[peteyPete]

Those who suffer from the virus can also develop a host of other things. Look up how many people developed ME/CFS (Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome) post SARS and how many are experiencing the same symptoms after "recovering" from COVID-19. Some are months into their recoveries with no signs of going back to their old normal.

I wish it was talked about more instead of people dismissing the fact that if a large percentage of those who get severe symptoms develop chronic illnesses, this is going to be a lot bigger than "just a flu". It far from just a flu. My significant other happens to be a SARS survivor who's been dealing with chronic illness since "recovering" from the infection in 2003. I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

I hope diabetes isn't yet another condition that many will develop after this.

[PaulKeeble]

People have already started appearing in various chronic illness forums around the world with what sounds very much like ME/CFS after having caught Sars2. The official diagnosis takes at least 6 months of having the symptoms and its notoriously badly diagnosed throughout the world due to the incredibly flawed PACE study that painted it as a physchological disease.

Doctors need to be quickly educated on the known blood bio marker combination (igG, lymocytes 2% and antibody complexes all abnormal) until the Stanford nano needle salt stress test is developed and released. They need to ensure patients are put onto a pacing regime which will slow the rate at which they get worse.

Many epidemics have caused ME/CFS "outbreaks" and it has no treatment and almost no research has even been done. 5% of people recover but some also die, most are broken for life. Doctors often think its diabetes as it presents with similar systemic issues but the insulin tests usually come up fine. Its critical they do immune system and full thyroid tests and get the diagnosis and the treatment correct early as each over exertion will permenantly degrade their patients energy levels.

[peteyPete]

Only upside to this is the amount of noise being generated and new funding being allocated to increase research and find a cure or treatment. Hopefully new testing can be developed, doctors can be educated so they can treat patients instead of doubting them or saying its all in their heads, governments can acknowledge people who are affected and actually support them instead of letting them wither away, out of sight, out of mind.

[scruple]

Can the asymptomatic who never present symptoms, or those whose symptoms don't land them in a testing facility / hospital, also develop these chronic illnesses? Is that known?

[PaulKeeble]

About 80% of ME/CFS patients know the day they caught the virus that caused their ME/CFS, but the other 20% don't. Whether that is because 20% of sufferers have a completely different trigger circumstance or because they were asymptomatic is unknown, like I said there has been almost no research in 70 years since the first outbreak was classed as mass hysteria and its been ignored and patients abused ever since until the last 2 years when research finally started to trickle in and get funded.

[erichocean]

> Can the asymptomatic who never present symptoms, or whose symptoms don't land them in a testing facility / hospital, also develop chronic illnesses? Is that known?

The evidence so far is "yes", unfortunately.

[mnm1]

The people who want to dismiss covid as 'just a flu' are not the kind of people who willingly research and consider details before making up their minds. I have never seen an argument by these people that takes into account the long term effects of a covid survivor. Frankly, at this point, these people are just idiots. There is so much evidence, one has to be willfully ignorant and in bad faith to make such arguments.

[eezurr]

To save you other's time:

ME = Myalgic Encephalomyelitis

CFE = Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

[1996]

CFS is nothing new when you're young and get serious viral infections.

When I got the right to vote, I also got EBV. I was stuck in bed for weeks with what the docs initially suspected to be leukemia. It tooks me months to get back to some kind of normal.

Even now I don't think I'm fully back to normal. I get tired much more easily.

[Sevrene]

I had a similar experience with EBV. Although I also think it caused a sleeping disorder as well (Delayed Sleep Phase). Any doctor I've mentioned this to has shrugged it off, I guess there's not much you can do even if they could establish that it was actually the cause.

[1996]

This is scary. I also have DSP since then, but no one ever suggested the 2 could be linked.

Now I wonder how much data we are missing, as doctors also shrugged off my much worse baseline state, saying EBV was innocuous. But as I did a lot of sports, I know very well how it affected me. Another person on this post mentioned of their weightlifiting suffered.

We should get organized to find anything that may help us go back to normal and healthy.

[Sevrene]

Interesting, I think there's more to this than people know, but most doctors I've spoken to don't even know about DSP let alone the seemingly obscure idea that it could be caused by EBV. It's hard, because I really think some amount of validation would be really beneficial to people who suffer from these problems. People have made some pretty insensitive comments about my sleep. Am I just lazy? Is it all in my head? Am I broken? It has an effect over time. I've heard doctors state that CFS doesn't even exist, or that EBV doesn't cause long lasting issues with sleep or fatigue, yet I hear so much about it. For me, the abnormal sleeping schedule isn't really a problem itself but rather it's the social expectations and obligations people and work has that you sleep to their schedule, what they consider normal.

There has to be more research conducted for this (and sleep disorders in general, really) because if there is a link that's the only way forward to managing it through your healthcare provider. At the moment I haven't found many doctors willing to be so speculative which makes sense - they don't know what to test for or how to treat it; so there's nothing they could really do anyway.

Personally I have found modafinil[1] to be extremely helpful in combating sleep and fatigue, one of it's on label uses is for people with narcolepsy so it's possible your doctor might be willing to prescribe it for you off-label. I buy it off the internet which is technically illegal where I live but it's way cheaper.

After your comment I did a really quick search for any information and found this paper[2] from 2018. It has some pretty big limitations, but I think it's worth doing more research.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modafinil

2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6220045/

[mbo]

This is identical to my partners experience. She got EBV (asymptomatically, only discovered in blood records years after) and has suffered from CFS and Delayed Sleep Phase disorder for almost a decade now. She's recently been prescribed Dexamethasone, which has helped manage her symptoms somewhat.

[Sevrene]

Thanks for the info mbo, I'll look into Dexamethasone. I currently use Modafinil to help manage my excessive sleepiness and it's been really helpful. Doesn't 'fix' it, but definitely helps.

[rapjr9]

Is anyone tracking the number of people who experience these "other things"? Every tracker I've seen focuses on the number of cases, the number of new cases, and the number of deaths. Seems like we won't have a very good idea of the real damage being done until we also track the number of people that survive but have new disabilities. If that number is significantly large then the coronavirus is more dangerous than anyone is admitting.