Long COVID Scientific Updates

keeping up with current information in order to move forward in recovery

With Groundhog Day just around the corner, I remembered something about trust and thought about where I should put my long COVID statistical trust.

Last week I read an article titled, “Vulnerable Americans live in the shadow of COVID-19 as most move on,” and ended up wishing that I hadn’t because it painted a lopsided, imbalanced, and rather hopeless picture of most chronically ill Americans, especially those of us who have wrestled or are wrestling with long COVID (and others who have compromised immune systems). The article also seemed to want to lay a guilt/shame trip on the many Americans who have successfully transitioned into some sort of post-COVID normalcy, at least that’s the way I read it. Until recently, Americans have been well known for their rugged tenacity and refusal to give up in the face of trouble, but I digress. While I admit that my experience with the virus that causes COVID-19 had me in its grips for longer than I wanted it to, and I wanted to throw in the towel on more than one occasion while I was in longCOVIDlandia, I’m happy to say I did not give in to the temptation to quit. I have fully recovered from my long COVID symptoms which I have documented, here. And I have been educated/updated on the proper definition of the term long COVID, so I will be doing my best to use the words COVID and long COVID appropriately. I guess there is a distinction between infection with a new variant of COVID and reinfection.

Reinfections were defined as having occurred at least two months after a first infection. They were found to occur most frequently when omicron variants were circulating in late 2021 and early 2022.

Study suggests reinfections from the virus that causes COVID-19 likely have similar severity as original infection | NHLBI, NIH

Based on my own personal experience, I would say that getting back-to-back COVID infections within very short time periods i.e. within 2 months of each other was the absolute worst for me, this has happened to me 2X since 2020. This is why I have always taken extra precautions to avoid “reinfection” directly after I have been infected.

Giving myself as much time as possible to heal after an infection and working on building up and nourishing my depleted immune and other systems or calming my auto-immune reactions down has been a good COVID strategy for me to follow.

A great resource on this can be found here - Herbal Therapy | Dr. Rawls’ Lyme Disease Treatment Guide

I’ve stopped paying attention to what particular COVID variants are floating around out there, so based on my own experience of “reinfection” being worse (for me) if it happens within around 2 months of an infection,

I will not be referring to any future infections I may get with COVID as a reinfection unless it happens within a couple of months of a previous infection AND it puts me back into long COVID hell.

I found a few other things from the RECOVER study I linked to above to be notable:

• severe infections, defined as receiving hospital care for a coronavirus infection, from the virus that causes COVID-19 tend to foreshadow similar severity of infection the next time a person contracts the disease.

• long COVID was more likely to occur after a first infection compared to a reinfection.

• 27% of those with severe cases, defined as receiving hospital care for a coronavirus infection, also received hospital care for a reinfection.

• 87% of those who had mild COVID cases that did not require hospital care the first time also had mild cases of reinfections.

• lower levels of albumin, a protein made by the liver, may indicate a higher risk for reinfection….trials (are needed) to test if nutritional interventions may prevent reinfection or its severity.

Scientists in this RECOVER study speculated that -”Waning immunity and increased exposure to the coronavirus, including the highly-infectious variants, likely accounted for the reinfection uptick seen in late 2021-early 2022.” This paper goes into more detail as to what contributes to “waning immunity.”

• hyperinflammation

• immune cell depletion

• People with deficiencies in toll-like receptors are more susceptible to the virus because they produce less interferon.

• One of the mechanisms by which the virus escapes immune surveillance is by partially inhibiting type-I Interferon (IFN-I) production. (Anaferon may help with this, but it is not made in the U.S.)

• lymphopenia observed in severe cases

• Spike protein is likely to be involved in long COVID syndromes. Indeed, some results show the persistence of Spike protein over several months in the blood following infection, and for some patients, the plasma levels of this glycoprotein appear to coincide with COVID-19 vaccine administration.

• The strategy of the mRNA vaccines is ultimately to produce antibodies directed against Spike.

• Vaccines containing modified mRNA encoding the SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein induce a high production of antibodies capable of neutralizing the virus Spike in weeks following their administration.

However, while the COVID19 mRNA vaccine is good at producing high numbers of antibodies (in some people, such as those with Lyme disease, this may or may not be a good thing- talk to your healthcare provider); spike is spike, and spike can be pathogenic even if it is associated with the vaccine.

