Covid, again...

[Alexi]

so I'm on my 5th bout of Covid, already been in the hospital from long covid + high blood preasure heart complications early this spring.

anyone else just seem to be a Covid magenet? how are you surving it?

this is on top of having lyme 3 times.

[truth]

Sorry to hear that Alexi, I hope you're able to heal up.

I've still not caught it fortunately but it certainly seems to be, yet again, going around in my world.

[makoti]

Lyme 3 times? I thought that once you got Lyme, you had it for good and you basically built up your defenses.
Have you contracted it 3 times? Or had 3 flare ups?

Of course, you do not need to answer that. Really not my business, but I also have Lyme and was told it will always show up, but it's "gone". Not sure how it does both.

As for Covid, that I've only had once and I worked in a high risk job, so I'm guessing having Lyme isn't something that makes you more susceptible

[Alexi]

Originally Posted by makoti

Lyme 3 times? I thought that once you got Lyme, you had it for good and you basically built up your defenses.
Have you contracted it 3 times? Or had 3 flare ups?

Of course, you do not need to answer that. Really not my business, but I also have Lyme and was told it will always show up, but it's "gone". Not sure how it does both.

As for Covid, that I've only had once and I worked in a high risk job, so I'm guessing having Lyme isn't something that makes you more susceptible

I think what they used to think was Lyme flare ups, or long Lyme/chronic Lyme are often repeated cases of Lyme.

IIRC once you get Lyme you’re more susceptible to getting it again.

[Alexi]

“A surprising number of patients experience a subsequent episode of Lyme disease after the first episode has resolved. Reinfection has been well-documented only after successfully treated early infection”

“Reinfection is defined here as the development of a new tick-transmitted infection with Lyme Borrelia occurring after successful antimicrobial treatment of a prior episode of Lyme disease.”

https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE8AD1TW/

https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/45/8/1032/344607

“Increased levels of Borrelia-specific IgGs strongly correlated with COVID-19 severity and risk of hospitalization. This suggests that a history of tick bites and related infections may contribute to the risks in COVID-19”

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-20202-x

[plunk]

Oh man, I'm so sorry to hear that you're going through this again. Five bouts of Covid is just crazy. You must be feeling really frustrated and worried about your health. Sending you lots of positive vibes and hoping you can get through this latest round quickly and without any more complications.

[CMiller]

That sounds terrible, sorry to hear, Alexi!

[JMT3]

I had Covid for the first and only time this February, Weird thing that got me to the ER was my blood pressure is normally about 110/60. When I tested positive I was feeling like I had a bad cold. Took my blood pressure and it was 240/120. I called my primary care and did some on line research. No where on anyone’s website including the CDC’c does it say high blood pressure can be a symptom. I’m in the ER and the doctor when I asked him the question told me very frequently high blood pressure is a symptom of Covid. Why is no one putting that out there? If I would have read it I would have not gone to the ER and waste a bunch of time and money.

Get well.

Took the Stumpjumper out this past Sunday for ride on the local trails. I need to get a longer seatpost, need 2 more CM of height, which came today but other than that I like it.

Thanks!

[gurk700]

Makes me wonder if some people are more genetically prone to it. My uncle is on his 4th bout. He's healthy in all metrics you can think of. Only thing that's bad is he sleeps like 4 hours a day. Other than that 0 other health issues and super healthy eater etc.

I'm sure sleep thing doesn't help his immune system but so far he's gotten covid every year while most of his extended family (and I) got it once.

Feel better soon. I can't imagine the frustration of missing ride time!

[jimcav]

Maybe 5--the last time I felt sick and lost my sense of taste I just didn't even care about getting a test. I just isolated myself b/c I've already got long COVID and there's nothing to do about it. No one else in my family got it from me, but my 3rd time I got it from my wife.

Her one and only positive was after flying home to see her family in MD for X-mas 2021. She came back and was sick a day or 2 after returning, tested positive. So that became #3 for me--omicron from her in Jan '22. She luckily was not very sick at all.
My elder son got it at college this past fall after his girlfriend got it. My younger son has never had it. I have had long covid each time. So, I am definitely susceptible--never too acutely sick (1st time was the worst with 104 fevers, complete loss of taste, and just wiped out).

I was the 1st person I knew personally to get it--there wasn't even a test near me in Late Feb '20. The 2nd was in early summer '21 and I'd been vaccinated by then. The 1st 2 times the long COVID got better after 12 months (1st time) and then 7 months (2nd time), but not the subsequent bouts--I got COVID twice about 5 months apart (Jan '22 and then June '23)--unending long COVID ever since. It really sucks to be a shadow of ones former self and not know if it will improve again.

