
Virus Survivors Could Suffer Severe Health Effects for Years - onetimemanytime
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-12/covid-19-s-health-effects-can-last-long-after-virus-is-gone
======
roenxi
There is no data here and nothing to really talk about. This type of thing
100% needs actual trials, papers and time before being an issue.

(1) The sample of people who went to hospital are presumably already more
susceptible to lung disease than the normal population.

(2) This doesn't include a comparison to the existing flu and other existing
diseases. Maybe some percent of ordinary flu cause long term symptoms and they
just don't get picked up. A surprising number of people will be quietly
nursing chronic conditions and not talking about them.

(3) How many people are we talking here? Need to see some %. There are people
who die of flesh eating bacteria; world is a scary place. If it only affects a
small number of people it isn't that important.

~~~
hutzlibu
I read those articles (there are lots of them) as "please take corona still
serious, even if you are young".

So not really journalism, but agenda/propaganda. Maybe not the worst agenda
and much better than: " we have to accept total surveillance to get back to
"normal", but still not really journalism.

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faitswulff
This Vox article on possible long term effects was quite thorough, going in
depth on each of the following:

• Lung scarring

• Stroke, embolisms, and blood clotting

• Heart damage

• Neurocognitive and mental health impacts

• Childhood inflammation, male infertility, and other possible lasting effects

[https://www.vox.com/2020/5/8/21251899/coronavirus-long-
term-...](https://www.vox.com/2020/5/8/21251899/coronavirus-long-term-effects-
symptoms)

~~~
ghastmaster
Have you read the side effects of prescription drugs? It's scary also. If 24/7
coverage and articles like this existed for car accidents, prescription drugs,
surgeries, cancer, etc. we would have to shut down life as we know it.

~~~
hrktb
Prescription drugs are legitimately scary though. As are cars and surgeries.

I'd argue that too many people are numb to these risks. Popping a pill should
be seen as scary. Driving two blocks down is making a life/death risk
calculation. Sure some people will take that risk every day, dozen of times a
day, without nothing happening.

But we should still acknowledge there is a risk, and I'd argue it should be
reduced to whatever level makes sense for the situation and not shrug it away
as "it's just life"

PS: this is mostly a reaction to "we would have to shut down life as we know
it". My point "life as we know it" shouldn't be the status quo.

~~~
hutzlibu
No, it shouldn't be scary to take a pill or drive to work. It should be well
thought of, but once you decided, there should be no fear, otherwise you will
really have a high chance of accident/sickness, as constant fear raises your
stress level till the point of mental and physical breakdown.

~~~
hrktb
I think you see fear as paralysing and handicapping while I see it as a
safeguard against complacency and carelessness. It's a spectrum, we could
agree there can be healthy amounts.

While I get you point about mental and physical breakdown, paracetamol
overdose [0] for instance is a fairly common thing. Too many people see it at
the same level as coffee or a redbull, when it's something else altogether.
Same for people abusing antibiotics, whith far reaching consequences going way
beyond a single person's stress level.

For driving, sure too much fear depletes mental resources. But currently we
are around 1.3 billion people just for the death count each year, and the
majority of accidents occur on short daily trips on well know roads, from lack
of focus and stress.

[0] [https://www.nps.org.au/news/paracetamol-overdoses-
rise](https://www.nps.org.au/news/paracetamol-overdoses-rise) [1]
[https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/road-
traffi...](https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/road-traffic-
injuries)

------
legel
If this is a war, then mobilization should equal many of us who were working
on other problems to focus on solving health.

That could mean better hardware sensing, better models, better interfaces,
better networks, better funding, better education, ...

------
ovx99
Take it to reddit, how is this tech content?

~~~
bovermyer
I don't think you understand what Hacker News is meant to be.

Perhaps you would be better served by something like Techcrunch.

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rhegart
Seems quite scare mongering. Less lung function is not a big deal at all in my
experience, especially at these levels. Same is true of pneumonia, most people
will hardly notice anything serious. Very little evidence of other health
issues. And this only looks like effects from those suffering serious symptoms
whereas it seems like at least 90%+ of infected are asymptotic anyways.

~~~
fullstackchris
That's what I'm saying. (Probably going to get downvoted to smithereens) but
how can COVID-19 _which is of the same nature of thousands of other known
corona viruses_ be so diabolically different than the ones we know about?

I'd bet all these worst-case symptoms are _also_ present in those hit badly by
the flu or other corona viruses.

Indeed, after some googling, same is true for H1N1:

[https://www.kidney.org/news/newsroom/nr/H1N1Patients](https://www.kidney.org/news/newsroom/nr/H1N1Patients)

and the flu:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/984071](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/984071)

These type of articles posted by OP are mostly clickbait. While they ARE true,
it's also true for all similar diseases.

~~~
hprotagonist
why is this different? because unlike the flu, sars-cov-2 has 8.5 billion
immunologically naive hosts.

~~~
votepaunchy
Does this count include cats?