Key problem areas appear to be (1) the toxicity of the spike protein—both from the virus and also when produced by gene codes in the novel COVID-19 mRNA and adenovectorDNA vaccines [1,2], hence the novel term ‘spikeopathy’; (2) inflammatory properties of certain lipid-nanoparticles used to ferry mRNA [3]; (3) N1-methylpseudouridine in the synthetic mRNA that causes long-lasting action [4]; (4) widespread biodistribution of the mRNA [5] and DNA [6,7] codes via the lipid-nanoparticle and the viral-vector carrier matrices, respectively and (5) the problem of human cells producing a foreign protein in our ribosomes that can engender autoimmunity [8,9].

‘Spikeopathy’: COVID-19 Spike Protein Is Pathogenic, from Both Virus and Vaccine mRNA - PMC.

efforts to unveil the connection between the triggering of the immune system by adjuvants and the development of autoimmune conditions should be undertaken.

Vaccines, adjuvants and autoimmunity - PubMed

I have presented all of this in order to help myself maintain a sense of balance when trying to make my own well informed health care decisions. The decision to vaccinate or not vaccinate is just as nuanced as the decision to mask or not to mask. So, I think we should all be extending a great deal of grace and respect to other people and their own COVID related health care decisions. It’s pretty easy to get sucked down the rabbit hole of socio-politically fueled COVID related rants that are often justified by words like “advocacy” and “concern for the health of others" but letting our own COVID frustrations get the best of us is probably not a good idea, especially if we have dysautonomia (dysregulated nervous system) due to COVID or trauma or __________.

Vaccinations and masks are just 2 of many coins in the long COVID defense coin purse. For anyone who thinks that the rest of the world should still be routinely masking, I would like to invite you to explore the other side of the mask coin through the following links-

We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection. Public health authorities define a significant exposure to Covid-19 as face-to-face contact within 6 feet with a patient with symptomatic Covid-19 that is sustained for at least a few minutes (and some say more than 10 minutes or even 30 minutes). The chance of catching Covid-19 from a passing interaction in a public space is therefore minimal. In many cases, the desire for widespread masking is a reflexive reaction to anxiety over the pandemic.

Universal Masking in Hospitals in the Covid-19 Era | New England Journal of Medicine

The freeze response is lifesaving when it's needed, but when the threat is over and the freeze response continues, it comes at a cost.

5 ways out of the Trauma response / how to un-freeze

Prolonged use of N95 and surgical masks by healthcare professionals during COVID-19 has caused adverse effects such as headaches, rash, acne, skin breakdown, and impaired cognition.

Adverse Effects of Prolonged Mask Use among Healthcare Professionals during COVID-19

Other notable data-

• The likelihood of developing long Covid has dropped since the start of the pandemic but remains possible.

• During the first year of COVID in 2020 10% went on to get long COVID.

• The risk of long covid was cut in half during the Delta wave in 2021.

• In 2021 with Omicron, 3.5%-7.7% of people who went on to develop long Covid.

• The virus continues to change, leading to less risk of long COVID than in the early years of the pandemic.

• New data suggests, 3 out of 100 (3%) of people who get COVID may go on to have long Covid and that 7% of US adults have had long COVID.

I find this data to be helpful, since several other “news” sources have led me to believe the risk of getting long COVID today was the same as it was in 2020: 10%.

There are additional/other ways in which more coins can be added to anyone’s COVID prevention purse:

I-PREVENT: COVID, Flu and RSV - Independent Medical Alliance

And this question is still a good one-

Have you nourished your mitochondria today?

Mitochondrial Dysfunction

To learn more about what long Covid is,

Go here- Long Covid Defined | New England Journal of Medicine

For the Reader’s Digest version, see my Note- Long COVID is.......

“When fear comes trying to steal your peace and joy, tell it to go straight back to the pits of hell from where it came and ask Jesus Christ to give you hope again.”
~Stephanie Schaible, from her memoir, Leaving Death in the Dust

Dear self, weigh your odds and make good decisions to the best of your ability. Please let others do the same.

Best Wishes,

My name is Stephanie, I can do hard things, and “Leaving Death in the Dust” was created in sickness and in hope for healthy healing.

******Remember to make prayer a first priority.

This publication was created to encourage beautiful human beings, who are sick, tired, and chronically ill, learn about becoming more actively involved in their own health care. I’m glad you’re here, and I hope that you have found our newsletters to be helpful.

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*Leaving Death in the Dust is a newsletter and is not a replacement for professional, regulated, medical, healthcare. This is informational and educational. Some of us in this community may have worked in the healthcare system, but we are not your medical provider and whatever you find here is not the establishment of a professional medical relationship or medical advice. **That is an MT behind my name not an MD.