Virus sick times vary for people who are infected

The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday provided a well-researched piece on how sick times vary widely for those who experience virus illness.

Sumathi Reddy wrote about people who suffer from short or lengthy sickness — from a few days to more than a year.

“Suffering from what’s often referred to as ‘long COVID,’ an estimated 10% to 30% of COVID patients continue to experience symptoms months after their initial diagnosis,” she wrote. “Many had mild to moderate COVID cases at first and didn’t require hospitalization. But months later, they are grappling with often-debilitating symptoms that can in- clude brain fog, fatigue, shortness of breath, racing heart beat and an inability to tolerate physical or mental exertion.”

In February, the National Institutes of Health announced a major initiative to study long COVID, backed by $1.15 billion in funding.

“Large numbers of patients who have been infected with (COVID) continue to experience a constellation of symptoms long past the time that they’ve recovered from the initial stages of COVID-19 illness,” NIH Director Francis S. Collins said in the announcement.

He pointed to a survey of more than 3,700 self-described COVID long-haulers that indicated early half couldn’t work full-time six months after developing prolonged symptoms.

Emily Jensen’s last surfing vacation was at Florida’s Cocoa Beach in November of 2019. She was eying California or Hawaii for the summer.

Now she doesn’t have the arm strength to hang a picture on the wall without help. A year after getting COVID, the 35-year-old is still struggling with long-term symptoms. She has migraines and gastrointestinal issues, chest pain and trouble sleeping, neuropathy, arthritis, shortness of breath, muscle pain and fatigue.

She has experienced a rapid heart rate, which led to a December diagnosis of POTS, a disorder of the autonomic nervous system that many long COVID patients are being diagnosed with.

She has brain fog and memory issues, forgetting whether she took her dog out or took a medication.

“I write a lot of stuff down to track things especially for work,” she says of her job as an education manager for a children’s television show, which she does remotely from her home in Minneapolis.

She thought she was doing better in August, but in September the migraines set in. “I started getting migraines that would last like three weeks,” she said.

Other startling case histories are mentioned in the article, adding to the worrisome hazards that can occur.

We’ve got to destroy this menace for the remaining future.