2024-01-02

My Thoughts on Covid and Long Covid

There’s a… I wouldn’t quite call it a set of beliefs, and it’s certainly not something that’s backed up by hard evidence, but on the other hand, I don’t think people are looking to prove or disprove this, as far as I know… so, there’s a concern that I have about Covid, and long Covid, that I think I can sum up as follows: What if

1. there’s no such thing as asymptomatic Covid, just Covid with symptoms you don’t notice; and
2. the actual percentage of Covid patients who get some form of Long Covid is 100?

Here’s my reasoning. Sometimes people have Covid-19 and don’t notice a thing, and they call that asymptomatic. But most people who aren’t dedicated, competitive athletes or the intellectual equivalent¹ thereof, don’t regularly push their bodies and brains to the limit, so they wouldn’t notice a slight drop-off in how well their bodies and minds can perform. If you are an elite athlete, you will notice that your peak performance reduced just a little bit, and that right there is what you’d call your symptoms.

Similarly, most people who recover from Covid still don’t push their bodies and minds to their limits, and shouldn’t, at least not for a while, because that increases their odds of getting what is currently recognized as Long Covid. But what if they only recover to about 99% of their prior level of functioning, and top out there? Again, only very competitive athletes/brain exercisers would even notice. It’d make the difference between a 2-hour marathon and a 2:05-hour marathon. But they still have permanent loss of function.

A corollary to that is that if people get Covid-19 ten times, their functioning will be reduced to just over 90% of their pre-Covid peak, in the best case of only getting mild illness, and at that point even an average athlete would start to notice. But because those infections would necessarily take place over a longer period, they would attribute the loss of function to normal aging or reduced activity. And if one or more of the infections was more serious, the loss of function might be worse.

And that is something that keeps me up at night and makes me want to continue to avoid all further exposure to Covid-19. Once was enough, never would have been better.