That is exactly the sense I get when reading through various journal articles and anecdotal reports of patients. I began my career as a respiratory therapist, and then wound up working in the public health space for a number of years, so these are the types of articles that leave me scratching my head. It's been evident for a little while that something really strange is going on with the pulmonary systems of Covid patients, but as of yet, we haven't been able to identify why that is. It's not a normal disease projection, and the typical treatments for these types of manifestations aren't working as they should. As this article points out, we are only beginning to give much attention to the ancillary effects of the virus, and those may prove out to be very substantial. I have thought for a while that we are going to see a lot of neurological injury before this is over with. There is bound to be neurologic injury from the low sats these patients are experiencing. The fact that you have a lot of people walking around with low o2 levels that are asymptomatic - I suspect in several months we will start seeing more and more people with mild neurological deficits. Don't be assured by the word mild, either - a mild diffuse brain injury from lack of oxygen translates into real world problems with personality changes, difficulty processing information (see executive function disorder) and other problems that directly affect a persons ability to function in their day to day life.
This is some of why I stay concerned most of the time. This disease, regardless of where and how it came to be, is vicious, hard to manage, and very contagious. A lot of attention is given to mortality numbers and transmissibity, but it's starting to look like survivors may have more lingering effects than we realize. I think we'll be talking about many more things in hindsight.
jmo, as always. |
