The "problem" still goes back to the spreading (and contact-tracing).
It's not so much a matter of "blasting" someone about being skeptical or venting (like the rest of us) about how much of a PITA this whole thing is and the reporting of it.
But it is illustrating what those of us who are scientists know - despite the fact that scientists supposedly "look at 'facts'", the reality is that they can all be presented with the identical set of data ( "facts" ) and then interpret what it means differently or come to sometimes disparate conclusions based on their particular backgrounds and experiences.
And this is what we have sadly seen play out in public for the past 2 years, in some cases, with disastrous results.
The early (and even continuing) dismissal of what has been dubbed "long COVID" is concerning because it has been documented "as a thing" and not just something that only impacts people who experienced moderate to severe bouts of illness from the virus like those who managed to skirt death (including making it out of intubation) or who needed to be hospitalized. COVID infections - even for some minor or "mild" cases (as they are characterized) - have brought about what has so far been considered "quality of life" problems (the last I saw - impacting upwards of 30% of those infected).
For example per this recently published by the Mayo Clinic -
Mayo Clinic Minute: Hope for COVID-19 patients who’ve lost their sense of taste, smell
March 17, 2022
The loss or change in a person's sense of taste and smell is something that can happen to people who have had COVID-19. It's a common symptom with other viruses, including influenza, but it's happening at a much larger magnitude due to the scale of the COVID-19 pandemic. Current estimates indicate that 20% of people with COVID-19 will experience some alteration of their sense of taste and smell.
"On top of that, about another 20% of folks will come down with some prolonged version of this that can sometimes last for several weeks to several months," says Dr. Greg Vanichkachorn, a Mayo Clinic occupational medicine specialist. The good news is that, over time, roughly 95% of those people can expect improvement in taste and smell in less than a year. And with help, the recovery of those senses can be sped up even more.
"There have been a lot of different therapies out there and touted for help with this, and we've combed through all the research. But the thing that we have seen to be the most effective, both in practice and in research, is something called 'olfactory retraining,'" says Dr. Vanichkachorn.
The nerves involved in taste and smell can heal and regrow. It's called "neuroplasticity." "So the idea is that if we can challenge those nerves with different smells, that will help them regrow in the proper fashion," says Dr. Vanichkachorn. Olfactory retraining involves smelling specific substances to do that.
https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/mayo-clinic-minute-hope-for-covid-19-patients-whove-lost-their-sense-of-taste-smell/
The AMA also published this -
Public Health
What doctors wish patients knew about long COVID
Mar 11, 2022
Sara Berg, MS
Senior News Writer
(snip)
There are three types of long COVID
Long COVID can be broken down into three categories, Dr. Sanghavi explained. “COVID-19 itself has direct cell damage because of the virus and this can cause lingering symptoms.” This means that people with COVID-19 “do not recover completely and have ongoing symptoms because of direct cell damage from the virus,” he said. That’s the first category.
The second category of long COVID is when a person’s “symptoms are related to chronic hospitalization,” said Dr. Sanghavi. “This is when someone is in the hospital, ICU, bed bound for weeks. “There is inherent muscle weakness. There is inherent cognitive brain dysfunction. There is inherent psychosocial stress causing post-traumatic stress disorder-like syndrome, which we call post-ICU care syndrome,” he added. “That is from chronic hospitalization.”
In a third category are those cases in which symptoms appear after recovery. “With COVID itself you see a variety of symptoms—a 30-year-old dying or a 70-year-old essentially being unscathed and symptomatic.” That’s because “there are various patient factors at play,” reflecting the “interplay with the immune system of a person, and then the impact that both those things have on the body,” he said. These “symptoms that linger on are produced after the recovery because of this interplay between inflammatory markers and the immune system.
“We are still trying to understand exactly how this interplay between immune system and inflammatory markers work, but there's no doubt that that is a group of symptoms because of ramped up immunity or ramped up inflammatory system,” he added.
(snip)
https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/public-health/what-doctors-wish-patients-knew-about-long-covidThe prolonged loss of taste and smell is just one example. Others are prolonged lethargy and brain fog, etc. Sadly you hear from these people once or twice and then they give up. The media might report on this intermittently but it just never rises to the level that it needs for acknowledgement of being a concern that begs really embracing the term "new normal".
Bottom line - you don't want to purposely try to get infected with this virus.
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