Fear and dread haunt COVID-19 'long-haulers'

By Kate Kelland

 

Felicity Callard, a 49-year-old British university professor and lecturer who suffered from the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), poses after an interview at her house in London, Britain, September 2, 2020. REUTERS/Matthew Childs

 

LONDON (Reuters) - Until March 19 this year, Felicity Callard, a 49 year-old British university professor and lecturer, was fit, active and strong. Now, she says, she's exhausted, frail and scared.

 

Her mind fills with fears about what kind of damage might have been done to her heart, lungs and brain when she suffered what is classified as a "mild" case of COVID-19 more than five months ago - and she's terrified it might happen again.

 

"I was absolutely, completely destroyed by this illness," she told Reuters. "My life has completely changed. I'm basically confined to a kilometre from my house and back - because that's as far as I can walk."

 

Back in March, she says, she felt more individual control over her health. She was reassured in part by messages that the vast majority of cases are mild, and that good infection control, hand hygiene and social distancing would reduce the risk of contracting COVID-19. Now, however, she feels as though "the threat is everywhere."

 

Callard is one of thousands of people worldwide who are reporting a wide range of ongoing symptoms many months after being diagnosed with COVID-19. Some call themselves COVID "long haulers", while others have adopted the term "long COVID" to describe their condition.

 

Breathlessness, memory loss, extreme fatigue, headaches, brain fog, muscle pain and swelling joints, are commonly described among multiple recurring symptoms in global online patient advocacy blogs and chatrooms.

 

And for many, the anxiety, depression and dread are at least as debilitating as the physical frailties.

 

"That's been the pattern - relapse and remit - for so many of us," said Sandra Edwards, a 46-year-old Briton who now helps run a newly-formed patient advocacy group called LongCovidSOS.

 

"We're in no man's land. We don't know if this is chronic or if it will come to a point where we'll make a full recovery," she told Reuters. "You wake up in the morning and don't know how you're going to feel - not just day by day, but sometimes hour by hour. It slowly chips away at you."

 

According to LongCovidSOS, data from a symptom tracker app devised by King's College London scientists shows that 10% of COVID-19 patients are still unwell after three weeks, and up to 5% may continue to be sick for months.

 

UNCERTAINTY

 

"Mentally, you feel abandoned," said Morena Colombi, a 59-year-old from Truccazzano in the Italian province of Milan who was diagnosed with COVID-19 in February and is still suffering symptoms. "Even the doctors don't know how to help you."

 

"Maybe one day you get better, and the next day you pay for it," she told Reuters. "You can no longer resume your life as before and that makes you depressed."

 

Til Wykes, a psychology professor at King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IPPN), notes that uncertainty is a key feature of anxiety. The unknown progression of the disease leaves doctors unsure of how to help, and can make patients feel fearful and alone.

 

"For most illnesses we have an understanding about what will happen first, what will happen next, and what to expect," she said. "The problem (with COVID) is that the symptoms come, then seem to be abating, but then they come back again."

 

After the World Health Organization met groups representing long-term COVID sufferers last month, the WHO's director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus assured them: "We hear you loud and clear".

 

But he cautioned: "We still know relatively little about the long-term effects. We only have less than eight months of experience (of the coronavirus pandemic) to draw on."

 

Patients like Callard and Edwards say they recognise doctors are dealing with a completely new disease caused by a novel virus, so can't be expected to have all the answers. But they and mental health specialists say the psychological impact of this unpredictability and lack of control make things worse.

 

Rona Moss-Morris, head of psychology at the IPPN, says evidence from previous disease outbreaks and from studies of patients who have been in critical or intensive care shows a significant impact on levels of anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

 

"And it's also very frightening for people being at home – and not in hospital - and feeling they can barely breathe, for example," she told Reuters.

 

"We're hearing horror stories from people who were in that kind of situation."

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2020-09-03

 

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Good that stories like this pop up too many Covid disbelievers that need to take it seriously. Its not just death its also lasting health damage.

these symptoms seem similar to others im familiar with in other illnesses ,fq toxicity immediately comes to mind.it suggests the cell has been damaged and its not reacting in the normal way,the electrical charge across the cell has been disturbed,DNA and mitochondria at the cellular level effected.lets see what we can do for these people and sufferers of similar illnesses.Drs and researchers seem slow off the ball again

Maybe it's time to remember who brought this mayhem to the world...

And to punish them.

16 hours ago, snoop1130 said:

Fear and dread haunt COVID-19 'long-haulers'

Now that doesn't sound very promising doesn't it. 

It looks like what George Carlin said  Maybe Right -    Saving the planet Earth.      Watch it on U Tube 

 

2 hours ago, rupert the bear said:

these symptoms seem similar to others im familiar with in other illnesses ,fq toxicity immediately comes to mind.it suggests the cell has been damaged and its not reacting in the normal way,the electrical charge across the cell has been disturbed,DNA and mitochondria at the cellular level effected.lets see what we can do for these people and sufferers of similar illnesses.Drs and researchers seem slow off the ball again

No, the  medical community  is not slow off the ball again. The infection was described as an inflammatory disease from the start.  The issues of "brain fog", extended fatigue and clotting disorders have been emphasized.  What more can they do if the general public  ignores them?

 

As soon as the inflammation characteristic was identified, there was a widespread effort to see what anti inflammatory would work. It takes time to trial enough patients to determine the benefit. Because you are not aware of the efforts does not mean that it is not occurring.   Infectious diseases specialists went to one of the older products in the  medicine chest, a drug that  is cheap and readily available,  dexamethasone and found that it was helpful in 20-30% of the cases. This drug is now being used.  One of the contributing reasons for the drop in fatalities is because of the use of the   anti inflammatories. It is not a cure, but provides hope for some. The drug was not being used as widely until June/July. Until that time,  the  critical care physicians were trying to see who would benefit most or if the drug worked.

 

  You may recall that Trump was popping up touting his own magic bullets; hydroxychloroquine, bleach, clorox, sunlight etc. The Russians  and Chinese have been pumping multiple false stories and claims into social media, with millions of gullible people accepting the stories as reliable. The end result is discord and confusion.

 

If you read the Covid19 threads in TVF, you will see the same loud group insisting that this is just a "flu', that the disease clears, that once  "recovered" there are no side effects etc.   They insist the disease should be allowed to run its course and that we will  have a unique "herd immunity", despite the fact that there has never ever been a natural herd immunity to a SARS virus. (If there was,  the existing vaccines used in domestic animals would not be needed.) This small, but loud  group would have  the world believe that nothing can be done and that there is no point in trying.

18 hours ago, snoop1130 said:

and

 

A vaceine will still have allergic reactions in certain people as many vaceines do, we are not all built with the same immune system.

there was a study that most deaths had 2+ comorbidities and the rest was old

On 9/4/2020 at 2:47 PM, Bender Rodriguez said:

there was a study that most deaths had 2+ comorbidities and the rest was old

Yea but from those that do not die a lot of people have lasting health problems. Fit people being totally wrecked.

 

But of course that does not fit in your narrative.