I have to be very careful with exertion and heat exposure (by heat I mean sunny SoCal days--it might be only 65-75, but the radiant heat from the sun causes my autonomic system issues if I do much more then walk. I can't be at all dehydrated if I want to do any exercise. The issue I care most about is not being able to run or ride as I did. My HR goes nuts (165 to 190) and then short of breath, dizzy, etc. My cardiologist put me on Corlanor, which lowers my HR so I can at least attempt exercise. Then, If I'm very, very careful with sun/temps, hydration, and build up SLOWLY, I can get to where I can jog 4-5 miles (at what is a really slow pace compared to where I was in 2019 for me) and I can MTB on most trails--I do have to stop on some sections and hills I never had to stop on in the past, but I can at least be out there.

My wife cares more about my long covid fatigue, insomnia, and memory and concentration issues. I was making some progress this year, but then got a jones fracture in my left foot this spring and have had to basically do nothing for months because those can heal poorly and need surgery. I am about 30-lbs heavier and out of shape, but I know I will lose it if I can get back to my usual 5-6 times a week riding and jogging.

All I can advise is listen to your body and don't try to push through anything or rush it trying to get back to prior levels of anything.

Walk if that is all you can do, and gradually try to build up very, very slowly. It took me weeks to get to the point of doing something every day (for weeks I'd have to have days between any jogging or cycling, but when I hurt my foot this spring, I was finally up to doing something daily, even several days of back-to-back jogging, albeit slow.

Maybe ask your doctor if Corlanor is right for you

Keep up hope!

[cash05458]

I am so sorry to hear this...good luck!

I never got it...and believe me, I was in situations work wise that I was literally in a van next to someone numerous times who then popped positive the next day.

The whole thing is barbed via what and what not and not to sound like a conspiracy fellow...but it might be possible vit. D does something...I have always taken it...and likewise have 3 friends who also always took it and they too never got it...no idea if that is real...but just perhaps...

[Nomadmax]

Get well soon.

[verticaldoug]

Bloomberg has a story today on how people in general are getting more sick post-pandemic:


Everyone Really Is Sick a Lot More Often in Post-Covid Times
2024-06-14 16:01:02.486 GMT


