Guardian: "Britain has closed its eyes to long Covid"

[Eleanor]

Interesting that there are over 300 comments on this and almost none claiming LC is fake or 'just mental health'. A couple of comments have been removed by mods, but a year or two ago half the thread would have been denialism and minimisation. I do think public perception is changing.

(edit to add - also many commenters making the link to ME/CFS and medical/political neglect)

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/30/britain-long-covid-lives-us-boosters

 

[Sasha]

I wonder what is going on with Covid in other countries, particularly those that did well in terms of public health protection early in the outbreak, such as Taiwan and New Zealand. I wonder if any country anywhere is facing reality.

 

[SNT Gatchaman]

I wonder what is going on with Covid in other countries, particularly those that did well in terms of public health protection early in the outbreak, such as Taiwan and New Zealand.

In terms of acute cases with the waves of subvariants, NZ seems to be doing relatively well. While located well off the beaten track our population does tend to travel and we have (often adventurous) tourists, and our seasons are opposite the northern hemisphere. But our waves are small and we seem to be one-behind in terms of dominant subvariants, ie I think we're only just starting to see XEC although it's predicted to give us a summer wave with more acute and chronic illness.

In terms of LC, it's hard to know absolute numbers but it's clearly nowhere near the percentages being officially reported in Europe and North America.

NZers had minimal exposure to ancestral and variant Covid until the population was >95% vaccinated (12yrs+). Then Omicron was "let rip". Ongoing booster uptake is generally low so I think most people had the primary series of two and possibly just one booster.

This strategy may turn out to have been highly protective against both future acute and chronic disease. But our ongoing exposures are atypical, usually having the bigger northern hemisphere winter waves more in our summer.