#COVID isn't over

[gumjrop]

Common Symptoms Were Fatigue and Decreased Exercise Tolerance, According to a 2022 Survey

Inequities In the Prevalence and Severity of Symptoms Observed Across Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Neighborhood Poverty

December 26, 2024 — Today, the New York City Health Department announced that 80 percent of adult New Yorkers infected with COVID-19 who were surveyed experienced at least one symptom lasting one month or longer. According to the results of the COVID-19 Experiences Survey in 2022, the most common symptoms were fatigue and decreased exercise tolerance. While post-acute symptoms may resolve within 12 weeks, many people will go on to develop Long COVID, an infection-associated chronic condition characterized by symptoms lasting three months or longer.

“This survey shows us that the symptoms following COVID-19 infections are a significant public health issue for New Yorkers. Black and Latino communities, women, transgender people, and those living in low-income neighborhoods were more likely to have symptoms, highlighting the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on marginalized communities,” said Acting Health Commissioner Dr. Michelle Morse. “We must invest in a comprehensive long-term response to the COVID-19 pandemic that focuses on prevention through engagement with health care providers and community members. Services for people experiencing the long-term physical, mental, social, and economic impacts of COVID-19 infection should be accessible to all.”

Post-acute symptoms are those that last one month or longer. To better understand experiences of COVID-19 post-acute symptoms, the Health Department conducted the COVID-19 Experiences Survey in November and December 2022. Adult New Yorkers who were members of the probability-based NYC Health Panel were invited to take the survey if they had confirmed or suspected COVID-19; 2,081 people completed the survey online or by phone in English, Spanish, Russian, Simplified Chinese, or Traditional Chinese. The results provide insight into how post-acute symptoms relate to health care seeking, social and demographic factors, disability, and mental health.

Some respondents reported many symptoms at different levels of severity, while others reported few symptoms, only mild symptoms, or none at all. Inequities in the prevalence and severity of post-acute symptoms after COVID-19 were observed across race/ethnicity, gender, and neighborhood poverty levels.

The prevalence of mild symptoms was similar across socio-demographic groups.

Moderate symptoms were more prevalent among Latino and Asian/Pacific Islander adults compared with white adults, and among people living in high poverty neighborhoods compared with people in low poverty neighborhoods.

Severe symptoms were more prevalent among women and transgender or non-binary adults compared with men, among Latino and Black adults compared with white adults, and among people living in very high and high poverty neighborhoods compared with low poverty neighborhoods.

Increasing symptom severity was associated with activity limitations and depression. Those with at least one severe symptom were more likely to report activity limitations compared with those who reported no post-acute symptoms (60 percent vs. 6 percent), which may result in social, economic, and mental health difficulties.

People with at least one severe post-acute symptom reported 10 days of reduced ability or complete inability to carry out usual activities or work in the past month, compared with 6 days for moderate symptoms, 3 days for mild symptoms, and 1 day for no symptoms.

One in three adults (33 percent) with at least one severe post-acute symptom after COVID-19 had probable depression, higher than those reporting only mild symptoms (6 percent) or no symptoms (2 percent).

Black and Latino New Yorkers, women, transgender adults, and those living in low-income neighborhoods were most likely to report severe symptoms, reflecting the disproportionate impact of the ongoing pandemic in these communities.

To address inequities in awareness about the long-term health impacts of COVID-19 and the importance of preventing new infections, the NYC Health Department partners with community and faith-based organizations to serve as trusted messengers and provide tailored and culturally resonant public health outreach to NYC communities.

Anyone can become very sick from COVID-19. To find a COVID-19 or flu vaccination site, visit nyc.gov/vaccinefinder or call 212-COVID-19 (212-268-4319).

#031-24

MEDIA CONTACT: Chantal Gomez PressOffice@health.nyc.gov

Gomez, Chantal. “Health Department Finds Most Adult New Yorkers Infected with COVID-19 Experienced Symptoms Lasting One Month or Longer.” Health Dept. Finds Most Adult NYers Infected With COVID-19 Experienced Symptoms Lasting 1 Mo or Longer - NYC Health, NYC Health, 26 Dec. 2024, www.nyc.gov/site/doh/about/press/pr2024/nyc-adults-with-covid-19-experienced-symptoms-one-month-or-longer.page.

I’d like to highlight that date: December 26, 2024.

