Perhaps people have had to expend more energy just keeping their personal life together in the last few years. People with children have had to deal with the constant school closings, childcare facility closings, etc. and that has taken its toll. They may have family members who got Covid or had treatment for other ailments delayed by the pandemic's rush to treat Covid patients. They could've experienced a huge shift in the switch to remote working in 2020, and are now expected to make another huge shift back to in-office working.
This doesn't even account for the incredible decline in civility from customers if you work a customer-facing job. The slightest inconvenience or mistake can end up in a tantrum by an American adult that only sometimes gets captured on video. And in the meantime, a bunch of people walk around opining that "Nobody wants to work anymore" as if they deserve to be waited on hand and foot regardless of circumstance.
During Covid, people were hiding in their homes, quarantined, with nothing to do but work.
This year, companies expect workers to return to office, despite little change in conditions, except now we have to deal with all of the above issues you've just mentioned, AND the fact that employees have now proven they can work remotely perfectly well.
It should neither be surprising that in a system where healthcare is tied to employment, that productivity jumped while people were locking themselves in their houses from a plague, or that productivity dropped afterwards, or that it might drop given the complete callousness of our current system.
All of what you've both said, plus the number of people who thought or still think COVID-19 is "no big deal" who now have a pulmonary deficiency and long-term mental fog.
In support of this—part of it!—here’s one paper of many: “The Neurobiology of Long COVID” by M. Monje, neurobiologist at Stanford, and A. Iwasaki, immunologist at Yale.
Prevalence of "Long COVID" is hard to measure at this point, but based on symptom reporting, about 15% of people who test positive for COVID have some symptoms more than 2 months later.[1] More data is available for people who have had heart and brain MRI scans, which show inflammation. It may be possible to diagnose this with a special eye exam that detects inflammation in the eye's blood vessels. The tests are still very experimental, but there are objective measures of damage.
In support of this, I want to mention that there are known and measurable biomarkers that connect reported symptoms to undeniable physical symptoms.
Low cortisol is very common. That’s just one example. With low cortisol it’s hard to feel good or function 100%.
One paper of many that show this kind of relationship (a preprint): “Distinguishing features of Long COVID identified through immune profiling” — https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.08.09.22278592
It’s also important to note that there was a study that seemed to show that Long COVID was just anxiety or in people’s imagination. Because people who said they had Long COVID didn’t have SARS-CoV-2 antibodies. The thing is that not everybody seroconverts. Not everybody actually produces antibodies after infection; We simply can’t exclude Long COVID diagnoses based on looking at those particular antibodies. So that study can’t show what it has been said to show. (I can provide sources for this but am out of time. It’s on my honor.)
The best explanation I've seen thus far, assuming there aren't other complicating factors (which there often are) is that the immune system stays hyperactive in some people after infection. This causes excess production of IL-6 and IL-10, which in turn causes something called the kynurenine shunt. That in turn results in lowered central serotonin rates in the brain and heightened glutamate. This off balance results in lowered dopamine as the production of serotonin and dopamine are comingled. Dopamine usually breaks down to your typical epinephrine and norepinephrine levels. But since dopamine is at a lowered state, you get less epinephrine and norepinephrine. I'm guessing, but do not know the pathway, that lowered epinephrine and norepinephrine explain the lowered cortisol.
Either way, the treatment should be the same. Take a corticosteroid to lower the IL6 & 10 levels, ensure the patient is getting proper sleep and nutrients, and not doing anything to exacerbate lowered serotonin/dopamine levels, and cross your fingers.
I've started to hear of companies that are testing for elevated cytokines as a proof of long covid, and my family member's hospital has started educating their staff on cytokine release syndrome in the rare patient who has a reaction to a vaccine shot, both of which, for me, imply the industry might be moving in this direction for explanation. fingers crossed
"Long COVID" and medical journals.... Even the highest estimates only have it as a very small percentage of symptomatic patients which is already a subset of the general population.
