Why You Should (Still) Care About COVID-19
I wrote this as a reminder to myself, but I'm sharing it in case someone else needs to be reminded too.
It is 2024, and at least 7 million people have died from COVID-19.
Over 1 million of those deaths were people in the United States of America.
There are limited options on how to treat an infection, and there is no “cure.”
Vaccines prevent severe disease, but they do not prevent you from getting COVID-19.
Unlike measles, having COVID-19 once does not give you permanent immunity.
Certain variants can also evade immunity.
Whether or not you are aware of being high-risk for Severe COVID-19, there is evidence that many conditions impact the severity of an infection including, but not limited to: diabetes, mood disorders including depression, not getting enough physical activity, being a current or former smoker, and use of certain medications.
When you get COVID-19, studies show you are at “increased risk of serious complications including heart and lung issues, dementia, kidney problems, and liver injury, compared to those who haven’t been infected.”
“[C]ognitive decline, changes in brain size and structure, depression and suicidal thinking, tremors, seizures, memory loss, and new or worsened dementia have all been linked to previous SARS-CoV-2 infections. In some cases, these longer-term problems occur even in patients with relatively mild COVID-19.”
You might think that because you’ve had COVID-19 and lived through it that repeat infections will impact you similarly, but “reinfections aren't harmless. As cases continue to rise and more variants arrive on the scene, infectious-disease experts are warning that repeat infections could have cumulative, lasting effects.”
“The older you get, the worse you do with viruses in general, but specifically with SARS-CoV-2,” [Dr. Davey Smith, a virologist and head of infectious diseases at University of California San Diego] says. “Every time you get COVID-19 again and again, you increase the likelihood of having a worse infection just based on age.”
“A team of researchers…concluded that reinfected people are twice as likely to die and three times as likely to be hospitalized with COVID than those infected only once, regardless of their vaccination status. Given those findings…repeat infections are “consequential both in the acute and long COVID phase.”
“Regardless of a person's health status, each COVID-19 infection can raise the risk of developing blood clots, which can travel to the brain or lungs.”
“For up to a year after a case of COVID-19, people may be at increased risk of developing a new heart-related problem, anything from blood clots and irregular heartbeats to a heart attack –- even if they initially seem to recover just fine.”
“There is a mischaracterization in the public understanding that you can get an acute infection with fever, cough, malaise, and fatigue, get over it after a few days or a week or so, then bounce back, and it’s gone,” says [Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis]. “The data are showing that [some] people still display increased risk of problems even two years after an infection.”
“That’s what [Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly] found in his study. People who had multiple infections were three times more likely to be hospitalized for their infection up to six months later than those who only got COVID-19 once, and were also more likely to have problems with clotting, gastrointestinal disorders, kidney, and mental-health symptoms. The risks appeared to increase the more infections people experienced.”
“Such evidence “dispels the myth that repeated brushes with the virus are mild and you don’t have to worry about it,” [Rambod A. Rouhbakhsh, MD, a faculty physician and program director at the Forrest General Hospital Family Medicine Residency Program and the principal investigator for Hattiesburg Clinic MediSync Clinical Research] added, noting that “it is akin to playing Russian roulette.”
“We should prevent reinfections as best as we possibly can because the more times people get infected, the more likely their health is going to suffer from medical conditions that can really involve any organ system in the body,” [Nancy Crum, MD, an infectious disease physician at Avita Health System in Galion, Ohio] said.”
“Every time you get infected [with COVID], it does harm to the body in some way,” says Avindra Nath, a neurologist at the National Institutes of Health who has led research on long COVID and other postviral conditions.”
“Many repeat infections are mild, but some studies suggest people who have been infected with COVID more than once are at a greater risk of severe disease or long COVID.”
Long COVID or Post-COVID Conditions include “a range of health problems that emerge, persist, or recur following acute COVID-19 illness, including fatigue, respiratory symptoms, and neurologic symptoms.”
“Curative treatments for long COVID remain elusive.”
“Autopsies of people who died from COVID-19 have shown that some patients develop these tiny “microclots” in their lungs, potentially contributing to respiratory failure. And now, a growing group of researchers believe microclots may also be to blame, at least in part, for Long COVID symptoms.”
“90% of people living with long COVID initially experienced only mild illness with COVID-19.”
It is not known why some people get Long COVID, so there’s no way to be certain you won’t get it beyond avoiding COVID-19 infections.
