'Long Covid': Why are some people not recovering?
For most people, Covid-19 is a brief and mild disease but some are left struggling with symptoms including lasting fatigue, persistent pain and breathlessness for months.
The condition known as "long Covid" is having a debilitating effect on people's lives, and stories of being left exhausted after even a short walk are now common.
So far, the focus has been on saving lives during the pandemic, but there is now a growing recognition that people are facing long-term consequences of a Covid infection.
Yet even basic questions - such as why people get long Covid or whether everyone will fully recover - are riddled with uncertainty.
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'Long Covid': Why are Some People not Recovering?
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(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 12 2020, @03:15PM (52 children)
If a patient has symptoms of scurvy and is deficient in vitamin C what should we do?
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30422823/ [nih.gov]
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15797491/ [nih.gov]
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32847620/ [nih.gov]
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 12 2020, @03:20PM (41 children)
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32964205/ [nih.gov]
Survivors had avg of 30 uM while nonsurvivors 15 uM. They should be 50 uM:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7400810/ [nih.gov]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 12 2020, @03:25PM (40 children)
Do they speculate (or _gasp_ have actual data) about whether the deficiencies are pre-existing at the time of infection, or a result of the body's reaction?
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 12 2020, @03:29PM (33 children)
What does it matter? If someone has symptoms of scurvy and is deficient in vitamin C they should correct the deficiency. Why would you not treat scurvy just because you found it in someone who had/has covid? That makes no sense.
But most likely it is both. These people were already low on vitamin C due to various comorbidities and poor diet then the oxidative stress of covid drained it even further.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 12 2020, @03:43PM (22 children)
Yes, regardless of whether or not having adequate Vitamin C has any impact on this illness, it's still a good idea to ensure that you've got enough of all vitamins and minerals just because they do have other health issues.
I remember for a time, they were looking at Vitamin D, but I haven't heard anything about that in recent months, so I don't know if there was anything other than just a correlation.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 12 2020, @03:51PM (5 children)
Vitamin D is also an antioxidant that gets depleted the same way:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8325381/ [nih.gov]
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16179538/ [nih.gov]
Wouldnt be surprised if vitamin c was responsible for recycling vitamin d just like for vitamin e.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 12 2020, @04:32PM (4 children)
Vitamin C recycles vitamin E:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32992851/ [nih.gov]
Vitamin D is probably similar, or is perhaps downstream from vitamin E in the membranes. Most people just study the role of the vitamin D receptor and don't consider it as an antioxidant.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2020, @06:00AM (3 children)
So if I eat vitamin C gummies, I can also start smoking again? Can we start a petition for Albanese to make vitamin C gummy worms?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2020, @01:28PM
Vitamin c gummies are probably worthless because the glucose competes for absorption via GLUT transporters. I think those gummies are like 40:1 molar glucose to ascorbate ratio iirc.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 14 2020, @02:21PM
+1 for Albanese gummy worms
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday October 15 2020, @02:51PM
If they're sugar free, you should live stream the next few days.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 12 2020, @04:25PM
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960076020302764 [sciencedirect.com]
Here is another recent observational study confirming vitamin D deficiency is common in covid patients:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.05.20206706v1 [medrxiv.org]
There are dozens of papers on that you can easily search on pubmed.
(Score: 2, Informative) by choose another one on Monday October 12 2020, @04:48PM (14 children)
Vitamin D connection has to be looked at very very quietly because pointing out that living at a latitude your skin hasn't yet evolved for (we are all African if you go back far enough) affects your Vit D upsets the woke because it overturns their narrative that death rates are higher among those with darker skin in Europe/US because of poverty due to white racial oppression.
If you double down and point out that while death rates of Black Africans in Europe are at least double those of white folk, in actual Black-African countries in Africa (same people, worse poverty, but living at latitudes they are evolved for, except maybe South Africa...) death rates are far far lower, then they get even more woke-upset...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 12 2020, @04:59PM
Not just latitude but also time spent in the sun matters. There are plenty of vitamin D deficient people in florida, etc.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by RS3 on Monday October 12 2020, @05:13PM (11 children)
I had to read your post several times to grasp your message. What you're saying might be true in some cases / people.
Not expert and no time to research but IIRC people with darker skin need more sunlight to generate the same amount of D as lighter-skinned people.
