Thread by @elisaperego78

Not sure how it's possible public health officials "initially believed only a small minority of people would suffer from Long Covid". I wrote some of the first papers ever on #LongCovid myself. Co-authors and I wrote the costs were going to be "unfathomable" = huge | in 2020

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https://twitter.com/TaylorLorenz/status/1525273707496632320

"Research indicating sequelae even in asymptomatic/pauci-symptomatic cases, suggests screening and treatment may be needed for millions" | a note: we wrote this in summer 2020 | we're now at hundreds of millions, if not billions, of infected people at risk!

An early report by @patientled found a significant percentage of people in their sample had
prolonged symptoms for several weeks | a note: we're again in 2020, so the survey was based on an early timeframe | but prolonged disease in many was evident!

patientresearchcovid19.com/research/repor…

Again in summer 2020, Carfi et al published a research letter in @JAMA_current on "persistent symptoms in patients after acute covid 19"
Based on a sample of 143 hospitalized patients, they showed only 12% of survivors were symptoms free ~60 days from onset | mean age 56 years

Again in 2020, Putmann et al addressed cardiac involvement in 100 patients with covid onset ~71 days before | mostly non-hospitalized | 78% had myocardial involvement | 60% onoing myocardial inflammation | mean age 49 years | not old!

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32730619/

These are some very early published pieces on prolonged symptoms and sequelae after SARS-CoV-2 infection | just a small list! | as we know, #LongCovid was being defined and recognized by those with the disease in late winter to spring 2020.

A lot of early knowledge on #LongCovid was created and shared via means which aren't those through which knowledge in medicine is usually built: tweets, posts in support groups, blogs, interviews to newspapers, videos.

sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

Many of those sharing their experiences on social and other media were not medical professionals (although some were!). Some were too ill to write scientific papers themselves, despite having a scientific background.

All this huge amount of knowledge shared by those with #LongCovid made clear already in early-to-mid 2020, that a significant percentage of those infected with SARS-CoV-2 was not recovering within the 2-6 week timeframe of official guidelines.

#LongCovid was formally recognized by the WHO in August 2020. Since the early studies in 2020, thousands of papers have been published on Long Covid. These studies show Long Covid isn't rare. I don't even mention the existent research on the SARS sequelae | #longSARS.

Sedicent "experts" saying #LongCovid was believed to be rare are clearly not expert, or they are not providing a clear description of both the disease and how knowledge on the disease evolved. Long Covid was never shown to be rare, or not a big problem. Quite the opposite.