I've been reading it's 10 to 20% of people who test positive have symptoms at least a month, and as much as 5 to 7% three to six months later. The US workforce is around 160 million people. About 60% of the population is estimated to have had SARS-Cov-2 at least once.
60% of 160 million is 96 million. So 5% of that is 4.6 million people or so with at least a solid portion of a year of symptoms.
There's mounting evidence that some of the damage could take years to recover or even be lifelong.
The current word from the Mayo Clinic is about 20% of folks have what they're calling Post-COVID Syndrome between one month and one year after an infection, with at least one symptom likely from the viral infection. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/i...
If we look at 20% of 60% of the workforce that's around 19 million people symptomatic for over a month after the initial positive test. Twelve percent, almost one in eight people in the workplace.
My understanding from other articles is its currently 1 in every 3 people currently unemployed cite long covid as the primary reason for inability to return to work, though that data may be a few months old now.
The difficult part of it is: for some people it is literally nothing. We had it now for the fourth time since 2020 even though we’re properly vaccinated and careful as much as life permits.
It’s a bit worse than a cold but much better for than the flu. So, yes, for us life just goes on with COVID. No need to change anything.
That is a problem. It's a dice roll each time a person is infected depending on a huge number of factors including what strain they've been hit with. Reinfections can give worse odds each time. People who got lucky once or twice before might be more careless thinking their luck will continue and end up screwing themselves.
Not necessarily worse, but there is cumulative damage.
In the UK, about 7% of COVID cases that get medical attention are now re-infections. That number increases with time; it was only 4% last February. Immunity from getting COVID is time-limited and not that long. One study said "time between reinfections ranged from 90 to 650 days, with the average being 343 days".
Over a decade, this might gradually debilitate most of the population.
I'm hoping that over the coming decade we get better defenses. Improved vaccines, treatments, and a greater understanding of the virus could prevent a lot of that harm. It hasn't been long enough to see what the long term consequences of infections or even our vaccines and current treatments will be for that matter, but I'll stay up to date on vaccines and continue taking sensible precautions against catching or spreading the virus. It's the best I can do to help my odds given what we know currently.
Paper: “p53/NF-kB Balance in SARS-CoV-2 Infection: From OMICs, Genomics and Pharmacogenomics Insights to Tailored Therapeutic Perspectives (COVIDomics)” — https://doi.org/10.3389/fphar.2022.871583
SARS-CoV-2 directly and indirectly interferes with p53 expression and balance.
On p53: “p53, cellular tumor antigen p53 (UniProt name); p53 proteins are crucial in vertebrates, where they prevent cancer formation. As such, p53 has been described as "the guardian of the genome" because of its role in conserving stability by preventing genome mutation. Hence TP53 is classified as a tumor suppressor gene.” — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P53
The literature goes on and on and on. People really are not okay after contracting this virus. I know plenty of people who simply are not recovering after COVID illness. Friends. Close family. Kids.
We are being warned.
And crucially: We can clean this crap out of the air. Nobody has to breathe in SARS-CoV-2. We absolutely must demand that something is done. There’s lots and lots that can be done.
All of these seem to say the risks of complications are extremely rare? I mean it's endemic at this point so it's really really shitty if you are one of the unlucky few but what can we even do?
> We can clean this crap out of the air. Nobody has to breathe in SARS-CoV-2.
?? What do you even mean. Maybe if the vaccine prevented spreading the virus we could but until we develop that I don't see how that is possible.
With SARS-CoV-2, complications are more common than death, and it’s still among the top reasons why people die.
Re. cleaning it out of the air: It’s literally airborne and it can literally be cleaned out of the air.
When infected, people emit tiny fluid particles which contain the virus. These are so small that they don’t fall to the ground. Filter materials like in HEPA filters and respirator masks strip these particles out of the air. Very effectively. (Surgical masks don’t work. Same kind of material, gaps at the sides. It doesn’t work.)
We can literally clean the air. We do not have to breathe this virus in. That’s just one of the things we can do.