By Jinshan Hong and Bhuma Shrivastava
(Bloomberg) -- Since February, Kathy Xiang and her entire
family has been under siege.
Her 12-year-old daughter has had whooping cough, rhinovirus
and parainfluenza: She's missed more than five weeks of school
in total. Xiang, a software developer in Shanghai, caught all
three too. Her elderly parents, who were helping care for her
10-month-old, tested positive for Covid-19 in early March, and
her father got shingles.
Then the baby caught parainfluenza and pneumonia,
necessitating five days on an IV drip. “I was literally numb
after the baby boy got sick despite all our efforts to protect
him,” Xiang said. “I was physically and mentally exhausted.”
Around the world, a post-Covid reality is beginning to sink
in: Everyone, everywhere, really is sick a lot more often.
Listen and follow TheBig TakeonApple Podcasts,Spotifyor
wherever you get your podcasts
At least 13 communicable diseases, from the common cold to
measles and tuberculosis, are surging past their pre-pandemic
levels in many regions, and often by significant margins,
according to analysis by Bloomberg News and London-based disease
forecasting firm Airfinity Ltd.
The resulting research, based on data collected from more
than 60 organizations and public health agencies, shows that 44
countries and territories have reported at least one infectious
disease resurgence that’s at least ten times worse than the pre-
pandemic baseline.
The post-Covid global surge of illnesses — viral and
bacterial, common and historically rare — is a mystery that
researchers and scientists are still trying to definitively
explain. The way Covid lockdowns shifted baseline immunities is
a piece of the puzzle, as is the pandemic’s hit to overall
vaccine administration and compliance. Climate change, rising
social inequality and wrung-out health-care services are
contributing in ways that are hard to measure.
Covid-19 is the first major global pandemic in the era of
modern medicine, so there's little precedent for what comes
after. “The last major devastating flu pandemic was in 1918.
There was no vaccination, no diagnostics or treatments. So we
are in a new territory here,” said Jeremy Farrar, World Health
Organization’s chief scientist.
Comeback Diseases
Influenza cases in the US have jumped about 40% in the two
post-Covid flu seasons, compared with the pre-pandemic years,
according to clinical lab results. Whooping cough, or pertussis,
cases have climbed by 45 times in China in the first four months
compared with last year. And in some parts of Australia, where
flu season is just getting underway, cases of respiratory
syncytial virus, or RSV, have nearly doubled from a year ago.
Argentina is battling its worst-ever dengue outbreak. Japan
is seeing a mysterious surge of Streptococcal A, also known as
strep throat. Measles is making a comeback in more than 20
American states, the UK and parts of Europe. Globally, 7.5
million people were newly diagnosed with tuberculosis in 2022 —
the worst year on record since the World Health Organization
started global TB monitoring in the mid-1990s.
The theory of immunity debt has become a popular, if
controversial, explanation for the post-Covid surge in
illnesses. It basically means that pandemic lockdowns offered an
artificial layer of insulation from routine pathogens but left
people more vulnerable when the world reopened. The effect is
worse for young kids, whose brand-new immune systems were
cosseted by social distancing, online classes and masks.
“It’s like the walls of the immune system are broken, so
all kinds of viruses can easily get in,” said Cindy Yuan, an
internal medicine doctor in a private clinic in Shanghai. In
some months, she says, her patient load has doubled from pre-
Covid levels. “It’s nonstop. From last autumn’s mycoplasma
infections to flu and Covid during winter, and then whooping
cough and various kinds of bacteria infections.”
That’s been the leading explanation for the extra traffic
at pediatric hospitals globally since the 2022 flu season and
for why respiratory pathogens returned with such a vengeance,
like in China’s first post-Covid Zero winter last year.
Read More: China Says Multiple Pathogens Are Behind
Respiratory Illnesses
Public health experts aren’t convinced. Immunity debt might
account for some resurgence of illnesses reported post-Covid,
but probably not all of it, said Ben Cowling, chair of
epidemiology at the University of Hong Kong’s School of Public
Health.
“Immunity debt, it definitely happens, but I don’t think it
results in enormous epidemics after Covid,” he said, adding that
greater surveillance and testing could also contribute to higher
reported numbers.
What’s more, if immunity debt were the only factor, the
countries that lifted pandemic restrictions two or three years
ago should be caught up by now, and they're not. The waves of
illnesses keep coming.
So do fatalities. A sustained rise in mortality levels in
some countries is fueling another theory, that pandemic
lockdowns essentially kept some people alive who may have died
in a normal environment with freely-circulating viruses and
bacteria. The Biggest Risk
Canada, Japan, Singapore and Germany — places lauded for
their successful efforts to contain Covid — are now seeing
unusual levels of excess mortality, said Christopher Murray,
Washington-based director of the Institute for Health Metrics
and Evaluation. In contrast, places that failed to control the
spread of Covid, like Bulgaria, Romania and Russia, are now back
to pre-pandemic mortality rates.
“Why would it be worse in places that did a good job? That
seems a bit strange. Some of this is the idea that those
countries kept frail, elderly people alive,” Murray said. Mixed
with the immunity debt theory, “it’s a really quite complicated
set of things going on,” he said.

Then there’s the unquantifiable role of poverty, which has
spiked globally in the aftermath of the pandemic. Social
inequality is the “biggest risk factor” for infectious disease,
said David Owens, co-founder of OT&P Healthcare in Hong Kong.
Overcrowded living conditions and poor access to high-quality
nutrition adds to illness, increasing the amount of viral and
bacterial pathogens in societies. And the ensuing strain on
public health-care systems drags down the quality of care for
everyone.
“Having vulnerable populations which allow an epidemic to
take hold or accelerate increases risks for everybody,” Owens
said. Missed Shots
The spikes in preventable illnesses, like measles, polio
and pertussis are easier to explain, experts say. Vaccination
rates fell sharply during the pandemic, with supply chains
disrupted, resources diverted and immunization services limited
by lockdowns, Cowling said.
Read More: Covid Fuels Worst Decline in Childhood
Vaccinations in 30 Years
At the same time, a growing number of children live in
conflict or fragile environments, limiting ready access to
vaccines. And Covid-era misinformation fueled simmering mistrust
in vaccines in general.
About 25 million children missed at least one dose of the
three-shot diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis vaccine in 2021.
The percentage of children who received all the three doses of
this vaccine dropped to 81%, the lowest level in 13 years.
UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell called it “a
red alert for child health” in July 2022. “The consequences will
be measured in lives,” she warned then.

