I've been reading reports that the virus causes endothelial damage to various organ systems and vasculature.
I wonder if the virus leaves behind permanent damage even among those who recover. I would hate to get the virus and be left with a permanently weakened heart and lungs.
I'm not a doctor or researcher, but it seems like we're still too early in this to know what the long term impact will be.
I've heard several anecdotal reports of long-lasting fatigue after a recent infection. Not all of those are confirmed COVID, due to difficulties in accessing testing. And it's too recent to know how long it will last. But it's worrying, since this is a symptom of some other viral infections that's not well understood and can have big quality of life impact.
As someone who nearly died before age 2 from Kawasaki disease, this all sounds so familiar to what I grew up learning about.
There have been surges in diagnoses of Kawasaki disease in children since this pandemic began, which has been said to cause long term endothelial damage. There certainly seems to be some link between the two.
> Autopsy revealed deep venous thrombosis in 7 of 12 patients (58%) in whom venous thromboembolism was not suspected before death; pulmonary embolism was the direct cause of death in 4 patients.
Would taking small amounts of asprin be a reasonable preventative measure (in addition to more sensible measures like, "staying home" and "washing your hands")?
You could give aspirin to the entire population to prevent heart attacks and strokes, and for every life you save from heart attack or stroke you prevent, you'll kill someone else by bleeding in the gut or brain. I don't know what the total risk of a severe outcome from COVID19 is, but the risk of serious bleeds on aspirin is 1/200. That's high.
Edit: I should probably add that the aspirin bleeding risk is not "1 aspirin out of 200 causes bleeding", but rather 1/200 people who are on daily aspirin to prevent heart issues will develop serious bleeding.
"Setting: Autopsies performed at a single academic medical center, as mandated by the German federal state of Hamburg for patients dying with a polymerase chain reaction–confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19."
"Patients: The first 12 consecutive COVID-19–positive deaths."
Yes, this stood out. The same judgement applied to a selection of cases that is not hand-picked (first N cases, except for having to choose a value of N) sounds like a good basis.
Maybe something good comes out of this, e.g. saving patients by treating them with anticoagulants preventively or something like that.
"Flu" hit me hard at the beginning of the year or end of 2019. Dry cough, etc...
"Flu" hit hard my mother that was vaccinated against flu
My father, as usual, didn't even noticed any flu. He was following a sintrom preventive treatment... a standard practice in several countries like... mumble, mumble. Let me take a look to something...
Uh, oh... "Warfarin was used predominantly in the UK and Italy (74.9% and 62.0%, respectively), phenprocoumon in Germany (74.1%), acenocoumarol in Spain (67.3%), and fluindione in France (61.8 %)".
We have a single virus, but it does not behave the same. The difference can be structural, but maybe there is a second agent that acts as modifier and is unknown.
If we take a look to the countries affected by coronavirus we can easily spot groups. For example, US, Iran or Brazil would fall in the same group IMHO in some aspects.
In Europe we could see Germany, then Spain+Swedden+Netherlands, then Italy+UK, and a strange outlier
At this moment we don't know where lies the difference between the number of infected cases ending in death in Germany (4% only), Spain (11%), Swedden and Netherlands (12-13%), Italy (13%) or UK (15%).
France, the outlier, has a 19%.
If we take the official data, France is one of the worst countries to be in Europe and maybe in the planet when you are positive (maybe french people should take extra measures to not enter in that group). Something is happening there.
One explanation could be that France has a bigger amount of deaths by frustrated hospital staff leading to a worse care, or even the appearance of solitary "angels of death".
The other explanation could be that they are simply missing lots of positives. More than the other countries.
This can be accidental or on purpose. If the former they aren't paying enough atention to this point, if the later, they could be simply applying several layers of statistical make-up to their data, maybe for the political goal of keeping the country in a lower position in the worldwide range. In a similar style that what UK did for weeks.
In this case, we could wake up one morning to see a +2000 increase in France deathcount.
Lets change the subject. It seems that blood clots have a relevant role in mortality. Well, Many countries, in Europe at least, have preventive programs that put a sizeable amount of elders in an permanent anticoagulant treatment to avoid heart attacks.
After the link above, It seems that each major group of countries in Europe favour a different product for that, and Italy and UK use the same product. Some products must be better than other by definition. This anomalies warrant further research in my bumbling opinion
Yep, is the same that I said before... they are missing lots of positives
The frivolous consequence is that France is in "7th position" and Germany in "6th". More serious consequences are that French could have a false sense of security at this moment, and that there is a lot of unknown and hidden damage being done in French lungs that could lead to a mortality increase in the future by "natural causes".
Yes, the number of confirmed case is well known as an underestimation. Some other data are gathered directly from GP, people in emergency room presenting Covid-19 symptoms or nursing home reports.
I'm sorry to say that here in Spain the situation is far worse than that. Number of cases is totally useless. It's just a fantasy, a way that governments, specially ours, use to make up the reality. Actually Spain is with Belgium in the worst place of the world counting the only relevant index: deaths per habitants.
China could be worse, but their deaths number is impossible to know for us. Simplest option is to think it's been much much worse than they say.
Actually number of deaths is almost certainly manipulated here too. The fact that nursing homes and people dying at home haven't been counted has been on the news weeks ago. Government just refused to adjust the numbers even when comunidades started to supply the corrected numbers. Autopsies aren't being made. And there are directives on what to write on death certificates so the virus doesn't appear except in hospitals and if the deceased suffered no other previous conditions. Sometimes last cause like stroke or heart attack are being said to be the cause.
There are already estimations based on previous years deaths and they're a 50% higher at a minimum, just think that traffic and on the job fatalities must be almost non-existent so it's probably more than estimated.
Everything is mediated by politics. Yesterday a high medical officer in Madrid resigned over end of quarantine because one of the two parties in the regional government imposed its views over technical criteria.
Belgium uses a different method to count deaths. If I'm not wrong, any death in this period (any not explained by other obvious causes) is counted as killed by coronavirus by default. Is probably not fair to compare them with the other countries at this moment. They are commiting an error by excess when all the other are commiting the opposite type of error.
I've also been listed on papers just because I was a student intern that conducted a part of an experiment and wrote a few lines describing it. My own paragraphs didn't make it into the published paper but I contributed to the research and was credited for it in the authors list. It does not seem wrong to do that - except if you interpret authoring narrowly as typing things.
I wonder if the virus leaves behind permanent damage even among those who recover. I would hate to get the virus and be left with a permanently weakened heart and lungs.
I'm not a doctor or researcher, but it seems like we're still too early in this to know what the long term impact will be.