You Have To Live Your Life
A resource for COVID-19 research and information
Former CDC Director Rochelle Walensky
Medscape Medical News
New Data: Long COVID Cases Surge
Archive Link
Independently, advocates, researchers, and clinicians also reported seeing an increase in the number of people who have developed long COVID after a second or third infection. John Baratta, MD, who runs the COVID Recovery Clinic at the University of North Carolina, said the increase is related to a higher rate of acute cases in the fall and winter of 2023.
Tinker Ready
Date published: March 28, 2024
Date archived: March 28, 2024
Article on statistics
Other / Mixed
Time
Long COVID Doesn’t Always Look Like You Think It Does
Archive Link
She knew about Long COVID, the name for chronic symptoms following an infection, because her 11-year-old son has it. But “he didn’t have anything like this,” she says. “His set of symptoms are totally different,” involving spiking fevers and vocal and motor tics. Her own experience was so different from her son's, it was hard to believe the same condition could be to blame. “I just thought, ‘It’s really coincidental that I never got well, and now I’m getting worse,’” she says.
Jamie Ducharme
Date published: Feb. 24, 2024
Date archived: March 29, 2024
Other / Mixed
Other / Mixed
The Independent
‘Finally we’re believed’: Long Covid sufferers hail new research saying they should avoid intense exercise
Archive Link
"This could be the next dementia or Alzheimer’s. People are getting worse because there’s so much misunderstanding around it by employers and everyone."
Date published: Jan. 4, 2024
Date archived: Jan. 18, 2024
Personal anecdote
Journalist
Nature Communications
Muscle abnormalities worsen after post-exertional malaise in long COVID
Archive Link
A low exercise capacity is one of the hallmark signs of long COVID, associated with a substantial burden for daily life. The ventilatory and central cardiovascular system did not limit exercise capacity in long COVID patients, but our results confirm previous suggestions of a peripheral impairment in skeletal muscle metabolism in long COVID patients
Brent Appelman, Braeden T. Charlton, Richie P. Goulding, Tom J. Kerkhoff, Ellen A. Breedveld, Wendy Noort, Carla Offringa, Frank W. Bloemers, Michel van Weeghel, Bauke V. Schomakers, Pedro Coelho, Jelle J. Posthuma, Eleonora Aronica, W. Joost Wiersinga, Michèle van Vugt, & Rob C. I. Wüst
Date published: Jan. 4, 2024
Date archived: March 28, 2024
Other / Mixed
Other / Mixed
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Long COVID will take your health, your wealth — then it will come for your marriage
Archive Link
Until 2020, Dr Putrino worked mostly with people who had suffered stroke and traumatic brain injury — typically sudden events that result in disability and big shifts in the dynamics of patients' relationships. Now, he sees those same changes rippling through the families who visit his long COVID clinic.
Hayley Gleeson
Date published: Dec. 27, 2023
Date archived: Dec. 27, 2023
Other / Mixed
Journalist
Fam Med Community Health
Association of COVID-19 with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infections in children aged 0–5 years in the USA in 2022: a multicentre retrospective cohort study
Archive Link
COVID-19 was associated with a significantly increased risk for RSV infections among children aged 0–5 years in 2022. Similar findings were replicated for a study population of children aged 0–5 years in 2021. Our findings suggest that COVID-19 contributed to the 2022 surge of RSV cases in young children through the large buildup of COVID-19-infected children and the potential long-term adverse effects of COVID-19 on the immune and respiratory system.
Lindsey Wang, Pamela B Davis, Nathan Berger, David C Kaelber, Nora Volkow, Rong Xu
Date published: Oct. 13, 2023
Date archived: Nov. 10, 2023
Study
Other / Mixed
The Economist
The pandemic’s true death toll
Archive Link
Although the official number of deaths caused by covid-19 is now 7m, our single best estimate is that the actual toll is 27m people. We find that there is a 95% chance that the true value lies between 17.8m and 32m additional deaths.
Date published: Oct. 12, 2023
Date archived: Oct. 19, 2023
Statistics & Models
Other / Mixed
The BMJ (British Medical Journal)
Occupational differences in the prevalence and severity of long-COVID: analysis of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Infection Survey
Archive Link
Public facing industries, including teaching and education, social care, healthcare, civil service, retail and transport industries and occupations, had the highest likelihood of long-COVID.
