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Belfast Telegraph - Sunday Life - Long Covid could claim up to 700 doctors in Northern Ireland

According to the latest official statistics, 93,834 people in Northern Ireland have tested positive for Covid-19 since the beginning of the pandemic.

This means upwards of 9,000 people here are living with long term effects of the virus, including debilitating breathlessness, chronic fatigue, headaches, chest pain and brain fog.

Dr Black (right) said he is aware of an increasing number of young doctors who are suffering from the effects of long Covid and that young females appear to be more susceptible.

"We will inevitably lose a significant proportion of the health care workforce at the end of this pandemic due to long Covid and due to the physical and psychological burden," he said.

"We are hearing of young doctors, who are otherwise fit or healthy, who have been off work due to Covid and go back after six or eight weeks and then having to leave after an hour or so due to chest pain.

"We have doctors off on long-term sick leave because of long Covid and ultimately we believe we may lose anywhere up to 15% of doctors from the workforce in Northern Ireland by the time this is all over."
The saddest part is that this was all predictable. If someone like me, so brain-fogged I have to take days to fill in a simple questionnaire, could see this clearly, that a multi-trillion dollar industry with tens of millions of expertly-trained workers completely missed it is simply absurd and a catastrophic failure of that field of expertise.

Not to point out "I was right" because frankly many people were right and it wasn't that hard to see this happening. But this was so entirely predictable. In April 2020:
Ultimately I think this is what will make all the difference, how many medical professionals go on to develop PVFS and how many of those develop ME. It's easy to cast off "those patients" to the loopy bin of psychosomatics. Much harder to do with colleagues one respects. Then again, maybe it will, but for institutions it's a lot harder as loopy bin or not, if they aren't going back to work it's a huge direct loss, especially for public health systems. At >$1M a pop, physicians are expensive to train. All that becomes a direct operational loss when they can't work anymore. Usually medicine does not see those direct costs, of how expensive it is to raise an educated adult taxpayer, only to have them barely work for their entire adult life.
 
My bolding. I wonder what 40 years ill would be described as if less than a year is "ultra-long-haul"?

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/covid-19-long-haulers


Anyone except the maligned chronic illness community, of course. But we don't count. Literally we don't even count, people are shocked at the possibility that this could go on and on and still they don't count the people who have already been living this way.

I will point this out at every opportunity, that we saw it, warned about it, and still people don't pay attention to that. Which explains everything, frankly. Dismissing people who were right long in advance and continuing to listen to the very people who got it wrong is a time-tested guaranteed method for failure.
 
This is one of the main consequences of keeping LC and ME separate. There are pros and cons but the cons so far will have wasted the first year and appear on track to go past this. It's impossible to take PEM into account while keeping ME locked away. It seems to be more important to keep us out of the way.

Repeating the same mistakes. False hope has consequences. If medicine were any rational this could be handled properly but we know how the system works, that nobody reads the fine prints and exercise is just the magical cure to everything, especially deconditioning, whether there is deconditioning or not. But of course since some with LC don't have PEM and would be on track to recover naturally anyway, a minority of anecdotes will be overplayed. We know this formula.

Diana is the leader of the Survivor Corps, the most visible long hauler in the US so far, and Peloton is an exercise bike manufacturer. And of course, Mayo is mayo, horrible with chronic illness.



Gonna need to palm-massage that forehead a lot today. I didn't expect much but frankly the failure is even worse than the worst case I expected. The first 6 months? Fine. But by now... :banghead::wtf:
 
This is one of the main consequences of keeping LC and ME separate. There are pros and cons but the cons so far will have wasted the first year and appear on track to go past this. It's impossible to take PEM into account while keeping ME locked away. It seems to be more important to keep us out of the way.

Repeating the same mistakes. False hope has consequences. If medicine were any rational this could be handled properly but we know how the system works, that nobody reads the fine prints and exercise is just the magical cure to everything, especially deconditioning, whether there is deconditioning or not. But of course since some with LC don't have PEM and would be on track to recover naturally anyway, a minority of anecdotes will be overplayed. We know this formula.

Diana is the leader of the Survivor Corps, the most visible long hauler in the US so far, and Peloton is an exercise bike manufacturer. And of course, Mayo is mayo, horrible with chronic illness.



Gonna need to palm-massage that forehead a lot today. I didn't expect much but frankly the failure is even worse than the worst case I expected. The first 6 months? Fine. But by now... :banghead::wtf:

Thankfully people are weighing in with the concerns already.
what sort of exercise based rehab program is being developed? I know there have been some major concerns about graded exercise therapy being used on #LongCovid patients.
@MEActNet are you able to weigh in here at all w/ relevant info?
Code:
https://twitter.com/fi_lowenstein/status/1351224297050808324?s=20

 
For the subset who didn’t recover from PVFS and it got relabeled as ME/CFS (us) I always worried that I missed an important window of opportunity during the first year or so where some kind of intervention might’ve worked that won’t work now or where researchers might’ve seen more clearly what is happening to me that led to this. So yes 2020 was wasted time for long COVID!
 


I think this might be an advert:

One supplement the team had been developing specifically for “long Covid” patients had shown promising results, leading to faster recovery in some, Ng said.

I am not sure what it would mean for 40% of Chinese to have 'dysbiosis'.
 