My comment to TFS and most of the posts here is that we just don't have enough data, there is so much we still don't know about COVID-19 and viruses in general, and we haven't been able to correlate the data and knowledge we do have to make sense of it all. The very point of TFA is that there is huge variation in patient symptoms and outcomes and we're not really sure why. Speculation is good as long as we can track the data to support the various theories.
But even then people's body chemistry varies widely, and there may be human biochemistry factors we don't yet know about.
I remember early on the science was that blood-type was a big factor in COVID susceptibility, disease length and course, etc. It's nearly impossible to gather all of the possible factors in each patient's case, but at least there's great effort.
Personally I wish _everyone_ could take part in helping the medical science effort. Kind of like "mechanical turk", "zooniverse", etc. And maybe there are opportunities to help in the effort, and maybe it's been talked about in the media... but for me the media is so overwhelmingly politics that I barely pay attention.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 12 2020, @05:28PM (7 children)
But we do know what to do for scurvy. So if people are deficient in vitamin c and showing symptoms of scurvy, the next step is pretty clear.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday October 12 2020, @05:59PM (6 children)
Absolutely, agreed, and it's tedious to keep (over)stating the obvious.
I will concede a shortcoming in the medical world and maybe society in general: doctors / medical workers generally overlook diseases that they think have generally been wiped out, or that people don't get because common knowledge, proper diets, etc., - like scurvy.
Another example that's bugging me: months ago hand washing and hand sanitizer was all the rage (in the media). More recently masks have become the rage and controversy. Just from my casual observation, many people seem to have slacked off of the hand washing and sanitizer use. Initially you could not buy sanitizer if your life literally depended on it. Store shelves were empty, not being replenished. (no clue where it was going). Jerks were selling it at 10X prices. Fake stuff popped up here and there. Homemade recipes were everywhere. Now I rarely see / hear of it.
It'd be nice to have 1 place- website- that accumulates ALL of the common knowledge / precautions for COVID. Blood-type, vitamins, etc.
BTW, BBC article yesterday said new data shows COVID can last up to 28 days on hard surfaces. Far cry and big problem compared to the 2-3 days previously thought.
Not to be reckless, but would a 27-day old COVID virus cell cause an infection? How many such cells would be required to infect someone? If you handled such a thing, how likely could you be infected? What would be the mechanism?
Which reminds me of another that belongs on the list of things we heard but aren't being talked about much anymore: not touching your face, especially eyes, nose, and mouth, without good hand washing / sanitizer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 12 2020, @08:04PM (5 children)
Translation: someone decided that "second wave" is a good time to repeat the push for abolition of cash (remember the failed campaign in the spring?) Expect more horror stories with ever more outlandish claims.
Observe the more direct FUD headline: "Don't touch this! Coronavirus stays on banknotes, mobile phone screens and steel for up to 28 DAYS" [dailymail.co.uk]
Enjoy.
Observe how any horror-reducing observation are relegated to "*" and "**" and tiny little unreadable font in the infographics. Isn't that nice?
Note that the actual facts like "Samples were incubated in the dark to limit any effect light might have on viral decay" never entered the nice article(s).
https://virologyj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12985-020-01418-7 [biomedcentral.com]
Note that PIN keyboards are never mentioned, apparently being miraculously protected from The Coronavirus by holy dispensation of Big Finance.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday October 12 2020, @08:55PM (2 children)
WAKE UP SHEEPLE!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 12 2020, @09:37PM
BAAAAAA!!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 12 2020, @10:55PM
https://www.henrymakow.com/upload_images/sheeple-masks.jpg [henrymakow.com]
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Wednesday October 14 2020, @03:17AM (1 child)
At least Canadian banknotes can be washed with soap and water.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 15 2020, @09:22AM
Slow down there, Hendrik. Everybody knows laundering money is illegal.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday October 12 2020, @07:32PM (2 children)
OTOH, there is also evidence, how definitive I don't know, that blacks/negros/AfricanAmericans (except the source was British)/whatever-name-you-prefer metabolize vitamin D differently than Caucasians do. It didn't mention orientals, etc. It didn't say in what way they were different, but merely suggested that using the same yardstick might be a bad idea. (IOW, it didn't have an alternative suggestion. It did suggest that lower levels might not be a problem, but gave no reasoning or evidence.)
Sometimes the needed evidence isn't available. But keeping your levels of Vitamin D up seems like a good idea...just don't overdo it, because that also has it's problems.
