Absolutely this about #LongCovid Covid is long
The issue for many is not the acute, early viral infection. This is often mild, or barely symptomatic. The hardest part is the prolonged disease process
This is why covid is such a treat to personal wellbeing, society and healthcare
We know from both the lived experience of patients and now the scientific literature that SARS-CoV-2 infection triggers prolonged disease processes in basically all body systems and organs. Strong is impact on coagulation, immunological, and endothelial function #LongCovid
Persistence of at least viral parts such as for example the spike protein, is also demonstrated by an increasing number of publications.
These triggers for prolonged pathology are not *rare*. SARS-CoV-2 is an extremely dangerous pathogen for many people. #LongCovid
Vaccination is a very useful weapon but it's not the only one. It is increasingly less effective, while SARS-CoV-2 evolves away from Wuhan strain. We see this with #Omicron. We shouldn't accept the "endemic" covid | #MildCovid narrative.
SARS viruses aren't benign
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SARS-CoV-2 infection can lead to prolonged, multidimensional, potentially irreversible | degenerative brain 🧠 damage in both hospitalized and non-hospitalized covid patients 🔺️
[pre-print | extensive brain imaging from the UK biobank]
A significant strenght of the study is availability of brain 🧠 scans from the *same people* before and after SARS-CoV-2 infection
This allows to compare any changes to their brain across time, with pathological changes most likely caused by covid itself
The study used multimodal MRI 🧠 scan of over 700 people who were assessed before and after the covid emergency.
Of these scans, analysis of the 401 people who had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 revealed multidimensional effects on the brain | different brain areas
The Veneto region in Italy is witnessing an exponential growth of covid cases in children in the last 2 months. It's coming close to 300 hospitalized children, of which 13 in PICU (pediatric ICU)
The tweets by medical professional and covid expert @maureviv from early to mid 2020 are amazing. There is so much existing knowledge and new knowledge in the making about clotting, endothelial injury, immune dysfunction from SARS-CoV-2, and post viral illness
🧵 by @maureviv also lead to many by healthcare professionals and patients trying to make sense of covid, as it spread almost unleashed, and alien, across Europe and the world
History in the making
I think this collective knowledge building will change medicine
This is untrue
It's not just #Omicron
We knew already in the early pandemic that CoV-2 could affect children. There are scientific publications on the topic, plus MIS-C, plus the relentless advocacy for #LongCovidKids
Quite a few in public health | medicine failed badly
It's possible, of course, that #Omicron is leading to a never-seen increase in severe pediatric patients. This could be for different reasons: from omicron fast spread to any intrinsic property of the variant
It could also be that multiple exposures to CoV 2 are hitting hard now
Yet, it's gravely incorrect to say that SARS-CoV-2 infection was "relatively reassuring to be safe for children". Early pandemic data appeared to indicate less severe *symptomatic* pathology and lower death risk in children on average than in adults
But never no risk or pathology
The US CDC says people with "resolving covid symptoms" can go back to work
Bad
Let's remember: early covid is often a biphasic disease, with a mild prodromal phase
Many people seem to recover around day 5, only to develop more serious issues, including silent hypoxia, in week 2
Many people especially in the youngish category but with severe | moderate disease tend to have a peak in covid severity around days 10 to 12. This has been called the "second week crash"
Some with covid pneumonia can be in life threatening conditions
Prof. in Medicine (❗) Paul Hunter of East Anglia University (UK) is reported in the press to say that people with covid shouldn't be isolating anymore
"Expert says people with COVID should be allowed to 'go about their normal lives' at some point" news.sky.com/story/covid-ne…
He adds that at some point people should behave with covid as they do with any other "cold"
There are thousands dying from covid every day in the world Hundreds of thousands have been hospitalized in the last few weeks and | or have developed debilitating symptoms
We don't even know how many are developing prolonged disease #LongCovid, especially in areas of the world were surveillance and access to care are poor SARS-CoV-2 is a SARS virus which is capable of partial immune escape as we have seen with #Omicron
People are dying of omicron