Chillingly, most people who develop long COVID did not have particularly vicious cases of the virus initially.

That’s in part because so many more people experience a mild form of COVID rather than a severe one.

(Across most studies, long COVID risk does increase with the severity of the initial infection.)

And each time people become reinfected with the virus, they’re at risk of developing long COVID,
even if they didn’t experience it previously.

The authors note that studies on recovery from long COVID are “sparse and inconsistent.”

But those that have closely evaluated individual manifestations of the virus have found recovery rates to be fairly low at one year,
and only 7% to 10% fully recovered after two years.

For millions and millions of people, the debilitating effects of long COVID are just that.

The economic toll is its own story.

A Census Bureau Household Pulse Survey in 2022 found that between
2 million and 4 million working-age Americans were out of work because they were sidelined with the effects of long COVID.

Meanwhile 20% of people with long COVID surveyed by the United Kingdom’s Trades Union Congress said they were not working.

Another 16% were working reduced schedules.

The $1 trillion estimated annual global economic hit involves Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries due to
“reductions in quality of life and labor force participation,”
the Nature Medicine review says.

And that price tag does not factor in the direct costs of healthcare, another likely category of deep financial fissure.

Al-Aly and his co-authors are pleading for governments,
especially U.S. health agencies,
to dramatically upgrade their levels of activity to investigate long COVID,
learn more about its mechanisms and pathways,
and develop vaccines that better block infection.

They’re also pushing for large-scale platform trials to test multiple drugs simultaneously,
so we can quickly learn what works and what doesn’t.

They have an ally in Congress.

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders recently introduced the ✅Long COVID Research Moonshot Act, ✅
a bill that would guarantee $1 billion per year for a decade to the National Institutes of Health
“to support long COVID research,
the urgent pursuit of treatments,
and the expansion of care for patients across the country.”

Sanders’ news release announcing the act puts the long COVID count in the U.S. at
22 million, including a million children.

Among other things, the bill would require NIH to establish a long COVID #database and a #grant #process to speed up clinical trials,
and to make any subsequent treatments “#reasonably #priced” so that every patient could receive it.

“The legislation that we have introduced finally recognizes that long COVID is a public health emergency,” Sanders said.

“Congress must act now to ensure treatments are developed and made available for Americans struggling with long COVID.”

If it accomplishes nothing else, Sanders’ proposal may help lift the veil on long COVID in the country and around the world.

It’s a topic that has been largely pushed into the shadows,
as governmental agencies
—and official policy
—tried to construct a reality in which COVID in general was just no longer a significant issue.

That was never the case, and it’s certainly not the case now.

“The reality is otherwise,” Al-Aly says.

As the virus mutates into new strains and continues to affect millions, the long tail of COVID is once again forcing itself to center stage.

#FLiRT #throat #pain #long #COVID #recommendations #Long #COVID #pretend #risk #Eric #Topol