science

That's fucked, buddy. One can only wonder at the uncalculated costs of everyone who had it that bad.

Same here. I'm already disabled and have cancer, and don't need any extra health issues to manage. Still get strange looks but I've evaded catching it so far, so I'll keep my mask.

As someone with long covid, it is fucking hell. The extreme fatigue, muscle soreness, lengthened healing times of wounds or new sicknesses or physical exertion have made life hardly bearable. I just straight up don't have the energy or mental capacity to do anything I used to love and enjoy.

It's endlessly depressing, even though I know I am keeping myself out of clinical depression after learning how to deal with depressive issues more proactively now.

I wish I just wore an n95 whenever I was around people now, but I know I never would have done so unless I knew how truly awful long covid is.

It’s not even that big of a sacrifice honestly. Wearing a mask is pretty trivial. Restaurants have outdoor tables. The indoor-only ones that don’t but are still worth going to tend to seat less than 15 people so I occasionally deem it worth the risk.

Long Covid seems way, way worse than a mask. When we have a cure for that I’ll drop it, but until then it’s not even that inconvenient.

Plus, you don’t even have to get the worst symptoms for it to affect you. A couple people I know lost their taste and smell in 2020/2021 and have yet to regain it. That, I think, ruins restaurants more than sitting outside.

The risk of long covid is cumulative so every infection increases your chance. But also just having covid increases your risk of heart attacks and strokes for up to a year https://nyulangone.org/news/study-helps-explain-how-covid-19-heightens-risk-heart-attack-stroke

It's not a one-time risk, either. You face these odds every single time you catch the disease. Your risk accumulates. According to a groundbreaking Statistics Canada report, you're almost three times more likely to develop Long Covid after your third infection. The more times you catch Covid, the more likely you are to come down with a debilitating chronic illness.

Covid messes up your immune system so even if you don't get long covid, you get other opportunistic infections, plus nice stuff like heart attacks. Of course if you die of such a heart attack, it's not counted as a covid death. So the damage of covid is way underestimated.

I got COVID after taking all precautions because my father didn't wear a mask and took it home. I was sick for a month. I only left my bed to use the bathroom or eat. I literally slept the rest of the time. I probably should have gone to the hospital because I could hardly stay awake even just to eat. I remember waking up one day, and just knowing that I was recovering.

Recovery was hell. I couldn't taste, or smell anything. I had awful flu like symptoms. I was lethargic and I could hardly walk. It took two weeks to feel functional, and for three months my sense of taste was completely fucked.

I've had long COVID symptons (reduced sense of smell, instantly tired, heart going on a gallop for no or not much reason) for 6 to 7 months after my COVID infection, after which point those symptons suddenly cleared up. At the start I did hospital visits to have my heart checked out and everything, but nothing wrong could be found. I have no trouble believing that some people will never recover.

10% does seem crazy high. But it's also possible that some long covid effects go noticed. Also totally anecdotally, but I heard multiple people say they just don't feel as fit now doing cardio, myself included. Is it we're just older or did we get slight lung damage? Or worse, heart damage. Our bodies are really surprisingly sturdy and able to keep up with damage for a long time.

I know 2 people with severe complications from long covid. And I don't know that many people. So how many around me are living with mild long covid complications and don't realize it?

This is why anecdotes are not informative when trying to understand statistics. You almost certainly don't have a close relationship with hundreds of people that would involve informing you of lingering COVID symptoms nor do you have a random sampling of acquaintances (age, ethnicity, and vaccination status affect how common it is).

https://www.webmd.com/covid/news/20230526/one-in-ten-people-omicron-long-covid

The people who have experienced long-term effects are extremely vocal online but it's hard to imagine that it is as common as 1 in 10 given how many people have had covid.

I am extremely curious to see if they find a genotype or something which is an indicator for people being vulnerable to long-covid. It's possible that it will end up being a similar situation for ME/CFS where we have no specific biological markers which differentiate people who suffer from it (aside from the symptoms).