[sicksadtumble]

Tbh if you consider yourself "Alt" or "punk," I don't care unless you wear a mask in public. Otherwise, you're just another poser.

[newlevant]

New zine that's free for anyone to print and distribute! Read the whole thing at newlevant.com/COVIDzine or in the rest of this post.

UPDATE 4/11/2023:

I swapped out the colloidal silver nasal spray info for xylitol nasal spray info. I originally included colloidal silver spray because of the linked study and recommendation from RTHM, but I don't want to be pointing people toward something with notable health risks. Xylitol spray (Xlear) is also cheaper and more widely available!

[counterintuitivecomics]

WHY WE MASK: It's Not "Just A Cold": A Handy Scientific Guide to Surviving COVID-19 Together

Here, have a free science zine with a ridiculously long title! Endless thanks to my partner and fellow disabled artist, Kimball Anderson aka @earnestattempts, who helped through the entire year-long process with art edits and image descriptions (located in the alt text). Additional thanks to my friends Dupe and Caitlin, who gave me thorough copy-edits, and every friend who read drafts or listened to me rant about COVID-19.

Feel free to spread it far and wide! And hit me up if you're interested in printing &/or distributing free copies :D

Read WHY WE MASK with Endnotes - includes working URLS so you can read the scientific papers I cited for yourself. Plus links for all the other resources, and a full transcript.

Download WHY WE MASK - Free PDFs to read, print, and share! Any donations go towards print copies &/or local mask blocs.

Can't get enough free printable COVID zines? Check out @newlevant's excellent What's Up With COVID & How To Protect Yourself: 2024 Ed! It was a huge inspiration in the final stretch.

Extra pages under the cut:

[covid-safer-hotties]

[fox-bright]

Covid Update, USA, late December 2023: Buckle up, folks.

Takeaway from his (very informative) thread:

Wastewater counts are obscenely high right now, belying the official case numbers. Considering that we've stopped collecting or reporting most COVID data, wastewater is the best way we have to judge the actual infection rate now.

We are currently seeing ten million new infections a week, and can expect that to greatly increase within the next three weeks.

If you've stopped masking, please start again, for your own safety and the safety of your community. Many hospital systems are already trending toward being overwhelmed right now; let's do what we can to lighten their burden.

Avoid unnecessary gatherings where possible.

Ventilate your spaces well (this is a good time to build that Corsi-Rosenthal box you were thinking about! I made one, it's great).

And just from me, personally--now's a good time to reevaluate casual habits. I've been careless, again, about touching my face. Time for me to knock it off!

This is a period where we need to act with more care. Not a time to panic, but a time to be more cautious.

[affixjoy]

My darlings, my loves, my fellow weirdos, I am begging you all to REST after you have covid.

I know it is very hard, and our society asks you to get back up and running at full speed as soon as possible, before you’re even done testing positive even.

But please my friends, please rest.

If you push too hard too fast you might be sicker for longer, you might be doing long lasting damage to yourself.

So please my beautiful nerds, take care of yourselves and REST.

[i-still-mask-because]

Nassau County of Long Island, New York passed a mask ban bill today. Please make a habit of calling your city, county, state, and federal representatives expressing your opposition to mask bans because fascist legislative proposals like this is absolutely going to be domino effecting throughout the US. AND WEAR A MASK IN PUBLIC. WEAR A MASK TO NOT ONLY PROTECT US, BUT SUPPORT US.

Editing to add (8/14/2024): Please read the recent update.

[kira-akira]

What I Want You To Know About Long COVID

Well lads, I've been suffering from Long COVID for over a year now. My life is at a complete standstill. I'm 25 years old and I'm too sick to go back to school, I can't work, I had to move back in with my parents and I'm still stuck here.

Here are just a few things I wish people knew about Long COVID, including things I didn't know myself until I got it.

COVID destroys your immune system. Yes, even if you don't have Long COVID. Are you getting sick more often now? When you get sick, does it last longer? There are many studies showing that COVID causes t cell depletion, even in mild COVID cases! T cells are how your body remembers how to fight off infections you've had before so losing those cells? Bad news.

Your initial infection can be mild and you can still get Long COVID. Right from Yale Medicine, "Most people with Long COVID had mild acute COVID." (This is also a good link for a basic Long COVID overview).

