I’m personally way more worried about long-term cognitive symptoms than about dying. Obviously the jury’s still out on long term symptoms, but something like a quarter of people with symptomatic COVID seem to have some kind of cognitive symptom (mainly “brain fog” and/or short-term memory loss) 8 months later. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.18.21253633v...
I was double vaxxed with moderna and caught a breakthrough case.
The weird thing is that while the extent of my infection was that I had a bad sinus infection without fever for about 3 days. It greatly effected my cognition, besides temporarily (<1 day) losing my sense of smell I also experienced a loss of spatial/body awareness and was knocking things over which I never do even when sick, I was easily cognitively overwhelmed for about 10-15 days after my positive test, 11 days after my symptoms subsided.
I am a software engineer that a couple times of year may get halo migraines, the worst untreated migraines I've had caused a small decrease in cognition and working memory for almost a week, most migraines have little to no cognitiove effect.
This "mild" covid was by far the most systemic and far reaching cognitive impairment I've had, worse even then post surgery recovery involving deep general anesthesia. It effected working memory, ability to follow conversational threads & profoundly limited my available vocabulary, I was missing words, not simply fumbling for them, for several weeks.
It's an interesting virus to be sure, my generally unflappable fiancee was uncharacteristically worried by my erratic mental state, she was relieved I tested positive with covid as she had been worrying about a stroke or something.
Anecdotally... I would not recommend getting this virus if you are a knowledge worker.
Sorry you had a rough experience but unfortunately that's not really actionable advice. Since the virus is now endemic all of us can expect to be exposed multiple times in our lives regardless of what protective measures we take.
What treatments did your doctor prescribe during the infection? Unfortunately many physicians still aren't treating it aggressively enough with monoclonal antibodies and other therapies.
I would not say that it was a rough experience, just that it had a stronger cognitive component than I had expected as a vaccinated individual. Was I supposed to give actionable advice? I clearly said my experience was an anecdote.
I was out of town when I became infected so I was not able to procure monoclonal antibodies during the recommended period, the healthcare logistics were a pain (as they often are in the states). I of course took high bioavailability zinc, magnesium, vitamin d, vitamin c, etc, etc.
If you're asking that I provide actionable advice I would suggest these things in so far as I'm qualified to make any suggestions.
1. get vaccinated
2. keep an oxygen meter on hand or use the one on your phone
3. keep a home antigen test on hand
4. if you test positive throw whatever your doctor recommends at it
5. When traveling wear a comfortable silicon respirator with a good fit.
6. It would be nice to have a nasal spray vaccine, it was very clear during my infection that covid was not able to find purchase outside of my heads mucosal... zone? region? it seems like a nasal spray booster that targets strengthening the immune response of that part of your body might be of enormous benefit to prevent these cognitive effects in mild cases.
I lost $1000 due to post COVID brain fog just today. I’m a photographer and had my first shoot since having it, and I set up a light in a way where the first gust of wind toppled it over in to a lake.
I think "long COVID" is too vague to really provide a specific incidence rate - it's more meaningful to look at the incidence rates of particular symptoms long after infection.
The study I linked finds 27.9% incidence of "confusion/brain fog/trouble focusing attention" and 20.7% incidence of short-term memory loss 8 months after symptomatic COVID infection (confirmed with antibody testing), compared to 14.7% and 5.6% respectively in the control group (who tested negative for COVID antibodies).
I don't know or really care if "long COVID" is the right term for what those folks are experiencing, but that result has real practical significance and the rates are way higher than 1%. The same study also finds significant incidence rates for lots of other symptoms that could reasonably fit under the "long COVID" umbrella.
I (40 yo non overweight, non smoker, non diabetic) got COVID back in March last year. I was healthy before that and got a 'mild' case by medical standards. And yet, I developed a nasty pneumonia in one of my lungs at that time.
After more than a year, I still haven't recovered my full lung function. As soon as I get in a room with AC I start to cough, and my lungs are sensitive to cold weather .
It may be 'just' 1 percent... But darn it sucks to win that lottery.
A better measure would be similar to Expected Utility: 1% multiplied by the 'loss' value of living the rest of your life fucked up.
Take a look at this book. Many patients with similar symptoms caused by other diseases have been able to improve just with breathing exercises. There has been significant research in this area, not just pseudoscience woo.
