Long Covid is keeping significant numbers of people out of work, study finds

[digdugdirk]

This will be extremely interesting to see play out. Unless I'm mistaken, there isn't a "testable" marker to determine/backup if people are still experiencing Covid symptoms. Insurance companies aren't going to want to play nice for both treatment and disability payouts, but the number of people with the condition is likely too large to sweep under the rug as might normally occur.

I have no idea how things will go, but I'm guessing it'll get ugly before it gets better.

[yboris]

It seems like if our society had UBI (Universal Basic Income) we wouldn't have to worry so much over cases like this - people would be able to get by, it wouldn't be a crisis for so many individuals.

[minsight]

There are testable markers. Drastically low serum cortisol is one of them.

[isp]

Related: "Long Covid: major findings, mechanisms and recommendations" (207 comments, 12 days ago): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34375735

[minsight]

Awesome. We know a lot more about Long Covid than many people seem to think. This is a good summary of where we are.

[throw_away_pri]

Personal anecdote: I'm going through some mental issues as a result of my divorce and I have trouble staying motivated at work. It's incredibly tempting to claim that I'm suffering from long COVID as an excuse instead of a mental health issue.

I wonder how many people are just using it as a convenient excuse?

[anonuser123456]

>convenient excuse

I think it’s not so overt or intentional. It’s more of a confabulation effect.

[kritiko]

Given the push for mental health & disability visibility as part of DE&I initiatives, is there a reason that you think long covid would garner you more sympathy than saying you're suffering depression as the result of a traumatic experience?

[switch007]

I'd never claim mental health issues at work, personally.

Sorry to hear about your divorce! Stay strong

[wonderwonder]

I thought the same thing after reading the article. I wonder if long term disability would pay out? [I have no intention of finding out]

[scotty79]

Are you sure you are not suffering from long covid? Neurological damage can drastically lower mental resilience. Get checked.

[nostromo]

The data here is worker's comp claims, so there's a financial incentive at stake.

[barbazoo]

Thank you for sharing, I hope you feel better soon.

[raptor556]

I've recently realized that I've been unusually tired, daily, and lack the usually high ambition and drive I had prior to January 2020, which is when I caught COVID.

I never got the vaccine and I'm curious if my symptoms are related to COVID, or related to being a few years older, or changes to exercise schedules, or a general change in life outlook after the past few years, or even mild depression or something. It may even be completely psychosomatic.

I'm considering getting the vaccine just to see if it makes a difference. I'm curious if anyone else is/was in a similar situation.

[tcoff91]

You should get the vaccine regardless to enhance your immunity in case of a potential re-infection. If it helps you feel better that's just a bonus.

[eldritch_4ier]

Completely feel the same way, except I attribute it to losing my job offer due to lockdowns (pulling the financial rug out from under me for months), being isolated from friends and family members for years, losing all access to outlets other than TV and video games or whatever else I could do inside, and the constant stream of news about how the world was on fire and we're all hopeless to stop it.

It doesn't take a novel virus to see how many people would feel pretty aimless and disillusioned after that.

[ifyoubuildit]

You'd probably be better off talking to your doctor and having some bloodwork done. It could be as simple as some kind of deficiency. Throwing a random vaccine at it for something that vaccines aren't meant to do is probably ill advised.

[wetpaws]

It's unlikely vaccine will help you at this point, although there've been some anecdotal reports of vaccination reducing symptoms of long covid.

[throwaway_86849]

I've been experiencing that, too, but mine started early in 2019 when I got burned out at work. I've been coasting ever since. Some weeks I get zero work done, and I struggle to do the minimum of get out of bed, exercise, and shower some days.

I don't think it's covid, except inasmuch as the isolation of work-from-home has made every day identically boring and unstimulating. The sense of looming doom -- new covid variants, long covid, and the beginning stages of world war 4 -- make it hard to care about doing anything for the long term.

I wish I had a solution. I'm considering taking a long sabbatical. My fear is that won't help, and I'll deplete my savings before the world can get any better, which I think is what I really need to overcome it.

[francisofascii]

I had had immune system issues since January 2020, where it take forever to feel better. So before the vaccines, which I did get. I am suffering now, as I write this. It comes and goes. I will go months when I am fine but then get sick and take weeks to get better. No mental issues. Not obese, run everyday, etc. If I overdo it with a long run then sometimes it will trigger it. Once its triggered, it takes a week or two feel normal. I can work and get through the day, but not much energy for much else. Feel sick in the morning. Extremely frustrating.

[nostromo]

Covid is a problem for working-age people when there is a comorbidity - usually obesity. It'd be interesting to see additional data about these worker comp claims about other health issues as we've known that America has an obesity problem for some time.

[peterbell_nyc]

My understanding is that while the risk of serious illness and death are strongly correlated with age and comorbidities that we're starting to see a meaningful number of cases of long covid in the working age population and it's not clear to me that it is limited to those who are obese.

[kjkjadksj]

Apparently Long Flu also happens to a certain number of people. I wonder if these people with long covid would have been just as susceptible to getting these symptoms with the flu or other diseases? Maybe there are relevant biomarkers for both?

