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Long Covid: A Stark Reality, a Call to Action
The pandemic isn’t over, and its effects will be with us for decades, but information is a pathway to hope and power.
The risk of “Long Covid” symptoms increases every time you get infected.
Like a shitty game of viral Russian roulette, you never know when your luck will run out.
But what is Long Covid? How can we understand its effects when so much contradictory language has been used, and when the mechanisms for Long Covid are not well understood?
First, we need to be grateful to all the sufferers of Long Covid for speaking out, loudly, and demanding that their symptoms be taken seriously. Seriously, you people are unsung heroes, because of your early warning cries, research started into Long Covid much faster than it might have. And that gives us all a better chance of surviving and thriving in the years ahead.
As for what Long Covid is, let’s turn to a 2023 study that attempts to analyze the mechanisms by which the disease causes damage:
“infection by SARS-CoV-2 leaves a lasting imprinting of variably apparent, radiologically detectable end-organ damage, including in the CNS, as well as immune subset perturbations, enhanced cytokine levels, including CCL11, and a range of pathologies relating to coagulopathy. There are possible roles also of EBV reactivation, persistent SARS-CoV-2, microbiota dysbiosis and low serum cortisol.” (Altmann et al., 2023)
The researchers don’t hold back from there, either. They go on to state that:
“the oncoming burden of long COVID faced by patients, health-care providers, governments and economies is so large as to be unfathomable, which is possibly why minimal high-level planning is currently allocated to it. If 10% of acute infections lead to persistent symptoms, it could be predicted that ~400 million individuals globally are in need of support for long COVID.” (Altmann et al., 2023)