Theocharis Kromydas, Evangelia Demou, Rhiannon Edge, Matthew Gittins, Srinivasa Vittal Katikireddi, Neil Pearce, Martie van Tongeren, Jack Wilkinson, Sarah Rhodes
Date published: Sept. 28, 2023
Date archived: Oct. 8, 2023
Study
Group of professionals
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Post-COVID Conditions: Information for Healthcare Providers
Archive Link
Acute SARS-CoV-2 infection and PCC have been documented to have the following effects: cardiovascular, pulmonary, renal, psychologic, neurologic / cognitive, gastrointestinal, immunologic, endocrine, reproductive, genitourinary, dermatologic
Date published: Sept. 11, 2023
Date archived: Oct. 10, 2023
Other / Mixed
Governing body
CNBC
Long Covid has led to financial hardship for patients, research finds. Experts say these changes can help
Archive Link
A rough estimate pegs the size of the population affected by long Covid symptoms at between 7.7 million to 23 million people in the country, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Lorie Konish
Date published: July 26, 2023
Date archived: Aug. 22, 2023
Article on a study
Other / Mixed
Urban Institute
Employment and Material Hardship among Adults with Long COVID in December 2022
Archive Link
Long COVID can affect many aspects of a person’s life, including their ability to work and afford to meet their basic needs, which can affect their recovery and long-term health and well-being.
Michael Karpman, Olivia Fiol, Susan J. Popkin, Lisa McCorkell, Elaine Waxman, Sarah Morriss
Date published: July 20, 2023
Date archived: Sept. 23, 2023
Study
Other / Mixed
Office for National Statistics
Prevalence of ongoing symptoms following coronavirus (COVID-19) infection in the UK: 30 March 2023
Archive Link
Long COVID symptoms adversely affected the day-to-day activities of 1.5 million people (79% of those with self-reported long COVID), with 381,000 (20%) reporting that their ability to undertake their day-to-day activities had been “limited a lot”.
Date published: March 30, 2023
Date archived: Nov. 4, 2023
Statistics & Models
Governing body
48hills
Long COVID has reached the ‘Russian Roulette’ stage in the US
Archive Link
What we do know, definitively and without question, is that COVID-19 is not “just a cold,” as some right-wingers have maintained. As the Nature Reviews article notes, “SARS-CoV-2 has the capacity to damage many organ systems.”
Bruce Mirken
Date published: March 28, 2023
Date archived: July 5, 2023
Article on a study
Journalist
Trades Union Congress
Workers' experience of Long Covid
Archive Link
The Office of National Statistics (ONS) reported that, as of 1 August 2021, 970,000 people in the UK were experiencing self-reported Long Covid. The most recent data from 2 January 2023, shows that this has increased to 2 million people – this figure is bigger than the population of the cities of Birmingham and Manchester combined.
Jenny Ceolta-Smith, Polina Sparks, Lesley Macniven, Clare Rayner, Kirsty Stanley
Long Covid Support Employment Group (LCSEG)
Date published: March 27, 2023
Date archived: Oct. 27, 2023
Other / Mixed
Other / Mixed
The Lancet
Long COVID: 3 years in
Archive Link
Although the majority of patients infected with SARS-CoV-2 recover within a few weeks, long COVID is estimated to occur in 10–20% of cases and affects people of all ages, including children, with most cases occurring in patients with mild acute illness.
The Lancet
Date published: March 11, 2023
Date archived: Aug. 18, 2023
Article on statistics
Other / Mixed
Scientific American
Long COVID Now Looks like a Neurological Disease, Helping Doctors to Focus Treatments
Archive Link
Some patients, Pittman says, “have the expectation that they're going to come in, and within a month they're going to be back to normal. And resetting those expectations can be really challenging. You have to be really empathetic because people's lives have completely changed.”
Stephani Sutherland
Date published: March 1, 2023
Date archived: Sept. 13, 2023
Article on a study
Group of professionals
Neurology
Incidence of Epilepsy and Seizures Over the First 6 Months After a COVID-19 Diagnosis
Archive Link
The incidence of new seizures or epilepsy diagnoses in the 6 months after COVID-19 was low overall, but higher than in matched patients with influenza. This difference was more marked in people who were not hospitalized, highlighting the risk of epilepsy and seizures even in those with less severe infection. Children appear at particular risk of seizures and epilepsy after COVID-19 providing another motivation to prevent COVID-19 infection in pediatric populations.
