The problem is that you're breaking the site guidelines left and right so your comments are rightly being flagged even if some users are flagging them for the wrong reasons.
If you want to present a minority/contrarian view you need to go about it in a completely different way. Venting and fulminating will only alienate others, get you banned for breaking the site rules, and ultimately discredit your own point of view, which isn't in your interest.
Tl;Dw - Physics Girl, a popular science education YouTuber, is on an indefinite hiatus due to complications from long COVID resulting in chronic fatigue. The video has a lot more detail about the severity of her condition and her husband's efforts to care for her. Her friends are asking people to consider subscribing to her Patreon.
The link from '2muchcoffeeman shows a dramatic increase in March 2020–January 2021 rates after Covid among a 36,005,294 cohort group with 1.45M Covid cases.
Which is fun, since 200,000 is a LOT of people and would normally (assuming independence and randomness) be seen as more than enough, but there's probably not a lot of true randomness/independence in cohorts of people who got Covid in that period. Probably a lot of shared characteristics.
In any case, the sample that's 7 times longer is probably the one to go with.
So the express article talks about risk increases of 75% and 557% (Pfizer/Moderna). The COVID cohort in the March 2020-January 2021 US study is a 16x increase. So quite likely several multiples worse to get "original" Covid unvaccinated, also a lot of unknowns around new variants and immune response, of course, but...
It's all pretty straightforward, no? Vaccine causes similar effects to a real infection intentionally, to stimulate the immune system. Sometimes this has side effect. The actual virus - which is much more, ahem, viral - hits the body even harder, the immune system produces much larger effects, including more frequent instances of the same side effects.
And these numbers all around are still infrequent, and viral infection has caused myocarditits for a long time pre-Covid too, so the hysteria seems like confirmation bias (either of "Covid is the source of all my problems" or "vaccines are bad" reactionary silliness.)
How frequently you do or don't get boosters should depend on disease prevalence, patient history, risk factors, etc, but.... the idea that people are commonly dropping dead from these vaccines or this disease super frequently, and worringly more than the whole world full of previous diseases? I'm unconvinced. And that it's "mRNA specific" vs "immune system stimulation" related? Seems to be zero reason to jump to that conclusion.
I don't think what you're suggesting is especially good science. A study of hundreds of thousands with something that another study shows an incidence rate of 0.15% of is far more than enough to detect a signal. And so what really matters is methodology and limitations.
The CDC mentions a substantial number of limitations in their methodology. One very big one is that they did not consider underlying conditions. In the limited data that they provided [1] you'll notice black individuals and those on medicare are both substantially overrepresented in the myocarditis group. Neither of those factors cause myocarditis, but both are correlated strongly with obesity - which does. And black individuals, especially early on in the pandemic, were substantially overrepresented in infection rates. In other words a sample of the population that is disproportionately obese, which can cause myocarditis, were also disproportionately diagnosed with COVID.
And those sort of biases, among many others, were not considered. Notably all unconsidered biases share the common characteristic of likely inflating the estimated COVID:myocarditis relationship. By contrast in the Israeli study these factors (and many more) were carefully controlled for, alongside a consideration of how their results may differ, and why, relative to other major studies.
There was NO increase in young people dying from random heart problems in 2020. Only after the vaccine rollout did the issues in young people begin.
Also compare to countries where no young people took the vaccines, in those countries we are not seeing unusual increases in young people getting heart problems.
Young people should not be getting boosters.
Is it known if Diana was waxed and/or boosted?
I was fully up to date when I got my first covid and it still took a serious toll on me. Hope she recovers :(
I haven't watched the video, but just wanted to say my family has insurance (in USA), with $7,000 deductible & $14,000 out of pocket family maximum. That of course assumes that we won't get balance billed for whatever bureaucratic reason the medical provider comes up with. For example: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/02/28/1159786...
I believe the recent No Suprises Act no longer allows balance billing for emergency care or when an out-of-network provider is working at an in-network facility.
True! It eliminated balance billing for almost everything except for land ambulances.
Got a $2,200 ambulance bill for taking my daughter 6 miles that was balance billed last year after insurance paid $600. Don’t know how land ambulances in particular managed to avoid being covered by the act, but just something to keep in mind if you have a non-critical injury and don’t need an ambulance.
Some progress is better than none. Hopefully ambulances can be added in the future. One thing though I heard is ambulance services in rural area are barely solvent so just eliminating balance billing may put them under. Not sure if a better approach to funding is taxes or have insurance cover it.
Is it normal in your country to have insurance which covers your entire income (including self employed stuff) for an indefinite amount of time? How much does it cost? How long does it cover?
It is worth noting, that Simone - in the video, says Dianna is not informed that they are asking for help. And that she (Simone) is looking forward to the day when Dianna is strong enough to be pissed at her about it.
