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People brain damaged by disease do not typically experience increased happiness and feelings of liberty. Quite the reverse, in fact. Obsessions, miseries, fears, fight or flight, displacement, disassociation, loss of identity, the tortures of uncontrolled dreams, phobias, and the pain of lacking self maintenance. The confusion of lost memory. Feeling both loss and lost. For months or years.

I feel one must simply point that out more often. Is it worth it to look "pandemic normal" for a year?

Kacey reshared this.

Kacey
Kacey  
It's 2.5 years since I contracted covid, and I’ve had no improvement whatsoever in 2 years...
Longhairedgit
Longhairedgit  
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@kacey three and a half for me. No Improvements. Probably slightly worse. Pacing has done nothing recuperative. It's perfectly clear to me there's 20 years of health I'm never getting back.
@Kacey
Longhairedgit
Longhairedgit  
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@soundconjurer mentally being over it, and physically are two very different things. Live long enough you'll find you're not over anything. These things are cyclical, and what was defeat becomes the more enduring regret of what you could have done and didn't.

Ask any long term survivor of suicidal tendancies. Retreat from the problem doesn't mean it's gone away. Nor does it mean denying it. Mental respite doesn't have to equate to risk taking. There's a whole other space to survive in.

Ed Suominen
Ed Suominen  
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Your description is so vivid that I am moved to ask if it’s a first-person account, from personal experience.

And #Covid is sure not worth it to me. Still treating this virus like the evil little bastard it so clearly is. I go weeks at a time never venturing past my locked driveway gate. My old brain still works; 30K lines of code written this past year for the most complex project I’ve ever undertaken testify to my never getting infected.

As do the smoldering ruins of my social life.

#covid
Longhairedgit
Longhairedgit  
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Some of it is me, some of its what I've resisted, some of it suffered and continues to be so, and some of it is what I've witnessed in others. Longcovid in many respects is how it feels to suddenly be the 90 year old version of yourself, without the acclimation time.

Alpha strain got me, right at the start. Started to slowly recover. Omicron caught me, and recovery ceased. Over three years, I'm still not used to it. That's it's nature. Unacceptable.

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
Puck Rickenbacker
Puck Rickenbacker  
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Sending virtual hugs. I'm so sorry this happened to you.
Kathmandu
Kathmandu  
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@edsuom
My sympathy to you. I hope someday soon we will have better treatments.
@Ed Suominen
Victoria ×4
Victoria ×4  
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💧️ so much for "happy hypoxia"
Longhairedgit
Longhairedgit  
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@croissant lol, I think you have to have a very specific character profile to be happy with hypoxia. It's probably fun for about five minutes, after that the lactic acidosis makes you feel like a living cramp for having had the cheek to attempt the washing up.
@Victoria ×4
Victoria ×4
Victoria ×4  
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💧️ i was referencing this phenomenon: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/covid-19-how-do-we-explain-happy-hypoxemia

but yeah, given how many individuals are suffering from obvious long COVID yet still just powering through life as if they've only been told that they just have to willpower their way into good health, IDK, i think lots of people might have the personality profile to have some real happy hypoxia


COVID-19: How do we explain 'happy' hypoxia?

A recent study concludes that conventional respiratory science may explain the unusual phenomenon of 'happy' hypoxemia in some COVID-19 patients.
Timothy Huzar (Medical News Today)
Longhairedgit
Longhairedgit  
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@croissant I suppose a few must, the hypoxia is the least of it tbh. The bit you really feel is the general dysautonomia. It sucks the joy out of basically everything. You can list the primal symptoms in about nine lines, but how it affects you is like a legion of daily assaults. It touches everything you are, everything you do, and everything you want to do, and just when you nearly get used to it, it finds something else horrible to do to you.
@Victoria ×4
Victoria ×4
Victoria ×4  
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💧️ yeah, i'm well aware of the terror that is long COVID and it's why i'm doing everything possible to remain uninfected
Longhairedgit
Longhairedgit  
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you keep going.you don't want this. In life I took injury and pain like most never do. In my official opinion, it sucks. It's not really any better than cancer or aids. I'm very lucky that my brain fog tends to be temporary, exhaustion related, but having lucid hours brings home to me just how many people I know are in rapid mental decline. It's work exposure, mostly. The last thing even the sane ones can't avoid.
This entry was edited (1 year ago)
Longhairedgit
Longhairedgit  
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The common things you hear are " were not getting any younger" and " we're all like it", like ageing twenty years in three is normal. You talk to them and they can't remember what they did from a few hours ago, to weeks ago. Their general knowledge fades. They snooze instead of chat. Then people lose their jobs, their self control, their health, and start to drop off the radar.

The sirens are heard, and they're gone.