“And because COVID is still relatively new, scientists realistically have no idea what happens 10, 20 or even 30 years after an infection, much less multiple bouts…Some viruses can hide out in the body and emerge decades after the initial infection to cause new problems. The virus that causes chicken pox, for example, can trigger shingles many years later. And scientists have recently learned that infection with the common Epstein-Barr virus seriously increases the risk of a person developing the autoimmune disorder multiple sclerosis.”
“One of the most concerning long-term effects of COVID-19 is immune dysfunction or hypofunction…findings suggest that SARS-CoV-2 infection damages the CD8+ T cell response, an effect akin to that observed in earlier studies showing long-term damage to the immune system after infection with viruses such as hepatitis C or HIV." The authors conclude that this dysfunction causes lasting damage and may “contribute to long COVID, perhaps rendering patients unable to respond robustly to subsequent infections by SARS-CoV-2 variants or other pathogens.”
“[I]ndividuals belonging to a group of COVID-19 survivors exhibited a significant acceleration of their biological age, occurring mainly in the younger individuals.”
If you want to maintain your current level of health and avoid potential damage to your body & organs up to and including your brain & your heart and/or want to live as long as possible, taking precautions to prevent COVID-19 infections is crucial.
TL;DR:
There’s an airborne virus called COVID-19 circulating among the human & animal populations of the planet. It can cause mild to severe symptoms up to and including death. COVID-19 has no cure, no full prevention, and no permanent immunity. A lot more people are at high risk for severe cases than realize, especially if a previous COVID-19 infection can be considered a factor. If you get COVID-19 and don’t die, post-viral illness is still a possibility. There is no cure/full prevention/permanent immunity for Long/Post COVID symptoms either. While some people may be at higher risk of a severe COVID case or developing Long/Post COVID, even mild infections can cause Long/Post COVID symptoms. Repeated infections increase your risk of more severe and more long-term health impacts. Both acute and extended COVID-19 symptoms can impact your heart, brain, lungs, and overall health including shortening your anticipated life span. The best way to prevent Long/Post COVID is to avoid infection from COVID-19. If you’ve already had it once or even multiple times, preventing future reinfections will lessen the harm done to your body. Taking precautions to prevent COVID-19 infections is crucial no matter how many times you’ve already contracted it.
Note: I chose to use the colloquial COVID-19 throughout this piece instead of SARS-CoV-2. I wrote this as a reminder to myself, but I published it to share with others who may benefit from the information I have compiled.
~The Overstimulated
For further reading, I encourage you to check out some of the source material I used to create this piece.
WHO COVID-19 dashboard (World Health Organization)
Covid's toll in the U.S. reaches a once unfathomable number: 1 million deaths (NBC News)
Treating COVID-19 at home: Care tips for you and others (Mayo Clinic)
COVID-19 drugs: Are there any that work? (Mayo Clinic)
Ground-breaking study reveals how COVID-19 vaccines prevent severe disease (University of Oxford)
COVID-19 vaccine: Does it stop people getting the virus? (Medical News Today)
How Long Does Immunity Last After COVID-19? What We Know (Healthline)
The Latest COVID-19 Variants Can Evade Vaccine Protection, According to New Data (Time)
How Risky Are Repeat COVID Infections? What We Know So Far (Scientific American)
Is It Dangerous to Keep Getting COVID-19? (Time)
Do Repeat COVID Infections Increase the Risk of Severe Disease or Long COVID? (Scientific American)
It Isn’t Just Long COVID. Post-Viral Illnesses Are More Common Than You Think (Time)
Long COVID or Post-COVID Conditions (CDC)
What doctors wish patients knew about COVID-19 reinfection (American Medical Association)
Notes from the Field: Long COVID Prevalence Among Adults — United States, 2022 (CDC)
Tiny Blood Clots May Be to Blame for Long COVID Symptoms, Some Researchers Say (Time)
4 Years In, a Sobering Look at Long COVID Progress (Medscape)
As Recommendations for Isolation End, How Common is Long COVID? (KFF)
Long COVID: What We Know (National Institutes of Health)
Scientists Are Just Beginning to Understand COVID-19’s Effect On the Brain (Time)
Most people who ended up with long COVID started with a mild case, new study shows (CBS News)
Long COVID stemmed from mild cases of COVID-19 in most people, according to a new multicountry study (The Conversation)
Evidence for Biological Age Acceleration and Telomere Shortening in COVID-19 Survivors (National Institutes of Health)
COVID-19’s Impact on Heart Health Still Confounds Doctors (Time)
The knowns — and known unknowns — of long Covid, explained (Vox)
COVID-19: Study Suggests Long-term Damage to Immune System (Infection Control Today)
SARS-CoV-2 infection weakens immune-cell response to vaccination (National Institutes of Health)