Long Covid in the media and social media 2023

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Podcast: The Rest is Politics. Ep "Question Time: The War On Drugs, a Tory Green Party, and Long Covid". 2 min segment @24:00.

Qn: "Lack of research funding for long Covid has broad implications if many are unable to work because of an illness that has been denied and psychologised."

I - like I imagine you and many, many people listening to this podcast - I've got a very close friend who has long Covid, and it has completely destroyed his life. I mean he's said that for the last three years he's barely had a happy day. He wakes up in the most terrible state and what I guess she's getting at there by saying 'it's been denied and psychologised' is struggling with the fact that so many doctors still seem quite reluctant to acknowledge that there's any connection between Covid and what people are experiencing. Or at least, speaking on behalf of my friend, I think it feels that it is a very difficult and humiliating position to be in.
 
Saw this on twitter - link to tweet is in the quote block.

Text: "This paper about the impact of Long Covid on language & cognitive function is frankly devastating. A couple examples of how affected individuals fared when confronted with photos of objects & asked to name them. Lots of struggling & pauses."


Here's the link to the study she's talking about, not sure if we have a thread for it yet (didn't see it).

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2949903823000015
 
Long Covid sufferers feel forgotten three years on

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-65952112

I didn't read the whole thing but there's a photo of a patient's list of their symptoms. I remember during those first 3-4 years thinking that if I was careful to record all my symptoms then eventually the doctors would figure it out the diagnosis and I'd get treatment.

Toward the end I saw this

"Although there are no long Covid clinics in Wales, it said rehabilitation services could be accessed through GPs"

I have no idea why news articles keeps mentioning rehabilitation services!

We know that exercise doesn't help (at least not the Long Covid patients with PEM/PESE and/or a diagnosis of ME). And it usually makes things worse. So what kind of rehab are they talking about?
 
Can't find the article again, but our national news wrote that people on sick leave from covid had a sick leave four time as long as others.
Probably not this article, but it probably came from the same source. It's a CDC study saying LC contributes to the labor shortage.

CDC: Research Says Long Covid “Contributing” to Labor Shortage
https://tech.co/news/cdc-research-long-covid-labor-shortage

It seems they discussed this in a call: https://emergency.cdc.gov/coca/calls/2023/callinfo_061523.asp.

  • Almost one-third of all workers infected with Covid-19 suffered or are suffering from Long Covid, with the percentage peaking during the initial phase of the pandemic and falling over time.
  • The percentage of female workers with Long Covid (37 percent) was 11 points higher than that of male workers (26 percent).
  • Forty percent of workers with Long Covid returned to work within 60 days of infection while still receiving medical treatment.
  • Nearly all workers with comorbidities or those hospitalized for their initial infection experienced Long Covid.
  • The incidence of Long Covid in essential workers may be higher than the data suggests, creating a potential blind spot for policymakers.
And as any expert worth their salt knows, you can't understand what you don't measure, and you can't solve what you don't understand. LC is still not being measured, it's barely estimated and usually with heavy bias. So of course it hasn't been solved.

Solving problems requires putting a sincere effort based on real data and a process that builds expertise based on experimentation and results. And we keep seeing articles that talk about the useless clinics are basically having solved it all already, so fake results are fed back in the loop as valid data. No system can function when you throw garbage at it tagged as valid data. Never works. Never happened.

It is a blind spot for policymakers. It's not a coincidence, the experts tasked with informing policymakers are part of the coverup.
 
Probably not this article, but it probably came from the same source. It's a CDC study saying LC contributes to the labor shortage.

CDC: Research Says Long Covid “Contributing” to Labor Shortage
https://tech.co/news/cdc-research-long-covid-labor-shortage

It seems they discussed this in a call: https://emergency.cdc.gov/coca/calls/2023/callinfo_061523.asp.


And as any expert worth their salt knows, you can't understand what you don't measure, and you can't solve what you don't understand. LC is still not being measured, it's barely estimated and usually with heavy bias. So of course it hasn't been solved.

Solving problems requires putting a sincere effort based on real data and a process that builds expertise based on experimentation and results. And we keep seeing articles that talk about the useless clinics are basically having solved it all already, so fake results are fed back in the loop as valid data. No system can function when you throw garbage at it tagged as valid data. Never works. Never happened.

It is a blind spot for policymakers. It's not a coincidence, the experts tasked with informing policymakers are part of the coverup.
I wish I could find it again (NRK's search bar is terrible), I'm pretty sure it was data pulled from our own national registries. Sick leaves are on record levels since swine flu, and one of the more likely diagnoses long covid patients could end up getting ("tired") is partly behind the increase. Those who had corona in their records also were longer on sick leave than others.
 
I wish I could find it again (NRK's search bar is terrible), I'm pretty sure it was data pulled from our own national registries. Sick leaves are on record levels since swine flu, and one of the more likely diagnoses long covid patients could end up getting ("tired") is partly behind the increase. Those who had corona in their records also were longer on sick leave than others.



Was it this article?
https://www.nrk.no/rogaland/sterk-s...efravaer-med-trotthet-og-slapphet_-1.16443369

It's based on a recent press release from NAV which has more details and statistics: https://www.nav.no/no/nav-og-samfun...orona-og-sykefravaer-med-trotthet-og-slapphet
 
Guardian: Health bosses warn of heart disease emergency in England

England is engulfed in a cardiovascular disease emergency, health bosses have said, as stark figures reveal there have been almost 100,000 excess deaths since the start of the Covid pandemic.

That's excess cardiovascular deaths, not acute Covid.

Analysis of official government data suggests that more than 500 people a week are dying needlessly from heart disease, heart attacks or strokes. There have been 96,540 extra cardiovascular-related deaths since March 2020, according to the report by the British Heart Foundation.

“We know that Covid has caused direct [Covid leading to new cardiovascular disease], indirect [reduced treatment and prevention of cardiovascular disease] and long-term effects [cardiovascular disease and long Covid],” he said. He added that there must be an “urgent prioritisation” of cardiovascular disease prevention and treatment, as well as an increase in staff to tackle the backlog of patients waiting for treatment.

Definitely a factor, but I think too much emphasis on explanation via the indirect path risks mis-targeting research and understanding.

“Covid-19 no longer fully explains the significant numbers of excess deaths involving cardiovascular disease,” said Dr Sonya Babu-Narayan, a consultant cardiologist and associate medical director at the BHF. “Other major factors are likely contributing, including the extreme and unrelenting pressure on the NHS over the last few years.
 
That's the one, thanks Kalliope :) The NAV statistics came out 1. June, so they took their time to write an article about it. The March statistics were disseminated a lot quicker. And as always, I'm happy by the lack of public health officials saying long term effects from covid is just anxiety and we should not talk about it so it would go away.
 
WHO: Nearly 36 million in Europe suffering from 'long COVID'

One in 30 Europeans may have developed "long COVID" in the first three years of the pandemic, the World Health Organization's (WHO) European office said on Tuesday, warning that the coronavirus has not gone away.

Since 2020, nearly 36 million people in the European region are believed to have contracted long-lasting health problems after being infected with COVID-19, the global health body said.

Addressing a press conference in Copenhagen on Tuesday, WHO regional director Hans Kluge stressed that "long COVID remains a complex condition we still know very little about."

He described the condition as a "glaring blindspot in our knowledge." To understand COVID-19 more accurately, there is much more need to be done, he added.


 
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