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
Alastair Cooper
Alastair Cooper  
Partly no one has the subjective experience of aging a given three years in their life, so that may make it easier not to realise it's not normal, particularly if you're around or over 40 or 60 both times when I think we kind of expect ageing to pick up a bit.
Longhairedgit
Longhairedgit  
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I think they're disassociating abnormally. A stress, or reaction within the sphere of hopelessness. People have always lived around others from differing age groups, they've observed behaviour in thousands of people in their lives. They will for the most part have a sense of familial ageing. They must surely realise when they don't have the energy levels of people twenty or thirty years their senior. How do they think people survived to those ages?
This entry was edited (1 year ago)
Victoria ×4
Victoria ×4  
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@alastair87 🔥️ I suspect that they're observing the same energy levels in everyone around them, which would make them less likely to either notice or talk about their post-acute decline.
@Alastair Cooper
Longhairedgit
Longhairedgit  
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they should really have both observations in their consciousness , should they not? I mean, they'd be a bit primitive not to. It may be an immediate group mentality, but it shouldn't be existing uncontested in their minds. They have a lifetime of other information to counter it with. Therefore I think it's a mentality associated with the state of health. Likely foggy.
This entry was edited (1 year ago)
Victoria ×4
Victoria ×4  
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@alastair87 🔥️ Social pressure is an unstoppable force for most.

If there are social consequences to breaking the illusion of "back to normal" by merely mentioning the Forbidden Trauma, then you can't talk about how you're sick and tired all the time since your COVID infection.

It's impossible for the average, normal individual to meaningfully protect themselves. Those of us who speak truth and act accordingly are in the minority.

@Alastair Cooper
Longhairedgit
Longhairedgit  
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All this is true of course, but it's an entropic state that cannot last, because if unaddressed, and the health dips below the ability to remain independent, or support others, or death ensues, it becomes a betrayal of family, and the renegment on managing the future for oneself and ones loved ones. Financial ruin, orphaned children etc. It changes your future whether it's acknowledged or not. It's psychosis that blocks planning as you might wish it.
This entry was edited (1 year ago)
Alastair Cooper
Alastair Cooper  
Except that it only seems to be some, not all, cases of COVID that lead to noticeable long-term complications. Far too many to neglect, but it's a minority. Of course a compounding problem is that repeated infection seems to be a thing, and avoiding post-acute complications in one round of infection doesn't seem to predict the same will happen again.
Longhairedgit
Longhairedgit  
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obviously this is a "to whom it may concern" conversation, regarding those who should be noticing the effects but aren't. For sportier people the contrast will be immediate, and sorting through a miasma of pre-existing conditions will be tricky.people owe it to themselves to try to sort through it, so they know the difference and aren't taken advantage of by COVID minimisers.

In my case its obvious because fitness is now post virally unreachable.

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
Alastair Cooper
Alastair Cooper  
If there's things that resemble massively accelerated aging, there's also the things that look roughly like normal aging (which varies significantly between different people) and things that people might or might not have developed any way. So it probably takes quite intensive data collection and analysis to work out what is (or isn't) changing, especially over only three years.
Longhairedgit
Longhairedgit  
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true, but in accordance with some semblance of precautionary principle, it's not a great idea to wait for every research group result to come in, because in that time you could lose millions of lives. Cripple millions more, eventually end up in jail, or sued into oblivion.

It's about making good decisions before the results are in, that's key to pandemic survival. Most big nations had pandemic planning, we need to ask why they didn't use it, and gave contracts to chums.

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
Alastair Cooper
Alastair Cooper  
The general consensus seems to be that in the UK the Labour government invested in pandemic planning then the Conservative/Liberal Democrat governments, in particular George Osborne and presumably the current chancellor Jeremy Hunt (then Health Secretary) saw it as an area for cuts.
Longhairedgit
Longhairedgit  
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Exactly. When a corrupt govt is asset stripping the NHS for privatisation,, basically being an industrial saboteur in the ranks, companies don't want pesky things like pandemic liabilities in the contractual obligations. Just the glossy bits. The guidance stil existed though. They ignored it. A eugenics for profit decision.
This entry was edited (1 year ago)
Alastair Cooper
Alastair Cooper  

I know some people twice my age who are fitter than me in some respects because they're particularly effortful with their health and I'm a bit overweight and don't exercise as much as I should.

That said it's only when it escalates to running or doing something very intensive, in terms of endurance at 'normal' activity levels I expect I'm still more capable.

Longhairedgit
Longhairedgit  
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@alastair87 @croissant This entire conversation frames why people should be able to start a path of differentiation, that they haven't, I suspect, is a combination of fatigue itself, and perhaps the susceptibility to minimiser propaganda that is so insidiously rampant, and the insecurity of appearing diseased..

I know two people who had strokes, and swore blind they were fine, while being admitted to casualty for assessment..

