A very good look at a very complex, murky topic. As the first shock of virus into the human population is passing, it's becoming clear that Long Covid is going to become the chronic illness of the century.

As the spouse of someone who survived septic shock, ARDS, and 11 days in an ICU. My take on "Long Covid" is still slanted towards seeing it as brain damage from micro clotting.

Until you know someone who has a TBI, or a stroke, or dementia it's difficult to appreciate how delicately fragile our brains are. Just the experience of being on a ventilator in an ICU has something like a 40% risk of some level of brain damage or "mild cognitive impairment".

I cannot help but see each bout of Covid as being the equivalent perhaps of a severe concussion. Typically individuals are completely functional afterwards but we know from studies of football players and boxers that there is always damage.

We are just getting the first solid data about what the long term impacts of Covid on populations are going to look like. What I am getting from your article is that the studies are indicating at any given time about 5% of the population will bear Covid damage.

This is perfectly in line with the historical impacts of earlier diseases like smallpox, polio, and measles but is incredibly jarring to modern sensibilities. This sort of shit isn't supposed to happen anymore.

Final Note:

Could it be that more women than men display symptoms of Long Covid because more women than men survive Covid? You have to survive Covid in order to develop Long Covid. Covid kills men at a rate of 2 to 1 versus women, in every age group.