There can be a gap of time between when you "get better" from the initial COVID infection to the onset of Long COVID symptoms. Some people get sick with an initial COVID infection and never get better. Some get better and then weeks or months later start developing Long COVID symptoms. Long COVID symptoms can even fluctuate over time, can go away for months and then suddenly come back.

So many people have Long COVID and don't realize it. Do you feel more tired lately but no matter how much you sleep, nothing helps? Is it harder to concentrate at work or school? Can you just not think like you used to? You could have Long COVID and not even know it. Even mild post-COVID symptoms are still Long COVID.

COVID can do anything to your body. Long COVID has over 200 recognized symptoms and can affect basically any part or system of your body. There is no one mechanism or cause of Long COVID which unfortunately also means there's no one cure either.

The effects of COVID are cumulative. Each COVID reinfection increases your chances of developing Long COVID. COVID is also affecting your body in other ways, yes, even if you're otherwise young and healthy! "Repeat COVID-19 infections increase risk of organ failure, death".

Once you have Long COVID, repeat COVID infections will make your symptoms worse. "80% [of Long COVID patients] saw their symptoms worsen [from reinfection]. In 60% of people who were in recovery or remission from Long COVID, reinfection caused a recurrence of Long COVID."

There is a lot more I want to say about Long COVID but I want to keep this post at least somewhat manageable to read. Like how when COVID is contracted during pregnancy, those COVID-exposed fetuses have a 6.3-fold increased risk of motor developmental delays, or that another study found 50% of babies exposed to COVID in utero had developmental delays.

You need to keep caring about COVID, for others around you and also for yourself even if you're "healthy". Everyone is at risk. And don't forget 40-60% of COVID infections are asymptomatic, which is why masking even if you feel fine is crucial. The only way right now to not get Long COVID is to not get COVID in the first place. It's not too late, if you've stopped masking it's never too late to start again! I know it's easy to get distracted by things in your life that seem more real than the possibility of getting sick some time in the future, and the peer pressure to not mask can be intense. But it only feels less real or less important until your entire life is having Long COVID. Trust me.

I know this is a complicated issue, many people can't afford to stay home when sick even if they want to because of their jobs, there are disgusting policies trying to ban wearing masks, but please if you can. Keep masking. Masking works, masking saves lives.

This post got a bit longer than I wanted so below the cut is a non-exhaustive list of my Long COVID symptoms and some of my experiences as one of the "healthy young people" who got "unlucky". cw brief mention of suicidal ideation.

Welcome to the Thunderdome that is my body with Long COVID. Keep in mind these are just my experiences and symptoms, Long COVID can cause any range of symptoms at varying severities.

Dysautonomia: Exercise intolerance, Post-Exertional Malaise (PEM), fatigue, and heat intolerance. What do those things mean? Here's some specific examples. Absolutely terrible circulation I am so cold all the time but also, if I get a little too warm I will pass out. Eating hot food makes my heart rate spike, I sweat, my body feels heavy. Blood pooling and pins and needles in my feet when I walk. Don't even think about exercising past walking, it's impossible. I used to work out an hour a day 4 times a week and now walking up one flight of stairs makes my heart pound and I can't breathe. Can't take even just warm showers anymore or I will pass out. Heat rashes from being in the sun for 10 minutes.

Digestive issues: Honestly too many to name but: constant bloating, extreme nausea, constipation, slow motility, lack of appetite, just so much cramping and pain. I lost 18 pounds from Long COVID, as someone who was already considered underweight their entire life, and almost had to get a shunt put into my chest to deliver nutrients because I was nearly completely unable to eat. For the first 6 months of Long COVID, if I could manage 600 calories a day, that was a good day.

Histamine intolerance: Oh boy. My worst symptoms, I don't even know where to start with it. If you know Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS) it's very similar. I can only eat 19 foods. If i eat a single bite of something not on that list, it's 48 hours of absolute hell. Coughing, migraines, itchy eyes, such extreme nausea I cannot even describe it, panic/feeling of doom, racing heart rate, derealization, rash, uncontrollable muscle tremors. I only learned about histamine intolerance 5 months into having Long COVID so before that, I was experiencing these symptoms nearly every single day. Terrifying isn't even a strong enough word to describe how it felt to experience all this and have no idea what it was, how to stop it, or if it would ever stop. Really dark times.

