July COVID update – Tracy Durnell

Medical

Post-acute and long-COVID-19 symptoms in patients with mild diseases: a systematic review (2022)

9 studies – mostly post-acute = more than 3 weeks; few long covid (=more than 12 weeks)
“frequency of persistent symptoms in patients after mild COVID-19 infection ranged between 10% and 35%”

Invisible long COVID?
Immunological dysfunction persists for 8 months following initial mild-to-moderate SARS-CoV-2 infection (Jan 2022)

Even mild COVID can cause cognitive impairment:

Selective visuoconstructional impairment following mild COVID-19 with inflammatory and neuroimaging correlation findings (June 2022)

Studied “adults at least four months after recovering from mild COVID-19”
“In approximately one-quarter of mild-COVID-19 individuals, we detected a specific visuoconstructive deficit, which was associated with changes in molecular and structural brain imaging, and correlated with upregulation of peripheral immune markers. Our findings provide evidence of neuroinflammatory burden causing cognitive deficit…”

COVID a leading cause of death for young adults too:

https://mobile.twitter.com/tylerblack32/status/1544812545524912128

COVID hurts immune system T cells:

https://mobile.twitter.com/PeskyTCells/status/1542572722592546817

Possible to be reinfected with a new strain in 3 weeks:

CDC Identifies Covid-19 Reinfections As Soon As 23 Days Apart

Lol this looks bad. Yeah not published yet but do you want to bet an indeterminate time of disability on it being completely flawed? Combine this with our societal efforts to reduce transmission that influence how many times a year you’re likely to get COVID, and with our current schedule that’s not a whole lot of years…

https://mobile.twitter.com/DavidSteadson/status/1546308765171224576

Associated with increased rate of new diabetes diagnosed for six months after infection

The risk of heart and circulation problems, such as irregular heartbeats and blood clots on the lungs, was nearly six times higher in Covid patients than uninfected people of the same age and sex, and 80% higher for diabetes, during the month after infection, researchers found.

(Although causation is not necessarily the case:)

While Covid can cause direct damage to organs and the circulatory system, Rezel-Potts stresses that many factors could explain the findings. For example, the Covid patients in the study were more likely to be overweight and had more underlying health problems than the uninfected control group, predisposing them to the further conditions.

CDC finds reduced severe disease protection via vaccination against newer strains:

“When BA.2.12.1 became predominant, vaccine effectiveness with two doses was 24% against COVID-19 -associated hospitalizations and increased to 52%-69% after a third/booster dose.”

And “We have no vaccine effectiveness data yet for BA.5.”