Maxime Taquet, MD, PhD; Orrin Devinsky, MD, PhD; J. Helen Cross, MD, PhD; Paul J. Harrison, DM, FRCPsych; and Arjune Sen, MD, PhD
Date published: Feb. 21, 2023
Date archived: Dec. 19, 2023
Study
Group of professionals
CNBC
Long Covid has an ‘underappreciated’ role in labor shortage, study finds
Archive Link
About 18% of people with long Covid hadn’t returned to work for more than a year, according to a report by the New York State Insurance Fund, state’s largest workers’ compensation insurer.
Greg Iacurci
Date published: Jan. 30, 2023
Date archived: Aug. 6, 2023
Article on a study
Journalist
CNN
Long Covid can be debilitating, even for healthy kids
Archive Link
Children – even healthy teens and the very young – can have long Covid, several studies have found, and it can follow an infection that’s severe or mild.
Jen Christensen
Date published: Jan. 15, 2023
Date archived: March 30, 2023
Other / Mixed
Journalist
Nature Reviews Microbiology
Long COVID: major findings, mechanisms and recommendations
Archive Link
Long COVID is an often debilitating illness that occurs in at least 10% of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections. More than 200 symptoms have been identified with impacts on multiple organ systems.
Hannah E. Davis, Lisa McCorkell, Julia Moore Vogel & Eric J. Topol
Date published: Jan. 13, 2023
Date archived: Sept. 14, 2023
Article on a study
Group of professionals
WebMD
Long COVID Risk Makes It Worth Avoiding Second Infections
Archive Link
“It’s not like, ‘Oh, I’ve had one, so it’s OK. Now I can take off my mask, do what I like.’ It has health consequences for reinfections – higher mortality rate, higher hospitalization rates, higher risk of long term, lingering symptoms,” she says.
Solarina Ho
Date published: Dec. 19, 2022
Date archived: March 17, 2023
Other / Mixed
Group of professionals
CNBC
Long Covid is distorting the labor market — and that’s bad for the U.S. economy
Archive Link
The overall labor impact of long Covid is tough to quantify. Estimates suggest hundreds of thousands to millions may be out of work, at a time when there are historic levels of job openings.
Greg Iacurci
Date published: Dec. 8, 2022
Date archived: Feb. 11, 2023
Other / Mixed
Other / Mixed
CNBC
Millions suffer from long Covid — and it costs them $9,000 a year in health-care expenses, on average
Archive Link
Long Covid has affected as many as 23 million Americans to date — and it’s poised to have a financial impact rivaling or exceeding that of the Great Recession. By one estimate, the chronic illness will cost the U.S. economy $3.7 trillion, with extra medical costs accounting for $528 billion.
Greg Iacurci
Date published: Dec. 1, 2022
Date archived: Feb. 11, 2023
Other / Mixed
Journalist
The Conversation
The risk of seizures and epilepsy is higher after COVID than after the flu – new research
Archive Link
For people with COVID who were hospitalised, the point at which a diagnosis of seizures or epilepsy was most common was at nine days after infection. For those who were not hospitalised, the peak was at 41 days. In children with COVID, the peak point for seizures or epilepsy was at 50 days after infection and at that time children who had COVID were three times more likely to have epilepsy or seizures than children who had flu.
Arjune Sen
Head of the Oxford Epilepsy Research Group, University of Oxford
Date published: Nov. 18, 2022
Date archived: March 20, 2023
Article on a study
Other / Professional
Nature Medicine
Acute and postacute sequelae associated with SARS-CoV-2 reinfection
Archive Link
The evidence shows that reinfection further increases risks of death, hospitalization and sequelae in multiple organ systems in the acute and postacute phase. Reducing overall burden of death and disease due to SARS-CoV-2 will require strategies for reinfection prevention.
Benjamin Bowe, Yan Xie & Ziyad Al-Aly
Date published: Nov. 10, 2022
Date archived: Sept. 14, 2023
Study
Other / Mixed
Time
You Can Still Get Long COVID If You’re Vaccinated and Boosted
Archive Link
For now, though, even vaccinated, boosted, and previously infected people aren’t immune to Long COVID. Any infection could lead to lingering complications, which underscores the importance of limiting exposure to the virus as much as possible.