[notacoward]

I often point out that what people think of as polio is more accurately Long Polio. The acute phase of polio infection wasn't fun, but the paralysis etc. came much later after apparent recovery. This kind of short and long term duality with viral diseases (see also: shingles) has been known for a long time.

[Zanneth]

A lot of the symptoms of “Long COVID” are exactly the same as depression and anxiety symptoms. Brain fog, fatigue, muscle weakness: anyone who has ever had depression knows what this is like. Of course there are a small number of people who had severe illness from COVID and had to be hospitalized, and the road to recovery for them is quite long, but most people claiming that they suffer from Long COVID are not the ones who were hospitalized.

The fact that there is no diagnostic test that tells you whether you have Long COVID or not leads me to believe that this is yet another hidden manifestation of mental illness. I feel sympathy for people going through this, but it’s wrong to expect the medical industry to come up with any solutions.

[minsight]

Long Covid has a collection of effects on the body which can be observed using commonly-ordered tests. A dramatically reduced serum cortisol is one.

[nradov]

There are likely multiple completely different underlying root causes which are being conflated together. Some cases may be psychosomatic. But post-viral syndrome has been recognized since at least 1987. It appears that many different viral infections can cause persistent damage to cellular metabolism in a subset of patients, and SARS-CoV-2 is nothing special in that regard. We need more basic research to understand what's really going on.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1710789/

[snozolli]

Brain fog, fatigue, muscle weakness: anyone who has ever had depression knows what this is like.

I've had depression and I've had depressed friends. None of us ever had those symptoms.

[invitrom]

It seems highly unlikely that millions of people get a depression right after an infection with covid.

[BryantD]

I generally think that mental illness is on par with physical illness, to the degree that you can differentiate them. If it’s worth our time to worry about one, it’s worth our time to worry about the other.

[tootie]

I think that's a very wrong way of thinking about it. Mental illness is illness and ultimately will always have a physical cause. My more optimistic take is that this will lead to us better understanding how things like pathogens and environmental factors can cause syndromes that manifest as mental illness. Which is to say this could be both depression and long covid and the two could be intertwined. And it may lead us to looking at how influenza or air pollution or cell phone radiation or whatever else is causing depression symptoms.

I say this as someone who was in the same boat for a while. I was suffering persistent fatigue, malaise, anxiety, sleep disruptions. The kind of thing frequently diagnosed as depression. Only I eventually graduated to a specific enough symptom to get a diagnosis of specific physiological cause. A disease that was only positively attributed to specific neurological malfunction 20 years ago and one that is very difficult to test for directly. In reality, I _was_ depressed by the "quacks like a duck" theory of disease. That doesn't mean I didn't have a treatable illness no different than heartburn or cancer. It's only a matter of time (maybe a lot of time) before we really can "cure" most forms of depression.

[runemadsen]

This is just so, so wrong in many ways. Read about post-viral diseases such as Me/CFS that closely mirrors what Long Covid sufferers are going through. Watch "Unrest" on Netflix. Stop telling people who have serious physical symptoms that it's all mental. Just stop.

[nerdponx]

That, or, it gives credence to theories that depression can have a physiological component or origin in at least some cases.

It also blurs the line between physical and mental illness. Where do neurological disorders end and mental illnesses begin?

[fzeroracer]

Calling it 'exactly the same' is doing a lot of heavy lifting. I've struggled on and off with depression and the symptoms people report for long covid are not at all like those I or others with depression I've talked to. General fatigue/exhaustion for example doesn't mean I quickly run out of breath when doing normal activities or struggle to do tasks I normally took for granted.

[lamontcg]

> The fact that there is no diagnostic test that tells you whether you have Long COVID or not leads me to believe that...

...we don't know everything about the human body and immune system and medicine and still have a lot to learn.

[Invictus0]

I swear there's a dismissive comment like this on every single long covid article on HN

[factsarelolz]

"BREAKING NEWS: Being locked down for almost 2 years with limited travel and physical interaction causes depression find out about Pfizer's new cure at 11"

[throwntoday]

I don't see how anyone can deny the risks inherent to getting a shot. However insignificantly low you can demonstrate the possibility of side-effects from the vaccine are, the risks associated with actually getting covid were just as low.

Given the vaccine isn't even preventing covid now, you're only compounding your risk by getting it. This is undeniable no matter what you think about vaccines, mandates, etc.

[joegahona]

https://archive.is/IBzbF

[lamontcg]

While Jerome Powell and the Federal Reserve wonders where the 3.5 million "missing workers" are in the workforce...

(See also the decline in immigration due to Trump's policies, which Biden has never actually reversed)

[riddleronroof]

No no it’s called “quiet quitting”

[RyanCavanaugh]

"Am I wrong? If people show up to say I'm wrong, that only proves I'm right!"

[somewhereoutth]

Unfortunately the conspiracy theories have directly led to 1000s of deaths, so yes flagging and downvoting is warranted.

[notahacker]

Weird how people started getting these side effects from the "experimental mRNA gene therapy" several months before the vaccination programmes started...