Paper: “The Removal of Airborne Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and Other Microbial Bioaerosols by Air Filtration on Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Surge Units” – https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciab933
People do study that. There's known to be a significantly increased risk of heart attack and stroke in people who have recovered from influenza, but that risk returns to baseline after about two months. The big risk is in the first 7 days.[1]
I everytime sayd it's not a big deal. Got my vaccine as it was ready but don't done anything else to don't get it. Now it's 2022, never had COVID, or maybee I don't noticed it. So, yes, not a big deal for me.
HN aside, most people don't have jobs that you can do more of at home than at the office / factory / lab / school.
Heck, with school it's quite obvious that "teaching hours delivered" sustained during pandemic, but "education learned" dropped by probably half.
I think you’re really on the right track with caregiving, and would add the blind push to force people back into offices without any recognition of the costs of those policies (or, often, perceptible benefits). Going into the office is fairly expensive in any case but it especially pushes parents towards needing daycare and aftercare services which were already expensive before the pandemic and became more so after a non-trivial number of providers found other jobs, became too sick to work, died, or decided the health risk wasn’t worth it after seeing that happen to other people. Our local parents group has had stories about people choosing not to go back to professional jobs because the employers insisting on RTO weren’t paying enough to make up for that, especially if they weren’t accommodating when someone’s schedule is disrupted.
You're right about daycare/school closings. Even now, essentially post-covid, if our two-year-old gets COVID, that's a 10-day quarantine from daycare.
That's 10 days where one of the parents has to work from home and be horribly unproductive because they are watching a child at the same time. And you can get COVID repeatedly. It often from the daycare itself, but also from a sibling who is in school. Even with full, boosted vaccinations, they can still catch it. They don't get very sick, but they have to quarantine.
It's unsustainable.
I'm sure that's not the only cause, but it's definitely a factor.
This is exactly why many people intentionally avoid testing themselves or their children. If you don't have a positive test then officially you don't have COVID-19 and can continue your normal life (symptoms permitting). (I'm not claiming that this is a good practice necessarily but it's what most parents do.)
It depends if you are willing to lie about it. I won't lie.
But the huge, unavoidable disruption that comes from a positive test result certainly doesn't encourage frequent at-home testing. I think at this point most daycare parents test when the school tells them to, and don't test otherwise.
Not only that, but sometimes even the threat of an outbreak can hamper the availability of childcare. Last winter, a few staff members were exposed to a close contact, so they held them out of work as a precaution - but that resulted in one of the rooms having to close for a week.
I assume the parents and staff at my daycare just have a collective unspoken agreement to not test for covid.
The remaining Covid policies are stupidly inconsistent anyway.
RSV is far more dangerous to children, but that is allowed to go unchecked. Hell, you have to pay $250+ just to get tested for it. Rhinovirus/influenza/norovirus/rotavirus/other coronaviruses are all OK, with kids leaking from both nostrils in the classroom.
But one kid or adult gets Covid and things have to close? Covid tests are paid for by government, but testing for all the other viruses costs hundreds of dollars? What a farce.
> Covid tests are paid for by government, but testing for all the other viruses costs hundreds of dollars? What a farce.
Could you imagine if there was some test that showed you all the viruses that are circulating in your system at any given moment? If we applied the same rules as we do for covid to such a test, people would literally never be able to leave their house...
> Covid tests are paid for by government, but testing for all the other viruses costs hundreds of dollars? What a farce.
None of the other viruses have caused a pandemic, and changed the course of human history (except influenza, but that was almost a century ago).
Have people literally forgotten that entire countries' health systems were overwhelmed by this virus? Seems like it would be prudent to keep infected individuals out of our public school systems for a few more years.
Although, the whole hospital volume thing is now wrapped up in pay shortages and rationing of healthcare, so do not really know how much the spread of virus is contributing and how much the lack of resources being put towards healthcare, and specifically pediatric healthcare is contributing.
> Seems like it would be prudent to keep infected individuals out of our public school systems for a few more years.
This is not possible unless you quarantine toddlers and young kids from each other for years, and I am not willing to pay the price of my kids’ development.
Not to mention that parents need to earn incomes to shelter and feed their kids.