@Alastair Cooper @Victoria ×4
Victoria ×4
Victoria ×4  
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@alastair87 🔥️ Not to mention studies like this: https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2022/01/422156/cerebrospinal-fluid-offers-clues-post-covid-brain-fog

This study had two arms: one arm of patients who had COVID and then complained of "brain fog", and a control arm of COVID-recovered patients with no lingering symptoms. 59% of the symptomatic arm qualified for a diagnosis of HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders, and 70% of the younger, "fully recovered" control arm met those same conditions.

We have no idea how many "feeling fine" individuals are walking around with unseen damage to their organs after infection.

I'm willing to bet the farm that the 10% figure for Long COVID, which was reached largely by patients self-reporting their symptoms, is a massive underestimate. The extent of the widespread damage caused by repeat infection is unfathomable, and we're just letting it happen again and again.

On top of that, survivors of SARS continue to experience declines in health long after the outbreak. Respiratory. Cardiac. Psychiatric. Immunological. There's still no reason to assume the same isn't happening to everyone who caught the sequel.


Cerebrospinal Fluid Offers Clues to Post-COVID ‘Brain Fog’

Many patients with COVID-19 develop brain fog and other cognitive symptoms months later. Their cerebrospinal fluid may hold clues to why this is happening.
University of California San Francisco
@Alastair Cooper
Longhairedgit
Longhairedgit  
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@croissant @alastair87 oh I totally agree, the global picture for post viral exposure health is much bleaker than officially recognised at current. It will be the defining and probably worst mass disabling event of our time. There's no question in my mind. The fallout of applying short term fiscal gains priorities to a pandemic will prove economically devastating, and the human cost more appalling than any world war.
@Alastair Cooper @Victoria ×4
Victoria ×4
Victoria ×4  
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@alastair87 🔥️ Yep. Worse, the mass disabling will continue until infection control improves. There's a reason to continue sounding the alarm — it's already bad out there and is only going to get worse.

"Mass disabling event" only covers where we are now. What we're barreling to is something closer to a "universal disabling event".

@Alastair Cooper
Longhairedgit
Longhairedgit  
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people will think that's alarmist, but having post covid dysautonomia myself, I could easily see how 40% plus of a population could end up with permanently zero endurance, and longevities extending only a decade into reaching that status.

I was taken down by the 2nd exposure. I'm looking at 60 thinking I can't make it. Could be for a fifty year period the average western longevity might only just break mid fifties. We have to restructure our lives, one way or another.

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
Alastair Cooper
Alastair Cooper  
It's possible it's more detrimental to healthspan than lifespan and in some ways that's more of a problem. We are already struggling to care for a growing elderly population as is, If people's healthspan falls but lifespan doesn't fall by as much then we're going to have even more people to care for and fewer people to care for them. In richer countries we've got better at keeping ourselves alive than keeping ourselves well.
Longhairedgit
Longhairedgit  
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this is very true. But only for wealthy societies with affordable healthcare, of course. Crazy the powers that be will probably encourage that, when only the pharmaceutical sector can really profit. Another problem of course is, too much neurological damage and dysautonomia you essentially cannot be saved for long, because you end up dying of self maintenance failures. They also cause " will to live issues". If people were suicidal cooped up, wait until they're unstable.
This entry was edited (1 year ago)
Longhairedgit
Longhairedgit  
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We really can't afford to be living as individuals with the expectation of unrealistic longevities. It's just not workable. Generations must be raised and survive, so we have to rearrange things to mirror that need, and if generations flip over faster, we have to have plan for that eventuality. If there's things you want done, and thirty years fewer to do them, we have to get people out of debt, the works. Best springboards for the young etc.
This entry was edited (1 year ago)
Longhairedgit
Longhairedgit  
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@croissant @alastair87 Families in developing countries know all about this, they invest very differently, and that way of thinking may have to come to the west. Our notion of nuclear families, dated as it's been for decades will finally be extinguished. Extended community, extended family investing more intensely on small goals. Deaths expected. It'll be a shock to many.
@Alastair Cooper @Victoria ×4
Longhairedgit
Longhairedgit  
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if COVID mutations stay ahead of immunisation, and we never find a more comprehensive immunisation, the real human immune response will collectively kick in, but here's the thing. Unaided, a real herd immunity, ( not the mad person version right wingers always go on about) to something like COVID, well it could take 200 years plus, and that's if it's possible.

Plenty of diseases the human immune system will never conquer.

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
Longhairedgit
Longhairedgit  
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@alastair87 @croissant the tendancy to minimise the level of debilitation they may be experiencing is also culturally reinforced, and in a sense a shortcut to not worrying or doing anything about it. Especially when fatigued. It's a vicious cycle. To put off the recognition of your own abnormally deteriorating health.

The mental flip from prinking like a deer, to "pragmatically" accepting a premature state of decrepitude, happening so readily is not really normal.

@Alastair Cooper @Victoria ×4
Longhairedgit
Longhairedgit  
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@deadbeefmonster well yes, it's not a unique phenomenon. Life can be taxing all right.
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