Anyone who is dogmatic about ANY of these points is a fool. The evidence isn't there to support the claim. But the evidence for moderate levels of various vitamins and minerals is pretty strong, and SOME people benefit from doing so. (OTOH, there's also evidence that viruses often do better in people who are "well-nourished", but that term was not defined in the report I read. So perhaps that just meant overweight.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 12 2020, @07:56PM (1 child)
Anyone dogmatic about trying vitamin c for someone with low vitamin c levels and symptoms of scurvy is a fool?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2020, @06:10AM
More like a vitamin C addict, snorting lemons and oranges. Get help.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2020, @08:25PM
i agree with your proposal to send 'em all home for their own benefit.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 12 2020, @03:56PM (3 children)
If it is depletion, then supplements upon diagnosis are much more urgent.
If it is pre-existing, the odds of non-causal correlation are much higher.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 12 2020, @04:01PM (2 children)
Do you think someone with covid who also has scurvy is better off than a covid patient without scurvy? How would that happen?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 12 2020, @06:33PM (1 child)
I think the serum concentration definition level of Scurvy may be a poor correlation for COVID survival rates, but the jury is still out on that one.
Take some chloroquinine while you're at it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 12 2020, @06:42PM
I think the serum concentration definition level of Scurvy may be a poor correlation for COVID survival rates, but the jury is still out on that one.
Based on what? There is one study published on that. The deaths had levels of 15 uM and survivors 30 uM, when healthy is 50 uM. Seems like a pretty clear correlation to me.
(Score: 5, Touché) by epitaxial on Monday October 12 2020, @05:52PM (5 children)
My car has a flat tire and won't start. Clearly the flat tire is causing the engine to fail.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 12 2020, @06:46PM
So you would conclude there is no reason to fix the flat tire since it isnt causing the engine issue? What is that supposed to mean?
(Score: 2) by Tork on Monday October 12 2020, @07:20PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 12 2020, @08:34PM
Connecting this [wikipedia.org] to an ignition lockout wouldn't be difficult.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2020, @12:16AM (1 child)
Fix the tire. Then you can at least push it (or have it towed) to where you can fix the engine. Even if not related, you should fix the obvious problems to make fixing the less obvious problems easier. Seems like common sense. Right?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2020, @06:02AM
You sound like a vitamin C addict to me. We should ban vitamin C.
(Score: 4, Informative) by nishi.b on Monday October 12 2020, @07:07PM (1 child)
It seems that most severe cases have a different immune reaction that involves neutrophils producing large amounts of oxydants to attack the pathogen, which might explain antioxidants being "used up" ?
Ref: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41577-020-0407-1 [nature.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2020, @03:50AM
Any source of ROS will do it, but it does seem to be more extreme in covid than usual critical illness.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Monday October 12 2020, @11:07PM (1 child)
Whichever, it isn't relevant to _long_ covid, which is symptoms several months after infection.
EITHER someone's diet is seriously deficient and they get scurvy, in which case they would have had Scurvy before covid, in which case they would also have had these symptoms before covid (many/most long covid sufferers report being fit and healthy beforehand),
OR someone's diet has enough Vit C, so they will not be deficient months after Covid (even if Covid depletes it in the acute phase, and remember many of these folk had very mild acute phase), so they will not have Scurvy now.
Only, kind of, other possibility is that covid _causes_ dietary changes in people (all ships' biscuits and no fruit) or _causes_ some kind of problem with vit C absorption - in which case treating for Scurvy (oral Vit C...) ain't going to do any good. On the other hand, why not give vit C, if not better in 2-3 days then "long covid" ain't scurvy. Quick, practically zero risk, eliminates a differential, holy shit why the heck ain't someone tried it already. Oh, wait... https://www.newsletter.co.uk/health/coronavirus/pastor-reveals-battle-long-covid-six-months-after-leaving-hospital-2986226 [newsletter.co.uk]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 12 2020, @11:20PM
They probably always had low vitamin C, but covid depleted it and their diet was never sufficient to get the oxidative stress under control. It could be easily answered with a 100 dollar blood test in a few of them.
