| | | That's true, we really don't. That being said, I've seen people with long lasting effects from other viral illnesses triggering autoimmune responses. Someone in my family has a severe neurological disease felt to be secondary to one, based upon viral titers, history, and the concomitant rise of antibodies against his nerves.
However the vast majority of people seem to be clinically fine within two weeks of being diagnosed. The people that seem to have issues and have a much harder time recovering -- and again, I'm one clinician at one hospital -- seem to be people over the age of 60, people that are obese, people with borderline kidney or lung function, and people with diabetes. If you are Black or Hispanic, this disease tends to hit you much harder if you have any of those preconditions, regardless of age.
It's a bad virus for a lot of people. I've never seen so many people hypoxemic in the hospital due to any other virus before, including influenza. Fortunately enough, most are doing well -- just surfing and texting away while they're on their bellies getting high flow O2 to keep their sats above 82-85% (normal is 97-100%, criteria for chronic outpatient oxygen therapy starts at 88% under Medicare guidelines). I've never seen 3/4 of our ICU filled with patients suffering from a viral illness before -- have of those people are on vents.
I've never seen that with the flu and I've been in practice for 20 years -- I was in med school when I joined SI trying to trade penny stocks with TokyoMex and BigDog and others to pay for tuition and now I'm middle aged with teenage kids. Fortunately enough, the vast majority of people with Covid are never in the ER, much less hospitalized. |
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