Long Covid - myth or actual thing

yep.

long covid is real, but vaccine injuries are being conflated.

I'd be curious to know how many of the people reporting long covid got the shots, and how many they got.

most of the 'long covid' side effects seem to occur in those who received multiple doses. and it's weird that these side effects almost perfectly match what many doctors were saying the vax would contribute to (namely, heart-related issues and neurodegenerative issues)

unfortunately, you'll get called a conspiracy theorist around here for even suggesting this. many ppl still can't admit the vax was not at all what we were told.

The findings on a CT scan of the lungs are not permanent. They're gone after 3-6 months.

I wholeheartedly agree with your last paragraph.

In my opinion, long Covid was more thing when the Wuhan strain and Delta were around.

Omikron is a benign variant that helped us get rid of the pandemic.

Someone I know was diagnosed with long covid - extreme fatigue for more than a year. Eventually they diagnosed micro clots in the blood, which influence oxygen carrying capacity. Got some treatment for that and seems to be better now.

I wonder also.

Hypothesis 1: It's legit. Viruses are devils and the immune system is insane is crazy in terms of how it repeatedly saves your life or turn against you and make you miserable.

Hypothesis 2: It's a reaction to losing your sense of smell. Happened to me and really messed with quality of life and bummed me out. Getting it back is a long process and is often incomplete and weird.

Hypothesis 3: It's made up by lazy people.

Hypothesis 4: It's real but a mental disorder due to isolation. Isolation can make you physically ill. Can't imagine what this did to extroverts.

I'm betting it's all four of these and more.

Again, this should be a topic we could discuss here. As a large group of serious runners, we should be able to discuss covid recovery, long covid, vaccine damage, and what worked for you to recover from those symptoms. We could be a virtual clearinghouse for information on covid as it affects our demographic. I started at least one thread on this a couple of years ago, but it quickly degenerated.

To the OP's point, yes long covid is real. Yes, the isolation itself caused mental health issues, especially among extroverts. Yes, vaccine damage is real. It definitely messes up the the hearts and immune systems of some people, but so far, it doesn't appear to have a negative effect on the vast majority of the population.

Long covid has such a constellation of conditions that it really can't be treated with one approach. Depression is an obvious reaction when someone has a long term condition and medical science is unable to treat it.

Vaccine damage, OTOH, appears to mostly cause heart inflammation, conditions related to micro blood clots, and impaired immune systems, which can be targeted with treatments. Of course, it's not being done that way since vaccine damage isn't recognized as a problem by the medical establishment. However, treatments do exist. I have helped friends find those resources. It has been a long road to recovery, but so far, their improvement has been promising.

Good post.

Indeed, the following two propositions can be consistent: Some individuals had serious, long-lasting adverse effects of covid; and many vaguer forms of "long covid" are indistinguishable from the consequences of a long-lasting pandemic and consequent limited social interactions etc.

Long COVID is real for about 10% of people who claim to have it (long flu is real as well for a select few). The truth is people will abuse the system any time the government is handing out money. I work with a number of veterans. Pretty much every one of them gets a service related disability payment (even though most of them are just fine). On a similar note, they have had a heck of a time getting people to return to the office and work post COVID. People are soft.

Yep, a running friend of mine has the exact same thing. She still runs marathons but needs to use an inhaler before workouts. All of this was after a single very mild case of COVID.

Strictly speaking, it only becomes a conspiracy theory when you claim "they" are hiding or otherwise suppressing the supporting evidence you haven't provided.

As it is, you're just some anonymous guy on the internet making unsubstantiated claims.

I got the vax and 2 boosters (Team Moderna) and I never had any of these symptoms.

I was going to say this too. It is real and some people are "faking it" --- both are true.

BTW - Think of chicken pox. Young people don't know about it (thanks to a vaccine) but it was real. And once you've had it, you will always have the virus in your body. Later in life, it might come back and kick your ass --- SHINGLES. Aren't most viruses like that? Herpes, HIV, etc?

I think people who don't understand viruses think this is all "fake news" but their opinions don't change reality. Just like Liberals who thought a cloth mask between the door and the table in restaurants would protect waiters & waitresses even though we all had our masks off for the whole meal.

Our opinions don't change reality.

I'll bite. I wonder about this too.

The issue at hand is that long covid is a self-reported phenomenon. There is no diagnostic test for long covid. But just because there is no diagnostic test for it does not mean it doesn't exist. There are other diseases out there, that are real, that elude simple diagnostic testing.

