CDC data shows nearly 18m people could be living with long Covid even as health agency relaxes isolation recommendations
Some 6.8% of American adults are currently experiencing long Covid symptoms, according to a new survey from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), revealing an “alarming” increase in recent months even as the health agency relaxes Covid isolation recommendations, experts say.
That means an estimated 17.6 million Americans could now be living with long Covid.
“This should be setting off alarms for many people,” said David Putrino, the Nash Family Director of the Cohen Center for Recovery From Complex Chronic Illness at Mount Sinai. “We’re really starting to see issues emerging faster than I expected.”
When the same survey was conducted in October, 5.3% of respondents were experiencing long Covid symptoms at the time.
The 1.5 percentage-point increase comes after the second-biggest surge of infections across the US this winter, as measured by available wastewater data.
- There is no cure for long covid. Sometimes symptoms get better with time, sometimes they don’t. Reinfections can make everything worse, or destroy any progress you’ve made in getting better.
- Covid can effect systems in the entire body, so persistant symptoms could be anything and everything going wrong.
- Follow long covid communities and you will realize a lot of doctors are arrogant assholes and will likely imply you are fat and/or lazy and need to get more exercise and change dietary habits before they admit “a cold” could be causing new debilitating onset symptoms after an infection.
The rate of adults currently experiencing long Covid has not been this high since November 2022; the greatest height since CDC began tracking the illness was 7.6% in June and July 2022.
So the rate of long covid went from 7.6% in mid 2022, to 5.3% in october 2023. At which point minimizers took it as great news that the virus was “mild now” and the “immunity wall” was working. Now it’s gone up to 6.8%. Nevermind the problem of underdiagnosing covid because we stopped testing requirements in mid 2023 because the emergency was declared over. You can be certain this is missing a lot of people who just assume it’s just age, or lack of exercise, or “sometimes bodies just do that”.
It’s the stuff that isn’t “long covid” related that worries me:
One of the most worrying long-term effects of infection is the potential to induce malignant neoplasms, which will be a major health concern over the coming decades. SARS-CoV-2 infection affects many mechanisms that play a crucial role in cancer onset and progression including cell cycle regulation, the RAAS system and inflammation/proliferation signaling pathways. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10202899/
So if someone gets cancer a couple decades earlier than they would have otherwise, correctly blaming covid for it is considered tinfoil hat stuff.
my mother keeps getting pre-cancerous skin moles. She’s pretty old at this point, and blames it on “years spent in the sun with no sunscreen.” Which like, that totally makes sense. But I can’t help but be suspicious of the timing - she was old pre-pandemic also, and never had any problems with her skin.
Man my skin has absolutely erupted in pre-cancerous growths in the last year. I’m getting old but not old enough for that imo. I wonder if any dermos have noticed this trend…
e: I can’t find data that is new enough to draw any conclusions from wrt skin cancers. Most of it was concern over people not getting diagnosed because of lockdowns. But I did find more evidence to support that this virus could cause multiple other types of cancers in the same way that hep C causes liver cancer.
yup, every action has a reaction
just because something isn’t diagnosed in a made-up human terminology doesn’t mean it doesn’t existIt could be that literally everyone is affected negatively by COVID, and that even the ones who don’t get Longcovid still end up with higher rates of cancer and other degenerative diseases. Technically this could just be an even milder form of “Longcovid”
People’s CDC is currently sharing a graphic on insta claiming 38 million US adults with Long Covid. unfortunately it’s hard to keep up with who is more accurate, but I think it’s safe to say a considerable amount of people are fucked.
I gotta give a huge thank you to @TheModerateTankie@hexbear.net . I appreciate keeping this community informed about COVID.
I wish there was better news turning up. One of these days…
Called it in 2020
6.8% is about 1 in 15, for those of you who have an easier time conceiving of percentages this way
Damn, what could have caused this, it is truly a mystery.
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