<
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2023/02/long-covid-cases-treatment-chronic-illness-emergency/673032/>
"In the early spring of 2020, the condition we now call long COVID didn’t have
a name, much less a large community of patient advocates. For the most part,
clinicians dismissed its symptoms, and researchers focused on SARS-CoV-2
infections’ short-term effects. Now, as the pandemic approaches the end of its
third winter in the Northern Hemisphere, the chronic toll of the coronavirus is
much more familiar. Long COVID has been acknowledged by prominent experts,
national leaders, and the World Health Organization; the National Institutes of
Health has set up a billion-dollar research program to understand how and in
whom its symptoms unfurl. Hundreds of long-COVID clinics now freckle the
American landscape, offering services in nearly every state; and recent data
hint that well-vetted drugs to treat or prevent long COVID may someday be
widespread. Long COVID and the people battling it are commanding more respect,
says Hannah Davis, a co-founder of the Patient-Led Research Collaborative, who
has had long COVID for nearly three years: Finally, many people “seem willing
to understand.”
But for all the ground that’s been gained, the road ahead is arduous. Long
COVID still lacks a universal clinical definition and a standard diagnosis
protocol; there’s no consensus on its prevalence, or even what symptoms fall
under its purview. Although experts now agree that long COVID does not refer to
a single illness, but rather is an umbrella term, like cancer, they disagree on
the number of subtypes that fall within it and how, exactly, each might
manifest. Some risk factors—among them, a COVID hospitalization, female sex,
and certain preexisting medical conditions—have been identified, but
researchers are still trying to identify others amid fluctuating population
immunity and the endless slog of viral variants. And for people who have long
COVID now, or might develop it soon, the interventions are still scant. To this
day, “when someone asks me, ‘How can I not get long COVID?’ I can still only
say, ‘Don’t get COVID,’” says David Putrino, a neuroscientist and physical
therapist who leads a long-COVID rehabilitation clinic at Mount Sinai’s Icahn
School of Medicine.
As the world turns its gaze away from the coronavirus pandemic, with country
after country declaring the virus “endemic” and allowing crisis-caliber
interventions to lapse, long-COVID researchers, patients, and activists worry
that even past progress could be undone. The momentum of the past three years
now feels bittersweet, they told me, in that it represents what the community
might lose. Experts can’t yet say whether the number of long-haulers will
continue to increase, or offer a definitive prognosis for those who have been
battling the condition for months or years. All that’s clear right now is that,
despite America’s current stance on the coronavirus, long COVID is far from
being beaten."
Via Violet Blue’s
Pandemic Roundup: February 16, 2023
https://www.patreon.com/posts/pandemic-roundup-78762468
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
