science

It's so wild to hear that people don't know this.

I:

• Fainted while watching TV on the couch.
• Had a blood pressure of 80/40.
• Have been to the ER twice.
• Had long-running (over two years) chest pain, heart pounding, weight loss, vision differences, dizziness, shortness of breath.
• Was so sick with those issues I was bed bound for months.
• After I started feeling a little better, overdid it and put myself back to bed for a week. Twice. With easy shit like rearranging the canned goods cabinet.
• Lost a tooth. (White lie, actually. I'm scheduled to have it extracted early February.)
• Still have lingering heart pounding and dizziness on a not-infrequent basis.

All from covid.

I'm fortunate to be mostly recovered. It sucks that there are so many who haven't recovered to speak of.

People look at me strangely, but I don't go in anywhere without a mask, still. I don't eat in restaurants, I don't go to indoor family gatherings without a mask.

It's a big sacrifice but I'm not willing to live with long COVID and brain fog.

If you haven't done so, check out PhysicsGirl on YouTube. Good science channel, then she got covid right after her wedding.

EDIT: Link to video.

Long Covid is so scary, but one thing that worries me is, if you get Covid and you don't get Long Covid, is that it, you're never going to get it ever, OR is it just a matter of time before most of us or we're all eventually suffering from Long Covid over the course of multiple waves? Why is it affecting some people differently than others? I've had Covid two or three times now and each time I was only out of it a week or two, otherwise no apparent long-term damage that I'm aware of, but will that always be the case?

I caught it for the first time a few months ago, relatively fit/healthy guy and it gave me the whammy for a full week (I could barely move, didn't want to eat at all, sweats, dizziness) I've never felt that bad in my life. Thankfully, no long covid here, aside from randomly coughing to clear up something left in my lungs once a day, but it put a 2-3 week sized hole in my life, it can show up with a vengeance, no joke.

I have lasting issues from a mild 2020 infection. My heart scares me the most these days.

I know someone who has an advanced degree and had a pretty impressive career. I don't think he will ever be able to work a normal job again. He got it in the early days and the hospital told him not to come. Yes, brain damage.

I caught it earlier this year at the peak effectiveness of my booster, so it was extremely mild. I still had a nasty cough for nearly 2 months after I recovered, and my memory is noticably worse.

To people who say it's oVeRbLoWn CoNsPiRaCy

Every viral disease may leave long term consequences, including the common flu. So can COVID. But we as a society got quite good at handling common flu. Also most people don't contract it that often and if they do it's a cause for medical attention. Meanwhile people are getting infected with COVID 3-4 times within 4 years and no one bats an eye besides "yeah, you're not lucky". So we were forced into pretending that going through a potentially heavily debilitating disease every 1-2 years is a perfectly normal thing and those who eventually "find out" are either just unfortunate or straight up lying.

Sadly facts don't care about our feelings and social setups. The endgame (that is max percentage of affected people) is at the level of 50% of the entire population with long covid at all times because the damage from subsequent infections accumulates. I just don't remember if the timescale for this was 10 or 20 years of unmitigated spread of the virus (that is: what we have now)

Meanwhile the new mutations are not really less severe. Only vaccinations make it so we're not seeing death rates of 2020 until today. And sooner or later one or another mutated form will evade all immunity, wheteher it emerges tomorrow or in 5 years.

Fun times ahead and, oh, remind me how well are health care systems faring right now when "the pandemic has ended"? Yeah, thought so. And these people are first in line to be affected so it won't be getting better. If anythong COVID is the one topic where doomerism is perfectly justified as we don't even try to pretend we're doing something like we are with climate.