Jamie Ducharme
Date published: Nov. 8, 2022
Date archived: March 31, 2024
Article on a study
Other / Mixed
Boston Globe
Long COVID affects millions. What is being done about it?
Archive Link
Long COVID costs at least $60 billion up to as much as $100 billion a year in just lost wages. The annual cost of medical care for these patients may be another $100 billion. And those numbers don’t factor in decreased productivity from people working with severe fatigue and brain fog, or family members of long COVID patients who must reduce their work hours to take on caretaker roles. Acute COVID is a pandemic; long COVID could be a mass disabling event.
Katie Bach and David Cutler
Date published: Oct. 31, 2022
Date archived: Sept. 5, 2023
Article on statistics
Journalist
European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control
Prevalence of post COVID-19 condition symptoms: a systematic review and meta-analysis of cohort study data, stratified by recruitment setting
Archive Link
An extremely wide range of physical and psychological symptoms are reported by individuals at least 12 weeks after a SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Date published: Oct. 31, 2022
Date archived: May 13, 2023
Study
Other / Mixed
Forbes
The New Disability And How Millions Of Americans Got Too Sick With Covid-19 To Work
Archive Link
What puzzles me is why it is so difficult to understand that long Covid can be disabling and that not working isn’t really much of a choice. It is that getting well is the job. When most people do recovery, they do want to and need to work.
Denise Brodey
Senior Contributor - Award-winning advocate for disabled jobseekers and employees.
Date published: Oct. 26, 2022
Date archived: Sept. 5, 2023
Personal anecdote
Journalist
Brookings
New data shows long Covid is keeping as many as 4 million people out of work
Archive Link
This may sound unbelievably high, but it is not inconsistent with the experiences of comparable economies.
Katie Bach
Nonresident Senior Fellow - Brookings Metro
Date published: Aug. 24, 2022
Date archived: Feb. 12, 2023
Article on statistics
Journalist
Nature
Brain changes after COVID revealed by imaging
Archive Link
Imaging before and after infection by the SARS-CoV-2 virus reveals substantial changes in the brain after infection.
Randy L. Gollub
Date published: Aug. 22, 2022
Date archived: July 9, 2023
Article on a study
Journalist
University of Auckland News and Opinion
If you've recently had Covid, look out for shingles
Archive Link
Opinion: Can having Covid trigger shingles? Yes, probably, according to Associate Professor Helen Petousis-Harris, and you might want to think about a shingles vaccine.
Date published: Aug. 16, 2022
Date archived: Sept. 25, 2023
Article on a study
Other / Professional
CNBC
Long Covid’s financial devastation: $8,000 in credit card debt, ruined retirement plans
Archive Link
On top of the toll it takes on their health, long Covid patients report a devastating impact on finances, including massive medical expenses and job losses.
Annie Nova
Date published: Aug. 12, 2022
Date archived: Feb. 14, 2023
Example
Journalist
Published on author's Harvard faculty page
The Economic Cost of Long COVID: An Update
Archive Link
Relative to my earlier estimate with Lawrence Summers of the cost of long COVID of $2.6 trillion, the higher number here is higher: $3.7 trillion in total. The higher estimate is largely a result of the greater prevalence of long COVID than we had guessed at the time. There are about 10 times the number of people with long COVID as have died of COVID.
David M. Cutler
Professor of Applied Economics, Harvard University
Date published: July 16, 2022
Date archived: Oct. 21, 2023
Statistics & Models
Economist
Institute working paper (Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute)
Long-Haulers and Labor Market Outcomes
Archive Link
But, when I discern long-haulers by whether long-haul COVID affected work, I find that long-haulers who reported long-haul COVID affected work are 10 percentage points less likely to be employed and, on average, work 50% fewer hours than individuals without prior COVID infection.
Dasom I. Ham
Date published: July 7, 2022
Date archived: Sept. 17, 2023
Statistics & Models
Governing body
Time
You Could Have Long COVID and Not Even Know It
Archive Link
Policymakers, public-health officials, and the media “have often portrayed covid as a short, flu-like disease, especially in the young,” Perego wrote in an email. As a result, people might not make the connection between a case of COVID-19 and health issues months later, especially if they had a mild initial illness or are fully vaccinated; other people may have been asymptomatically infected or got a false-negative test result, so they don’t know they had COVID-19 at all.