So the question is, is it real, or are people lying, or is it a combination of both?

How could you design a study to prove or disprove the existence of long covid?

Based on observation of WHO gets long covid, I tend to be in the camp of "it's not real in most cases, but might be real in some cases."

Here is why: I have 3 friends who claim to have contracted "long covid" and no longer work. Mostly they sit on the internet complaining about their long covid. Interestingly, all three of those were lockdown fanatics from the very beginning. All three of them had various self-diagnosed medical disorders preceding their "long covid" (anxiety, depression, adhd, etc). None have ever been particularly motivated to work.

Yes, this is an n=3, but I bet if you did a large survey, you'd find a very close correlation between people who were pro-lockdown fanatics from the beginning and self-diagnosed "long covid."

"What most people call long-COVID is a constellation of nonspecific symptoms that could occur after any viral infection or pneumonia."

This. It's always been possible to suffer lingering symptoms after getting a viral infection. As a new viral infection, Covid was rather more severe for a lot of people, so it's not surprising that a disproportionate number suffered "long" symptoms when it first came out. The definition of long Covid is suffering lingering symptoms for more than three weeks. I've personally had "long cold" and "long flu" and "long pneumonia" in my life based on that definition, and I'd consider myself overall pretty healthy, though not young anymore. My father lost his sense of smell after a virus before Covid came around; viruses have always been the #1 cause of loss of sense of smell.

And a small fraction of people will have very long-lasting, severe symptoms. But also, I think there are a fair few head-cases out there. I know only one person who suffered long Covid, and she was very clearly suffering from an anxiety disorder, which she fortunately acknowledged and treated. And then the long Covid went away. Did she suffer lingering Covid symptoms? Yes. Was the whole thing greatly exacerbated by her anxiety, which was stoked by the hysterical media? Also yes.

As for Chris Froome and his long Covid, he recovered quickly enough to compete and finish the Vuelta, even if it wasn't his best showing, so it can't have been that bad. Remember that he hasn't been himself since the car accident.

me and another guy on our team got long covid, one just straight up quit after about 2 months, I had issues with my heart for 1.5 years and now only have is occasionally

Wife of a friend is an elementary school teacher and is about 1.5-2 years into long COVID. Exhibits many of the same symptoms as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. On again - off again low grade fever, overwhelming fatigue... has difficulty taking care of her 10 y.o. daughter. She was mandated to get vaccinated before she could returned to the classroom; however, after a year she still tested positive on a COVID test. You are not allowed to get a vaccine when you test positive for the virus. Vaccination is no longer required, so she can technically get back in the classroom; however, she is hit-n-miss on the ability to be able to consistently make it through the day. Last I heard she is on complete disability.

Yes, long-COVID is real. How common...not a clue.

Oh FFS

You should put no weight on this post - like most of us, I'm speaking of anecdotal things, people I've heard from, things I've read - and my conclusion is that long covid is *absolutely* a real condition. I just want to offer this food for thought, for those of you who think that it is just something that lazy people pretend to have in order to avoid work, hypochondriacs make up, etc...: have you noticed how many of the people who get it seem to be from the immunologically strongest subset of the population, young healthy women? I've read about fit female athletes in their early 20s who had seemingly very mild cases, and then developed bad long covid. This fits well with the idea of overly-activated immune systems. But these are often young people who are likely excited about their new careers - if the "pretending to avoid work" hypothesis were true, wouldn't you expect to see a bunch of men in their late 50s and early 60s who are burned out from their jobs developing "long covid"?

as of reading this, my post has 15 downvotes, the most downvoted post on this thread, which just goes to prove my point.

unfortunately, people have made covid and the shots part of their tribal identity - and many won't budge. They simply won't or can't acknowledge the ever-increasing evidence that these injections are not what we were told. it's a pride thing, an ego thing, a defense mechanism thing.

in fact, if you read most of the posts on here, they bring up everything from psychosomatic reactions to lockdown related flu-like illnesses as reasons for "long covid", but what's the one thing they don't bring up?

lol how about that little thing that billions of freakin ppl across the world got injected with, many multiple times, that causes the body to manufacture the very protein that is the main toxin in the virus itself? how about the fact that your body produces more of this spike protein from the vax than is natively in the virus?

people don't want to talk about this. they just want to call you a conspiracy theorist and feel safe in their tribe. it's honestly pretty sad