This doesn't mean anything. A dietician is probably giving like 1 g/day max, more likely 100 mg or something sufficient for healthy people but not someone who is currently ill. How much is she giving him and what are the blood levels?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2020, @12:32AM (1 child)
Surprises of surprises but people who come to the ER to seek care for infectious diseases tend to be undernurished. If you are coming to the ER for an infectious disease, it is because it has lasted a long time, is severe, or both. Not surprisingly when someone feels bad for a long time or really bad for a short time, they often don't eat well. If you don't eat well, it doesn't take too long for serum levels for all sorts of things to drop.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2020, @01:46AM
Why would it be surprising? All critically ill people require 30-300x more vitamin C to maintain healthy levels. There are many papers on this.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2020, @12:59AM (9 children)
Do you even read the sources and items you cite? Or is the problem that you just ignore everything that you don't think matches with your conclusion? Seriously, the paper you keep throwing around for this stuff even disagrees with you if you make it all the way to the next sentence. It is even worse for you if you actually finish the conclusion because they actually know the limits of their study and are unafraid to acknowledge them.
And on a related point, scurvy at the levels you are talking about are easy to spot and tell apart from other diseases. Most of that ease is because of all the signs scurvy has that "long" COVID-19 doesn't and the ones "long" COVID-19 has that scurvy doesn't. A 2-way frequency table makes that difference obvious. No clinician would mistake COVID-19-associated ARDS or "long COVID-19" with scurvy precisely for that reason. If it really were as obvious as you said a paper on Vitamin C and COVID would have at least mentioned scurvy somewhere in discussion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2020, @01:37AM (8 children)
What sentence says they do not have low vitamin C?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2020, @02:29AM (7 children)
What sentence had anything to do with them having scurvy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2020, @02:50AM (6 children)
They don't go into the symptoms at all in those covid papers. Just report that once in the ICU the vitamin C levels were low. Symptoms of scurvy are very common in covid patients though. Strange how they have low vitamin C and symptoms of scurvy but you don't want to check their vitamin C levels or try correcting that deficiency.
Scurvy:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6989015/ [nih.gov]
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30422823/ [nih.gov]
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15797491/ [nih.gov]
###############################################3
Covid:
1) gingival inflammation
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32969503/ [nih.gov]
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32969503/ [nih.gov]
2) diffuse lower-extremity nonpalpable purpura in a perifollicular distribution
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7267236/ [nih.gov]
3) microcytic anemia
mean corpuscular volume appears normal:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7414516/ [nih.gov]
4) erythrocyte extravasation
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0190962220310227 [sciencedirect.com]
5) hemosiderin deposition
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/9/20-2095_article [cdc.gov]
6) fibrin thrombi within small blood vessels
https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m2058 [bmj.com]
7,8,9,10)
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-54296223 [bbc.com]
11)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1076029620938149 [sagepub.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2020, @04:01AM (5 children)
I actually read all of that. Let me say, That's a lot to put just to say "I just ignore everything that I don't think matches with my conclusion."
And next time you want to claim what I want to do with COVID patients or those presenting any vitamin deficiency, you may want to check the treatment guidelines and standard of care in general.
But please, put even more copypasta.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2020, @04:06AM (3 children)
What was ignored?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2020, @06:28AM (2 children)
About 80% of the paper corpus cited and a basic understanding of medical research, diagnostic methods, and statistics.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2020, @01:22PM (1 child)
So you got nothing then. Just dogmatic believe that vitamin c deficiency shouldn't be treated with vitamin c for some reason. Probably learned from a textbook written before the internet existed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2020, @09:13PM
You are the one who started this by claiming that they had scurvy. Scurvy is not the same thing as Vitamin C deficiency and it doesn't have the same symptoms as COVID-19, long or short, acute or chronic. If they have a Vitamin C deficiency, then treat it. It is easy to spot because it is so obvious and fix because there are almost no side effects or adverse events. That's why hospitals are giving patients Vitamin C and D and others despite your claim that they aren't and such action is in the guidelines despite your claims its not. But not everything is a Vitamin C deficiency. The fact that the papers you cited disagree with your conclusion of scurvy on a basic analysis, if not on their face, and you don't see it speaks volumes. And a number of them says that patients don't have a symptom that you say they do and instead sound similar on their face. That probably comes from you not knowing your jargon and medical terms.
But if you aren't, prove it instead of just relying on your feeling and focusing on where they look the same. Do the 2-way frequency table. You could do the statistical testing. Even better establish estimates of what the sensitivity and specificity of your diagnostic signs are. You could save tens of thousands of lives through your efforts, especially if you got it in a big journal or in the blogosphere. You could be a household name for making the connection between "long COVID" and Vitamin C deficiency despite the evidence being against you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2020, @04:16AM
Anyway, I was going to encrypt it but not worth the effort at the moment.