Also, I have had 5 Covid vaccine injections, my kids have had 2, but there exists no RSV vaccine. And RSV is specifically bad for kids, causing a fever almost every time. Given the lack of voting power for those affected, I imagine there is not much political will to spend money on expediting R&D for an RSV vaccine. Just like how pediatric healthcare gets reimbursed at 60% to 75% of adult healthcare.
> I am not willing to pay the price of my kids’ development.
I mean, sooner or later the people working in schools are going to be fed up with parents' constant refrain of "The whole world needs to sacrifice their health so I don't have to keep my kids at home for an extra week."
Somewhat similar to the healthcare workers' issues you mention in your comment.
sounds like washington state lol. one of the reasons we moved from there.
now at my kids preschool, if a kid gets sick they stay home, if they are better the next day they come back. no PCR tests, no missing 2 weeks if any member of the family was sick, its great
Would you be willing to share the preschool? I would like to avoid sending my kids to a preschool that pretends asymptomatic spread of diseases doesn't exist.
>This doesn't even account for the incredible decline in civility from customers if you work a customer-facing job.
Not sure if you're in a customer facing job, but I've personally noticed that there seem to be noticeably fewer Karens now compared to pre-pandemic levels. (There was a spike during the first lockdown, but that died down within a few months.)
Everyone seems to be used to random disruptions now, and I think all of the campaigns about retail worker abuse have really made customers stop and think.
antiwork started off good but quickly went downhill.
I abandoned it some time ago because it is now a "pro-union eco-chamber".
I once advocated serious changes to the labour laws are what is needed, and was inundated with "join a union" posts.
It really speaks to just how out-of-touch these people are.
Unions only care about large corporations because they can get a lot of members and union dues. The issue with this logic is that small businesses are often totally out of the unions reach and laws benefit EVERYONE. The other issue they overlook is Union contracts only apply to those in the union and can change greatly from one union to the next.
I'm not unionized (I cannot because none of them are purely work focused here and I deeply disagree with their other views), but here is an observation from Norway, 20 years ago:
AFAIK, unionized companies in Norway statistically were more profitable than ununionized ones.
This might of course be because it is more tempting to unionize when there is a lot of money to be had, but I remember one extra detail:
In between (friendly) ribbing I also remember the union people here being focused on working efficient so that our bonus would increase :-)
> I once advocated serious changes to the labour laws are what is needed, and was inundated with "join a union" posts.
Strong unions are the way to get changes in labor laws and how to get collective action.
If we could all just magically come together without any organizational structure in order to effect change in the government and laws we would have already gotten it done.
There isn't a way out that doesn't involve organized collective action and something that looks very much like unions. Individualism doesn't work to effect the kinds of changes that are necessary.
People were inundating you telling you that you needed a Union because what you want is a magical pony, and unfortunately you're the one that is out-of-touch (although in another sense you're not at all out-of-touch since most people believe that there simply MUST be some way to effect change without collective action--which continues to fail but nobody will give up on the dream).
IIRC most users and moderators or /r/antiwork were opposed to anyone doing interviews on behalf of them. The person who did just unilaterally decided to do it anyway.
I think part of the issue is that it had its reputation destroyed destroyed almost as quickly as it was built. It was fascinating to watch it unfold.
I do not believe for one second that the person selected for this interview was a good representative for the cause ( although I am sure there are some goofballs, who can't seem to present a coherent case even on hostile territory that is Fox News ). I did not follow story that closely, but I believe the person that took the interview got serious blowback from its reddit friends.
The sad thing is a lot of people will form their entire opinion of it based on this one interview. To me it is OWS all over again ( I do not count BLM as that since it had Democrat political machine, and later business machine, backing ).
This doesn't even account for the incredible decline in civility from customers if you work a customer-facing job. The slightest inconvenience or mistake can end up in a tantrum by an American adult that only sometimes gets captured on video. And in the meantime, a bunch of people walk around opining that "Nobody wants to work anymore" as if they deserve to be waited on hand and foot regardless of circumstance.