Neurological issues: More of that derealization. Inability to concentrate. Anxiety. OCD-like symptoms such as thoughts getting "stuck" in my head, repeating 24/7 completely unable to stop them, genuinely felt like my brain had cracked open and I had lost my mind. Constant dizziness like I'm on a boat.

Sleep issues: I sleep like garbage. I have insomnia, I wake up dozens of times every night and every single time I sleep I have intensely vivid dreams. I can't sleep longer than 7 hours total no matter how exhausted I am. It is exhausting. I'm exhausted, I'm so so tired.

And finally. Just. Really intense suicidal ideation. My body, my health, my entire life has been stolen from me because someone else decided my life was worth less to them than wearing a mask or staying home if they feel sick. Before I got Long COVID, I was preparing to go to South Korea to teach English, then on to a PhD in neurolinguistics, I was supposed to meet my long distance partner and had already booked plane tickets when I got sick. All of that has been destroyed.

Most of us with Long COVID are stuck in a cycle of being extremely sick, then if you're lucky you'll slowly get better over months, just to get reinfected and go right back where you started or worse. Honestly, I'm not scared of dying from COVID. I'm scared of living for a long time, suffering from Long COVID the entire time. This isn't living.

I don't know how to end this now. I'm still fighting, I'm trying experimental treatments, I'm not giving up yet. I hope everyone reading this stays healthy and well.

[killthelantern-raisetheghost]

if you can’t afford k/n95s or covid tests, reach out to your local mask bloc

and here are some zines about covid safety

why we mask: it’s not “just a cold”

what’s up with covid and how to protect yourself: 2024 edition

how to choose a mask

masking through blackness

covid is a labor issue

The covid pandemic is still happening btw. Infection case rates haven't dropped, they're just not being reported. People are still dying and being left permanently disabled by covid.

Keep wearing masks in public. Get tested when you may be sick and self-isolate when you test positive. Get vaccinated if you can. Stay away from elderly and immunocompromised people if it's possible you have covid.

[casmarotta]

save these (or download them here) to use for posters, social media, zines… whatever u want! it’s never too late to start wearing a mask again :-)

[daisiesonafield-blog]

“Mystery virus” getting everyone sick… …. It’s COVID

Link

[crumbsinthesea]

"It wasn’t until about two years into the pandemic, when the “vax and relax” era was clearly not going to work, that I had to reckon with my system for organizing time. I couldn’t delay the future any longer; I couldn’t continue protecting the story of my life from the pandemic’s incursion. So I accepted the terrible fact that the pandemic was going to continue indefinitely and was not merely an event in my life but rather the container in which the rest of my life would take place. This was a difficult reckoning. It required that I come to terms with a great deal of grief about the failures of those around me; about what I lost and will have lost; a privilege in thinking that these were the sorts of world-historical changes that happened to other people, at other times. But it was also a reckoning that rescued the orderliness of time, for me. It was as if the clock was un-paused, and life resumed its forward march. I think most people stabilized their warped sense of time by other means. Instead of accepting that the pandemic continued on, that we failed to contain it and so would need to incorporate its ongoing reality into the stories we tell ourselves about our own lives, they instead transformed the fantasy of after into their reality. After the pandemic, after the lockdowns, after our world ruptured. They were able to interrupt the prolonged uncertainty that the pandemic had brought to all of our lives by erecting a finish line just in time for them to run through it. And as they ran through it, celebrating the fictional end of an arduous journey, they simultaneously invented a new before. This is the invention of memory. The Pandemic became something temporally contained, its crisp boundaries providing a psychic safeguard to any lingering anxieties around the vulnerability and interdependence of our bodies that only a virus could show us. No longer did it threaten to erupt in their everyday lives, forcing cancellations and illnesses and deaths. It was, officially, part of The Past. And from the safety of hindsight (even if only an illusion), people began telling and re-telling the story of The Pandemic in ways that strayed from how it all actually went down. It was a way to use memory as self-soothing."

--Emily Dupree, The invention of Memory

[there-are-many-ways-to-smile]

[intersexfairy]

at urgent care and the sheer number of people with covid in here is absurd. if you haven't gotten the most recent vaccination, NOW is the time to get it. if you arent wearing a mask, NOW is the time to start. protect yourself and others as much as you can! you will regret it if you don't.