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posted by Fnord666 on Monday October 12 2020, @02:59PM   Printer-friendly

'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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  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 12 2020, @03:35PM (8 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 12 2020, @03:35PM (#1063574)

    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.

    Scientists are *against* lockdowns. The WHO's special envoy on covid-19:

    “Just look at what’s happened to the tourism industry, for example in the Caribbean or in the Pacific, because people aren’t taking their holidays. Look what’s happened to smallholder farmers all over the world because their markets have got dented. Look what’s happening to poverty levels. It seems that we may well have a doubling of world poverty by next year. Seems that we may well have at least a doubling of child malnutrition because children are not getting meals at school and their parents, in poor families, are not able to afford it,” Nabarro said.

    “This is a terrible, ghastly global catastrophe actually,” he added. “And so we really do appeal to all world leaders: Stop using lockdown as your primary control method, develop better systems for doing it, work together and learn from each other, but remember - lockdowns just have one consequence that you must never ever belittle, and that is making poor people an awful lot poorer."

    https://twitter.com/spectator/status/1314573157827858434 [twitter.com]

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 12 2020, @03:47PM

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Monday October 12 2020, @03:47PM (#1063582)

    children are not getting meals at school and their parents, in poor families, are not able to afford it

    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...)

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  • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday October 12 2020, @07:36PM (4 children)

    by HiThere (866) on Monday October 12 2020, @07:36PM (#1063670) Journal

    It sounds like by "scientists" you mean economists rather than infectious disease specialists. This is defensible, but is also misleading.

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    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 12 2020, @07:59PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 12 2020, @07:59PM (#1063682)

      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)

      by slinches (5049) on Tuesday October 13 2020, @03:46PM (#1064023)

      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)

        by HiThere (866) on Tuesday October 13 2020, @05:03PM (#1064045) Journal

        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.

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        • (Score: 2) by slinches on Tuesday October 13 2020, @05:53PM

          by slinches (5049) on Tuesday October 13 2020, @05:53PM (#1064078)

          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)

    by Joe Desertrat (2454) on Monday October 12 2020, @09:41PM (#1063717)

    “Just look at what’s happened to the tourism industry, for example in the Caribbean or in the Pacific, because people aren’t taking their holidays. Look what’s happened to smallholder farmers all over the world because their markets have got dented. Look what’s happening to poverty levels. It seems that we may well have a doubling of world poverty by next year. Seems that we may well have at least a doubling of child malnutrition because children are not getting meals at school and their parents, in poor families, are not able to afford it,” Nabarro said.

    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

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 12 2020, @10:58PM (#1063745)

      Yea, if only government was more powerful there would be even more money for when they shut down the economy.