Is ‘Long Covid’ a Grift?

[Lasagna Pirate]

There’s a certain patter to the so called Long Covid testimonies.

The doctors are wrong.
In my lived experience.
It really real! Listen and believe.
Join our group! Donate!

Are people calling any anecdotal symptom covid?

[Lasagna Pirate]

Don’t worry about all those scabs on my dick…. I have reoccurring Long Covid.
It’s totally not herpes.

[Mr. Marty]

What's your problem with it Dane?
It took me 11 months to get over most the bullshit with COVID-19I
Bits and pieces still come back for a day or two but time between is getting longer.

...and no there are no scabs.

[Lasagna Pirate]

What's your problem with it Dane?
It took me 11 months to get over most the bullshit with COVID-19I
Bits and pieces still come back for a day or two but time between is getting longer.

...and no there are no scabs.

There’s very little credible news on this, so I’m understandably curious and naturally skeptical. Seeing a lot of social media groups though!
What triggered my posting was a guy said he sought opinions of a few doctors, and he wasn’t satisfied with their consensus of ‘cabin fever’ . Led me down a rabbit hole of people self diagnosed every little ache, pain and sniffle as ‘Long Covid’.

I don’t trust random people online with a sob story and a donation button.
I think you’re an honest and reasonable guy ( even if you’re a hermit that lives in a swamp) so I’m genuinely curious why you’re certain it’s covid? Could the longer symptoms (that seem random and inconsistent from person to person) be something else entirely?

[Lasagna Pirate]

...and no there are no scabs.

Glad to hear covid healed your scabs.

[Mr. Marty]

Well, I am not going to try and run down the varied way it effects people. Me, it started in my gut but I did not know what it was till 3 days later when the fever came on. Within 1 day the respiratory destress started. It lasted about a week, with a secondary surge about three weeks later. Those surges have kept up but time between lengthened with time. Severity also reduces with time. But it is definitely the same as I have never had those symptoms before COVID. What really bothered me were my sinuses. That has gotten better with time.

COVID hit here hard in March and April. It was on the national news too....sort of a "Here is what is coming" The hospital here was taxed almost to turning people away. As it was they still put people in other communities. I honestly believe (and just my opinion) that what hit New York City was a different variant than what was here.

But in your investigations remember that people react differently. Some respond with severe reactions in the lungs, some in the heart. Some did not even get sick. You cannot do a "one size fits all" when it comes to people. I honestly believe that a much larger majority of people have been exposed but never had a reaction...that they noticed. I think we are closer to herd immunity than most think.

Despite what you believe, you have to look at other parts of world. India I will not understand nor accept how people can ignore that situation and still say it is not real. I cannot understand how people can be so ingorant to say that nearly 600,000 people in the US have died from something else. If that is the case then things like heart or respiratory diseases have an extreme sudden spike in deaths. Such ingorance is hard to accept. It really makes me angry.

[Trobador222]

I was reading recently that the long term effects and death rates, plus the non serious and symptom free rates are about the same as Polio was. The difference is, that Polio affected more young people where as CO IDs rates seem to be more spread out.

My daughter had COVID and for her, it was like a medium case of the flu and no long term affects.

Because of whatever, I am the baby of my generation and even beyond that , in my family there were older people having children. That means I had a lot of direct contact with older people as a child. My father was born in 1914. I knew people that were born in the 19th century.

They talked about epidemics and pandemics they experienced growing up. Those things happened. One of my mother’s brothers died of Polio in the late 1930s. My father was a school teacher and after he got back from service in WWII would react positively to a TB skin test. Because of that, every year he would have to get a chest X-ray to prove he did not actually have TB.

The amount of crap about this virus is incredible and if you take 5 minutes to read into a bit of history on disease and society, you will find out it’s not that unusual. It happens and will happen again. And viruses routinely morph and mutate and jump from other species into humans. After we started researching the genome, we even found out that our genetic make up might be dependent on past viruses.

Curious Dane? Can you explain to me how viruses are different from bacterial infections and how they infect us and why? The reason I am asking is if you do know that, you would probably know why most of the conspiracy crap about COVID is exactly just crap.

As a disclaimer, I once researched and wrote a paper about viruses for a college biology class about 30 years ago.

[Trobador222]

The small hospital my wife works at, is in a poorer and non white area. They have had their death rate go down. Only had 5 deaths from COVID last week. Their ICU is still full. What you don’t get is those beds are taken from the people that have other health problems.

[Trobador222]

Oh, and you want to be afraid of something? Be afraid of prions. They are folded proteins that are for what ever reason are folded oddly and interact in a devastating way with the human brain. We k ow them as “mad cow disease” and before they were k own in cattle, they’re were known in sheep. But some where they jumped from sheep to cattle.

But…… there was a an infection in men of Mediterranean descent that was a type of dementia that has since been linked with prions. And there was a linked disease in New Guinea from old cases of cannibalism rhat has been traced to it.

No one really understands what causes is. It’s not a virus or a bacteria. It’s a type of protein that exists in brains and when it folds itself and goes wrong, it’s fucked up shit!

[Lasagna Pirate]

Prions. Yep. Don’t eat same species.
Except that one time.

What scares me though are parasites.
Especially brain parasites.
No thanks.

[Lasagna Pirate]

Virus has a shell containing rna that can attach itself to a host cell an co opt that cell’s processes to replicate itself and destroy the cell.
Bacteria are bigger and need ‘food’ and warmth and moisture to multiply. Their excretions produce toxins.

[Mr. Marty]

Well, this thread went sideways really quickly.

I dunno guys all this is scary stuff but what really bothers me is the miss-management, fraud, or even down right murder permitted by humans to humans. Diseases and plagues are part of our history and future. There is very little we can do except respond when it happens. It it the response (or lack thereof) that bothers me. It is about money and power, not the health. Humans should know better. Despite havig a large and dense brain, we do some really stupid shit.

Dane, I really am glad you took the time to ask questions. Just don't let ignorance of others blind you. Yes, there are assholes who try to pull a grift onthe social media. Fuckers will get theirs eventually. But that is nothing compared to the grift form the right wing nuts.