In it for the Long Haul
By Albert B. Kelly
As I write this, the country is seeing approximately 90,000 new Covid cases per day. This is roughly half of what was being recorded daily in the middle of summer. What is hard to know is whether we’re past the worst of this pandemic or if this is some type of calm before a new storm, in the form of a new variant that will make the vaccines less effective.
As for progress with vaccinations, some 57% of adults are fully vaccinated nationwide, while here in New Jersey that number is 65%. Closer to home in Cumberland County 48% of the total population is vaccinated and in my home community of Bridgeton, 44% of residents are vaccinated. I can’t help but think that the primary way to lessen the chances of our facing a “variant of high consequence” is by having the greatest number possible fully vaccinated.
I’m still not sure why something like getting vaccinated became so political, but that is where we find ourselves these days. The whole issue of vaccinations has become a stand-in for issues that have nothing to do with medicine or the science behind vaccines. At some point though, we’ll have to come to grips with the cost of it all.
I don’t just mean the body-count, which here in this country is a staggering 744,218 people dead. Very little real attention has been given to the long term medical impacts of Covid on those who have been infected with the virus. Many of have heard of “long-haulers”, the term used to describe people who are battling an array of serious symptoms on this side of their recovery from Covid-19.
Sadly, SARS-CoV-2 can cause damage to lungs, kidneys, liver, heart and the nervous system to name but a few. Less obvious both physically and medically, but equally impactful, is what several acquaintances have described to me as “brain-fog”. That is to say that these people now struggle with being able to focus on tasks or give their work the type of mental concentration they could easily do prior to becoming infected with Covid-19.
This is no small thing when you consider that in our country; approximately 45,700,000 people have been infected with SARS-CoV-2. Out of fear or for other reasons, some try to minimize the risks and the impacts by insisting that these long term symptoms mostly apply to people with preexisting medical problems, but that claim doesn’t hold up.
We expect someone with preexisting problems like high blood pressure, diabetes, breathing issues or some other medical condition to be more severely impacted by Covid-19 than someone in the prime of life with no underlying medical conditions. Yet even among younger and healthier people with less severe Covid symptoms there is increasing evidence that they are dealing with everything from scarring in the lungs, to heart inflammation and kidney problems.
There is so much we don’t know. With so many people having been sick with Covid-19 now dealing with some combination of health issues as a result of being infected, it remains to be seen whether insurance companies and the medical community will simply treat the package of symptoms as stand-alone things or whether they’ll be recognized as a new syndrome stemming from Covid-19.
It matters because any single symptom might not be debilitating on its own, but multiple symptoms in combination, such as neurological problems, joint pain, shortness of breath; fatigue, and kidney malfunction could be crushing to someone rendering them disabled.
Even if the immediate fear that overtook us in March 2020 with the onset of the pandemic is easing we’re only now seeing the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the long term fallout from Covid-19. I encourage any who have not yet been vaccinated to do so because the science tells us that being vaccinated is the biggest thing in determining whether you will get sick and if so, how severe that sickness will be.
Not for nothing, but when it comes to Covid, it isn’t simply about whether someone will live or die should they become infected. For some perspective, to date 2% of all who’ve been infected lost their lives from the virus. That means most people will live. What we don’t know and will likely not know for some time to come is how many had the virus, recovered, but now have their quality of life seriously diminished post-infection. Only time will tell.