consider possible direct additional costs associated with the management of the pathology (eg, medical care, medication). For example, myalgic encephalomyelitis (a pathology often compared to post-COVID-19 condition) is estimated to cost US$9000 annually per patient in the USA. Therefore, direct and indirect costs of the post-COVID-19 condition have been recently estimated to range from US$140 to US$600 billion annually.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10159592/

It is not simply the massive, unvaccinated hoard getting it at the same time which made it a terror. It is the unpredictable, multi-organ, continuing nature of the disease. Pretending that surviving the acute phase is all that matters is putting our heads in the sand to a massive - and largely preventable - burden on society.