Everything you say I am ignoring is going to be symptoms counteracted by the hypoxemia.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 12 2020, @03:31PM (15 children)
They die because God is punishing them for their wicked promiscuous non-Christian ways. The bill for their sins of the past has come due.
They suffer because they are too weak to resist the evil, the strong survive - you should be projecting strength, don't let the virus scare you, keep you down, get back out there and start spending your money again before the whole house of cards collapses. 200,000 deaths is just noise in the system, hardly more important than a new oil field discovery or drought in the heartland during wheat growing season.
If you cower behind the scientists, wearing your facemasks and hiding in your homes, you will experience more pain and suffering than COVID could ever bring.
/s
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 12 2020, @03:35PM (8 children)
Scientists are *against* lockdowns. The WHO's special envoy on covid-19:
https://twitter.com/spectator/status/1314573157827858434 [twitter.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 12 2020, @03:47PM
At least in our area, when the schools were 100% remote learning, some teachers made rounds in schoolbuses delivering meals to families that needed them (ironically, often including their own...)
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday October 12 2020, @07:36PM (4 children)
It sounds like by "scientists" you mean economists rather than infectious disease specialists. This is defensible, but is also misleading.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 12 2020, @07:59PM
Doesnt look like an economist to me: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Nabarro [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by slinches on Tuesday October 13 2020, @03:46PM (2 children)
Here's the covid-19 pandemic in a nutshell:
Infectious disease expert: We can stop this pandemic if humanity stopped interacting for a couple months. If we do nothing, millions will die.
Economics expert: We can't stop all interactions at once for that long. It would destabilize the economy, collapse the supply chains causing gross food and medical supply and power shortages. Millions will die.
Politicians: Okay, you do one and I'll do the other. That way we each have someone else to blame for the deaths.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday October 13 2020, @05:03PM (1 child)
There *are* ways to handle it without huge death rates. The countries that have been able to do this have a populace that trusts the government. The easy ways are rather totalitarian (see Vietnam). The more difficult ways still require that the populace be willing to trust the government (see Sweden). Note that Sweden has/had a significantly higher death rate than Vietnam, because of errors earlier in the process. (That's what you expect with a more difficult process.)
Or you can be lucky, and depend on excluding it, like New Zealand. But ALL the successful approaches require that those possibly infected not interact in dangerous ways with others. What's required is a populace that's willing to trust the government, and a government that deserves that trust.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by slinches on Tuesday October 13 2020, @05:53PM
You're right. Of course there are better ways to handle it that strike an appropriate balance between health and socio-economic impacts. It would have to evolve over time as new information is learned and could be communicated and would be far more effective if there was a mutual trust between the people and their government. It would also help if the people trusted each other and had a real common bond through their nationality, so that they see each other as neighbors trying to improve their community rather than enemies trying to destroy it.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Joe Desertrat on Monday October 12 2020, @09:41PM (1 child)
Looks more to me that the problem is with economic systems that depend so heavily on a labor force that lives barely above the poverty line with no social safety nets to prevent hardship when a catastrophe strikes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 12 2020, @10:58PM
Yea, if only government was more powerful there would be even more money for when they shut down the economy.
(Score: 5, Funny) by c0lo on Monday October 12 2020, @04:21PM (5 children)
Believe me, I tried being wicked promiscuous in a Christian way, but using only the missionary becomes terrible boring after a short while.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 3, Touché) by choose another one on Monday October 12 2020, @04:50PM (4 children)
I think promiscuity requires using more than one missionary by definition...
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday October 12 2020, @05:09PM (3 children)
Nope, having sex with multiple transient partners is promiscuous by definition.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 12 2020, @05:25PM
It isn't necessary that all those partners be transient. The widow next door needs loving too!
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Monday October 12 2020, @09:28PM (1 child)
> Nope, having sex with multiple transient partners is promiscuous by definition.