Jamie Ducharme
Date published: June 28, 2022
Date archived: March 29, 2024
Other / Mixed
Journalist
JAMA Network
The Costs of Long COVID
Archive Link
In an October 2020 analysis, we estimated the then-nascent COVID-19 pandemic might result in $2.6 trillion of cost as a result of long COVID. Unfortunately, our estimate seems very much on target.
David M. Cutler
PhD
Date published: May 12, 2022
Date archived: Feb. 2, 2023
Article on statistics
Other / Mixed
Nature
SARS-CoV-2 is associated with changes in brain structure in UK Biobank
Archive Link
[...] and (3) a greater reduction in global brain size in the SARS-CoV-2 cases. The participants who were infected with SARS-CoV-2 also showed on average a greater cognitive decline between the two time points.
Gwenaëlle Douaud, Soojin Lee, Fidel Alfaro-Almagro, Christoph Arthofer, Chaoyue Wang, Paul McCarthy, Frederik Lange, Jesper L. R. Andersson, Ludovica
Date published: March 8, 2022
Date archived: Sept. 6, 2023
Other / Mixed
Group of professionals
Brookings
Is ‘long Covid’ worsening the labor shortage?
Archive Link
Long Covid could account for upward of 15% of unfilled jobs
Katie Bach
Nonresident Senior Fellow - Brookings Metro
Date published: Jan. 11, 2022
Date archived: Aug. 12, 2023
Article on statistics
Other / Mixed
The Guardian
More than a million of us are suffering with long Covid – yet still it’s not taken seriously
Archive Link
Having been fit and active, I now find that on bad days I still struggle with everyday chores, and my usually quick-firing brain remains in slo-mo (“brain fog”), a far cry from the way it used to function when I was still working as a consultant in infectious diseases.
Joanna Herman
Date published: Dec. 22, 2021
Date archived: July 10, 2023
Other / Mixed
Other / Professional
eClinicalMedicine (Part of THE LANCET Discovery Science)
Characterizing long COVID in an international cohort: 7 months of symptoms and their impact
Archive Link
Patients with Long COVID report prolonged, multisystem involvement and significant disability. By seven months, many patients have not yet recovered (mainly from systemic and neurological/cognitive symptoms), have not returned to previous levels of work, and continue to experience significant symptom burden.
Hannah E. Davis, Gina S. Assaf, Lisa McCorkell, Hannah Wei, Ryan J. Low, Yochai Re'em, Signe Redfield, Jared P. Austin, Athena Akrami
Date published: July 15, 2021
Date archived: Oct. 17, 2023
Study
Other / Mixed
Trends in Neurosciences
The emerging association between COVID-19 and acute stroke
Archive Link
Given the number of people infected with COVID-19 worldwide, high mortality seen with COVID-19-related stroke and resulting disability of younger people and those without traditional risk factors, the potential societal implications of COVID-19-related stroke are immense.
Laura K Stein, Naomi A Mayman, Mandip S Dhamoon, Johanna T Fifi
Date published: April 8, 2021
Date archived: Sept. 7, 2023
Study
Group of professionals
UC Davis Health
Studies show long-haul COVID-19 afflicts 1 in 4 COVID-19 patients, regardless of severity
Archive Link
Another consistent finding is that it does not appear to matter whether non-hospitalized patients had more severe cases of COVID-19, mild cases or even cases that caused no symptoms at all.
Date published: March 30, 2021
Date archived: July 18, 2023
Article on a study
Other / Mixed
JAMA Network
Sequelae in Adults at 6 Months After COVID-19 Infection
Archive Link
In this cohort of individuals with COVID-19 who were followed up for as long as 9 months after illness, approximately 30% reported persistent symptoms. A unique aspect of our cohort is the high proportion of outpatients with mild disease.
Jennifer K. Logue, BS; Nicholas M. Franko, BS; Denise J. McCulloch, MD, MPH; Dylan McDonald, BA; Ariana Magedson, BS; Caitlin R. Wolf, BS; Helen Y. Chu, MD, MPH
Date published: Feb. 19, 2021
Date archived: Nov. 20, 2023
Study
Group of professionals