Read More: Eroding Mandates Means More Parents Aren't
Vaccinating Their Kid
Pertussis, which can induce coughing fits so violent that
patients have been known to break their ribs, has been staging a
global comeback. Deaths, usually in young babies who struggle to
breathe, have been reported in China, the Philippines, the UK,
the Czech Republic and the Netherlands. Canada, South Africa,
Bolivia, the US, Malaysia and Israel have all seen resurgent
outbreaks.
Measles — identified through a distinctive dotted rash,
coughing and a fever that can be deadly for young children — is
an extremely contagious virus, requiring a very high threshold
vaccination rate of about 95% in young children to stop its
spread.
In the UK, coverage for the second measles dose was just
over 84% in 2022-23 for five-year-olds, far below what’s needed
for community protection. In Europe, more than 1.8 million
infants in Europe missed their measles shot between 2020 and
2022, and the region saw a 30-fold spike in cases last year. The
US eliminated measles in the year 2000, but the disease has
returned after a dip in kindergarten inoculation.
Measles, says University of Illinois epidemiologist Katrine
Wallace, is an early warning sign, the first indication that
vaccination rates are dropping to the point that other diseases
are going to come back.
Read More: Measles Cases Rise 30-Fold In Europe, Alarming
Health Officials
“Every one of these diseases has kind of its own story, its
own risk factors, its own geographical considerations,” Wallace
said. “It’s like putting together a series of puzzles.”
Sick Days
The consequences of Covid can be thought of as “a series
of concentric circles,” said WHO’s Farrar. The acute public
health emergency has ended, but the knock-on effects persist.
The state of constant illness already is taking a toll on
businesses and the economy. Nearly one in three US employees in
white-collar jobs took at least one sick day in 2023, according
to payroll company Gusto, up 42% from 2019. And when they missed
work, they missed more of it, with the average absence up 15%.
And a UK study found workplace absences at the highest rate in
over a decade, with employees missing nearly eight days on
average over the past year, up from six before the pandemic.
To move past the current situation, rebuilding society’s
trust in vaccines is an absolute must, said Farrar. “We’ve got
to make the case for science and for vaccines and explain and
explain and explain the importance. We can’t just say some
people are anti-science or anti-vaccine and forget them,” he
said. “We need to listen, explain, andtry to reach everybody.”
Read More: China’s Child Pneumonia Outbreak Shows Danger of
Drug Resistance
Despite the speed with which countries around the world
left Covid-era protections behind, the lingering trail of
sickness, along with the thousands of Covid deaths each month,
shows that the pandemic has cast a long shadow. The Spanish flu
persisted for roughly three years, IHME’s Murray said.
Given three years have already passed since Covid arrived,
“we were very surprised with the 2023 patterns in some of these
countries,” he said. “Maybe we have more surprises coming.”
Data Methodology
Bloomberg News collaborated with Airfinity to map the post-
pandemic resurgence of 13 infectious diseases. The spike size is
determined by the fold change, or ratio, in the peak reported
cases during a post-pandemic period (2022-onward) compared with
the pre-pandemic maximum annual incidence between 2017 and 2019.
The baseline year for pertussis for some countries may be set to
an earlier date to capture the most recent outbreak before the
pandemic.
The analysis includes chickenpox, cholera, dengue, measles,
mycoplasma pneumoniae, parvovirus B19, invasive Group A
Streptococcus, pertussis, influenza, RSV, wild poliovirus type
1, vaccine-derived poliovirus and tuberculosis. The global spike
map illustrates only six diseases with most notable resurgences.
The analysis, as of June 1, relies heavily on data reported
by countries or regions and may not be exhaustive. Data from
some geographies may be more accurate due to superior
surveillance and reporting systems. Some regions have also seen
higher testing, which may have increased the disease incidence.
The year-to-date data has been included in the research
since significantly higher cases are being recorded for certain
diseases in 2024 than in any other year included in the study.
In such instances, the fold change is calculated based on cases
reported so far this year, with the assumption that these
figures will rise as more data becomes available over time.

[nooneline]

solidarity with the long covid folks out there. i've been grinding through it for over two years, and i've made a lot of progress but am still so far below what I used to be capable of. it sucks.

[Black Dog]

Originally Posted by cash05458

I am so sorry to hear this...good luck!

I never got it...and believe me, I was in situations work wise that I was literally in a van next to someone numerous times who then popped positive the next day.

The whole thing is barbed via what and what not and not to sound like a conspiracy fellow...but it might be possible vit. D does something...I have always taken it...and likewise have 3 friends who also always took it and they too never got it...no idea if that is real...but just perhaps...

I take vitamin D every day and I got Covid twice. However I did not stay at a holiday inn express and there is a 5G cell phone tower 5km from my house. 🤔 Correlation is not causation. It is rarely beneficial to let yourself confuse the two.