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From The Guardian:

Almost 30% of Covid patients in England readmitted to hospital after discharge – study [as yet unpublished]

'A total of 47,780 individuals who had a hospital episode between 1 January 2020 and 31 August 2020 with a primary diagnosis of Covid-19 were compared with a control group who did not have Covid-19.

Of the 47,780, 29.4% were readmitted within 140 days of discharge and 12.3% died.'

...

'The risk of post-discharge illness – such as respiratory conditions, diabetes and problems with the heart, liver and kidneys – in Covid-19 patients was higher compared with the control group...

...“This matters. Long Covid at this level of morbidity and new disease is absolutely as important as the number of people dying,” said Summers. ' [Dr. Charlotte Summers, Cambridge lecturer]

https://www.theguardian.com/society...re-admitted-to-hospital-after-discharge-study
 
...“This matters. Long Covid at this level of morbidity and new disease is absolutely as important as the number of people dying,” said Summers. ' [Dr. Charlotte Summers, Cambridge lecturer]

This looks to me confused. Do we know that these readmissions and deaths have anything to do with 'Long Covid'. There are a number of reasons why people bad enough to go into hospital with Covid might be readmitted last a high rate and die, including pre-existing poor health and organ damage (which is excluded from Long Covid was I understand it).
 
This document was discussed earlier in the thread:
Possibility of ME or PVFS after COVID-19, Long Covid


Returning to physical activity after covid-19

https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.m4721

GET, assumed to be deconditioning. Sensible caution about some co-morbidities but otherwise it's standard BPS fluff.
Only return to exercise after at least seven days free of symptoms, and begin with at least two weeks of minimal exertion
Technically this should exclude long haulers but obviously symptoms that can't be measured don't count. It's framed about anxiety and distress:
People may feel unsure of how and when to return to physical activity after covid-19, and whether it is safe. Some may have tried to return to their baseline exercise, and found they were unable to do so, causing concern (“When will I get back to normal”?).
As this should:
This article offers a pragmatic approach to help patients safely return to physical activity after symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection, focusing on those who have lost fitness or had a prolonged period of inactivity but who do not have an enduring post-acute covid-19 illness
But then again the whole exercise for "chronic fatigue" was supposed to be for the mildly ill only and we all know all that went. The whole problem is being able to identify it.

The date suggests this is recent but I remember an almost identical article from several months back. Don't know if it's a reprint of that.
 
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Why do we think SARS-Cov-2 and long COVID are going to be any different than SARS, MERS, swine flu, bird flu, Ebola, Herpesviruses, Giardia, Q fever, Ross river, Enteroviruses, and the other documented intracellular pathogens that always seem to trigger PIFS and ME/CFS in a significant minority of people.

Wait maybe I haven’t been up to date on latest research, is there more evidence to suggest that it’s pathogens that can and do infect the gut that lead to PIFS and ME/CFS than whether they are intracellular? Or both?
 
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...“This matters. Long Covid at this level of morbidity and new disease is absolutely as important as the number of people dying,” said Summers. ' [Dr. Charlotte Summers, Cambridge lecturer]

https://www.theguardian.com/society...re-admitted-to-hospital-after-discharge-study
Without in any way downplaying the appalling tragedy and cost of Covid deaths, I remain firmly of the view that the tragedy and cost of Long Covid is going to be much worse. Something society is only just starting to even consider, let alone fully grasp.

It is also the reason why 'natural herd immunity' was always a shockingly bad idea.

The harm caused by the false psych theories will be undeniable.
Psychs: Hold my beer...

The webinar was recorded -- before it ended I messaged a request that it not be released unless Trish's assault on ME patients was edited out -- I believe I finished with something like "no use in traumatizing more people".

I doubt any of it will be released.
It is indeed traumatising and enraging and profoundly dispiriting. But on balance I would prefer this stuff was released unedited. The world needs to see the harsh reality of it, to be appalled, horrified, disgusted, and scared.

The best way to discredit somebody is with their own words. People with this kind of attitude need to be exposed and discredited.

We are way past the point where benefit of doubt on this stuff is a legitimate defence.
 
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This looks to me confused. Do we know that these readmissions and deaths have anything to do with 'Long Covid'. There are a number of reasons why people bad enough to go into hospital with Covid might be readmitted last a high rate and die, including pre-existing poor health and organ damage (which is excluded from Long Covid was I understand it).

I meant to include a comment that it appeared to suggest that large numbers of people readmitted in a serious condition are being included in the Long Covid cohort...but I was over-tired, and forgot. :rolleyes:

Having re-read the article this morning, it looks like two reports hashed together by a sub who hasn't really read either of them, so it's probably not worth trying to draw any conclusions from it!
 
If 1 in 10 of those who had Covid 19 have gone on to have Long Covid, and 12% of the population have had Covid 19, then that suggests an LC prevalence of 1.2% of the population? This is far higher than the c 0.1% prevalence for ME which Luis Nacul proposed, the lowest figure I have seen and the one I trust the most, given so much uncertainty.

There is no way of knowing yet how many of those suffering LC have organ damage which affects their recovery and how many are at the start of ME but would it be reasonable to give to those with LC that have ME symptoms an optimistic message? They have a good chance of recovery if they rest well and that any supplements or treatments that they try may help for a while but they will get better anyway.

But! please remember those of us who have not recovered from viral infections, of whatever sort. Remember what it was like to not be able to work, to be active and have fun, to be able to meet family responsibilities and to live a life of uncertainty, having to face living in poverty.
 
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