Er, that was what I said, or meant to. You said you got bored with one missionary, I said you needed more than one, but maybe forgot to clarify that they don't need to be at the same time.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday October 12 2020, @11:01PM
Eh, I didn't figure out some may not get it's the missionary position that's boring
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 12 2020, @04:04PM (5 children)
When you think about, the disability is just as bad as losing an arm in affecting your ability to work.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by choose another one on Monday October 12 2020, @04:30PM (3 children)
It may actually be worse, we do actually have reasonably functional low-risk prosthetics for an arm or leg, we don't really have functional low-risk prosthetic hearts, brains, pancreas, kidneys or lungs - there is some stuff we can do (except for brain) but it is all a bit of a bodge. Or we can transplant (but not brains), but that opens up a whole world of other problems including requiring immunosuppression and making you highest risk for covid complications when it comes around again (as it will, it's been less than a year and we already know immunity doesn't last).
Moreover, chronic illnesses like this tend to wax and wane, come and go, flare up / die down, however you phrase it, and claiming benefits or insurance is _much_ harder for things like that. Just consider questions like "can you walk 50m unaided yes/no?", simple to answer if you've lost a leg, not so simple if you really want to say "sometimes", or "yes but then I have to lie down" or "on a good day".
Now add in that there is (most places) no official diagnosis of "long covid", no medical guidelines or criteria either diagnostic or treatment, no evidence base to give a prognosis, can you claim on insurance? Sure. Will it pay out? If you are very lucky, and even then probably only after years of ombudsman/regulator/court action.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 12 2020, @05:12PM (1 child)
Mental disability is in many ways the most difficult of all to accommodate. If your brain is "in sync" with the bulk of society, the bulk of society can relate and help you overcome missing legs, or a dysfunctional arm, or blindness, or whatever.
When your brain works differently, the first (most common) thing you do is expend tremendous effort in attempting to hide the difference - make it less noticeable, or undetectable to as many people as possible. People who fail to achieve that threshold of undetectability then "get help" which ranges from a padded cell up through all kinds of other generally useless accommodations - useless because the people designing and implementing them usually have no clue what's really happening / what would really help the most, if at all.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 12 2020, @07:58PM
> When your brain works differently, the first (most common) thing you do is expend tremendous effort in attempting to hide the difference
Another option--become an artist. Of course this assumes that "differently" doesn't mean "damaged".
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Monday October 12 2020, @10:03PM
That's a big problem with a lot of disabilities. What little safety net we have in the U.S. is so inflexible that one gets the idea that it is designed to look for excuses rather than to help people who need it.
Many real disabilities feature good days and bad days as well as days that start out good and turn bad and even days that start out bad and get better. Unfortunately, most employers expect you to show up every day and be productive all day and will fire you if you can't manage that but any help for disability sees any hint of a good day (or part of a day) evidence that you need no help at all.
Then you have the people who delight in finding 'cheats' They get a picture of someone on disability who is out and about, apparently not screaming in agony and parade it around as evidence of a cheat. The part they don't report (or actually know or even try to find out) is that the picture was taken on the only day that week the person was able to get out and that after the 2 hours they were out, they basically collapsed in bed for the rest of the day.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 12 2020, @05:14PM
Fuck no will your disability insurance cover this as that would cut into our precious profit margins, and this clearly would be an exclusion in our impossible to read declarations page and fine print. We can't have you getting all better and what not, so we need you perpetually sick so that we can capitalize off your misfortune.
Sincerely,
Your Insurance Company
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 12 2020, @07:11PM (2 children)
It only lated a few months. I would be out of breath fast despite not having too many breathing problems during the orignal infection. Think for most, it will eventually pass but I got sick real early in the year.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by HiThere on Monday October 12 2020, @07:45PM
Maybe. You are one data point, and also you may relapse in a month or two. Or, of course, not. You don't know.
In fact, which the cause isn't known (in detail), the only way to know is to collect lots of data over a long period of time. 5 years would be too short a study. Of course, pending that study each symptom-free month increases the probability that you're permanently symptom free, but give it a few decades before you give it certainty. Consider chicken-pox. (Of course COVID can't hide the same way that chicken pox does, but there are suggestions that it can hide in the gonads or possibly in neural tissue protected against immune reactions. But suggestions sure isn't proof, and maybe it can't. How lucky are you feeling?)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 12 2020, @08:00PM
I had it too. Then it turned out I just ate too much and it was gas.
(Score: 2) by legont on Tuesday October 13 2020, @05:15AM
Let's see a case of a 16 years old who get hepatitis A. He will likely fully recover. What does it mean, exactly? He will recover to be about 50 years old. No more competetive sports, no army, probably no good university, no hot girlfriend, no great promotions; just full recovery.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2020, @09:51AM
by saying "no" to dream sex with demons.