COVID reminders
Now that COVID seems to be surging again, some timely reminders are in order:
• keep your vaccination status current. The vaccine won’t keep you from being infected, but it will most likely keep you out of the ED and the morgue;
• the outcome of COVID infection isn’t binary: death or survival. A third outcome is long COVID. Among the consequences of long COVID are pathological changes in blood pressure and heart function.
From the link:
“For up to a year after a case of COVID-19, people may be at increased risk of developing a new heart-related problem, anything from blood clots and irregular heartbeats to a heart attack –- even if they initially seem to recover just fine.
“Among the unknowns: Who’s most likely to experience these aftereffects? Are they reversible — or a warning sign of more heart disease later in life?
“Heart disease has long been the top killer in the nation and the world. But in the U.S., heart-related death rates had fallen to record lows in 2019, just before the pandemic struck.
“COVID-19 erased a decade of that progress, Cheng said.”
Long COVID and heart problems
https://apnews.com/article/covid19-long-covid-heart-3dd8f26c663e96bffcc2980830626153
August 10, 2023
COVID-19 took a toll on heart health and doctors are still grappling with how to help
By LAURAN NEERGAARD
“We are seeing effects on the heart and the vascular system that really outnumber, unfortunately, effects on other organ systems,” said Dr. Susan Cheng, a cardiologist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles….
“We’re about to exit this pandemic as even a sicker nation” because of virus-related heart trouble, said Washington University’s Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, who helped sound the alarm about lingering health problems. The consequences, he added, “will likely reverberate for generations.” …
Heart disease has long been the top killer in the nation and the world. But in the U.S., heart-related death rates had fallen to record lows in 2019, just before the pandemic struck.
COVID-19 erased a decade of that progress, Cheng said.
Heart attack-caused deaths rose during every virus surge. Worse, young people aren’t supposed to have heart attacks but Cheng’s research documented a nearly 30% increase in heart attack deaths among 25- to 44-year-olds in the pandemic’s first two years.
A devastating article and post.
Whether this increase in disability is related, I do not know:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=17hQl
January 4, 2020
Labor Force and Population with a disability, * 2017-2023
* Age 16 and over
“There is no cure for long covid. Two of my friends went on to have strokes. A third developed diabetes, a fourth dementia. One died.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/08/09/madeline-miller-long-covid-post-pandemic/?pwapi_token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJyZWFzb24iOiJnaWZ0IiwibmJmIjoxNjkxODk5MjAwLCJpc3MiOiJzdWJzY3JpcHRpb25zIiwiZXhwIjoxNjkzMjgxNTk5LCJpYXQiOjE2OTE4OTkyMDAsImp0aSI6IjdkZGRmODc0LWMxMzAtNDYyMS1iZDExLTVlN2I3NmM3YzM1ZiIsInVybCI6Imh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lndhc2hpbmd0b25wb3N0LmNvbS9vcGluaW9ucy8yMDIzLzA4LzA5L21hZGVsaW5lLW1pbGxlci1sb25nLWNvdmlkLXBvc3QtcGFuZGVtaWMvIn0.in4QeFlHaWLRxWRRH1NoBW0D3X6c-WkaXRobCvlTzMk&fbclid=IwAR10pMj6MQ60aBiiE5x8cUXPvwMTzTulnfxREtIMpy_2LJaN_0mLExtWlZ0
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/08/09/madeline-miller-long-covid-post-pandemic/
August 9, 2023
Long covid has derailed my life. Make no mistake: It could yours, too.
By Madeline Miller
a short excerpt from my enviro newsletter from this morning:
Biobot’s data on Covid’s concentration in samples of US wastewater doesn’t look all that bad until one scrolls down to the regional graph…nationally, they’re showing 431 copies of the virus per ml of wastewater as of August 9th, which is up about 8.8% from last week…however, the concentration of the virus in Midwest sewers has spiked to 666 copies per ml, more than double the August 2nd Covid concentration, and more than a fourfold increase from the 148 copies per ml reported for July 19th…checking for details on nearby counties, neither Erie county PA nor Summit county OH look that alarming, but some areas of Midwest have to be seeing concentrations of Covid in wastewater that are higher than seen during this past winter’s surge…in other regions, it’s not so bad; in the South, the Covid concentration is now at 409 copies of the virus per ml of wastewater, actually down about 5% from August 2nd; in the Northeast, the concentration is now at 419 copies per ml, about a 2% decrease, while the concentration in the West is at 392 copies per ml, a 12% increase…
From Medscape…
Don’t Get Your Next Covid Booster Quite Yet
NY Times – August 10
What vaccines you should seek out
NY Times – August 4