I assume that the patreon is to cover loss of income, health costs which are not covered by insurance, and to support her husband who is caring for her.
She has almost 9000 patrons, and is an already successful Youtuber / e-celebrity. I'm sorry for what's happened to her, but I sincerely think charity is better directed elsewhere (for example, a local org that helps disadvantaged families receive healthcare/resources).
methinks you underestimate just how bad health care costs are in the US, especially for entrepreneurs who tend to not be able to afford good insurance. On top of that, where's the money coming for rent, power, food, etc? Her husband is a full time caretaker now so... he's not bringing in anything.
Yes, there's value in supporting the things you said, but ~9k patrons to support a creator who isn't creating, and her husband, and her medical costs and andandand... that's not actually very much, especially if she lives in a major city in the US where rent is frequently ridiculous.
She doesnt' get 100% of that, she doesn't even get close. Several podcasts I listen to are killing their $2/$3 tiers as it doesn't make them any money. That's also assuming they continue the payment for the full year all 10k of them.
> Several podcasts I listen to are killing their $2/$3 tiers as it doesn't make them any money
Am I missing something here? The cut that Patreon gets is 5-12% of revenue and processing payments for 2-3$ are 5% + 10c. At worst, she's getting $2.2 for every
$3/m user.
I think there are other fees but I couldn't find them. Sure so that's $22,000 once if everyone (10k) is $3 tier patreon and goes for one month. For someone who can't work, and then there's taxes. With just federal they're down to $15k for that month. Yeah that's nice, but that's what being nice is. Does that keep going, likely no. And that's max, not including local taxes, etc.
Are they rolling in it, no not at all. I'm not sure what your point is, they don't think they can work, it's been going on for a bit, they get a nice community pay out ... do people live on less, yes definitely. But she didnt' win the lottery here.
I think what they mean by that is that they thing if they raise the bottom tier it won't reduce the number of patreons by the same amount, so they are essentially losing money by not doing that.
Let me tell you: $325k/yr is not enough to manage a debilitating health condition that requires constant care.
For a creator of her size, patreon takes 12% right off the top. ($39k)
In addition, there is a transaction fee of 2.9% + $0.30. ($9.5k + $32.5k = $42k)
Then you have to pay taxes. Self employment taxes on $283k are $26.5k. Federal/state/local income taxes are $82k.
189k of your earnings are GONE.
So, you’re at $135k takehome. Not $325k, but not bad, right?! Well, maybe, except this does not include any of the benefits of a traditional job. No health insurance, dental, retirement, etc. Hopefully, they have good health insurance, otherwise they are probably already close to bankrupt.
If you’re wondering whether $135k takehome can support a couple through a catastrophic health issue like this long term, I have the personal experience to say that it can’t. I won’t elaborate further, but maybe someone else can.
Even assuming that your figures are correct, I am not sure how you can conclude that $135k/year take-home is insufficient to support a couple through a catastrophic health issue.
She is apparently in her 30s. Same with me. I pay for an excellent Marketplace health insurance policy. My premium, annualized, is around $6,500, and my annual out-of-pocket maximum is $8,000. That’s $14,500 a year. Double that to liberally cover two people, and you’re still under $30k/year.
Also worth noting that before the video was released she had a little less than 1k patreons and wasn't releasing new videos. So, she's probably been going through her savings for the past 6 months or so. She's not getting better any time soon either. So, this 9k number will probably decrease a lot in the following months.
My comment was a rebuttal to someone who argued that $135k/year in take-home is insufficient to support a couple - any couple - through a catastrophic health issue.
This is in the context that she's already rich enough and doesn't need support. So, I was pointing out that, even if 137k per year is enough. It doesn't mean she quite get that really.
Insurance is not the only health care expense. Her level of illness indicates need for round-the-clock supervision, which could be satisfied by a nursing home at $10k per month, which would allow her husband to work. That’s a pretty miserable existence, so home health aids are more common, which augment the time family spends caring for the sick person. That can easily cost $5k/month or more to just cover enough time to hold a job, go to school, or just sleep most nights without worry.
I had a serious, one-off injury in 2018 that would have wiped out about half of that if not for my employer sponsored care. US healthcare is extraordinarily expensive.
She also did not have more than 1000 patrons before the video push a few days ago. Which, particularly considering what must be substantial medical bills, is definitely not enough to sustain her family.
I was also implying her earnings from her YouTube channel, on which she has over 2 million subscribers. I'm well aware how bad health care costs are in the US. Although I'm not an entrepreneur, I'm willing to wager my net worth does not compare to that of Dianna and her family's. If I were in the same position, I'd probably be less equipped to handle the tremendous healthcare costs, and I probably wouldn't be able to rally thousands of strangers on reddit or YouTube to help pay for my medical bills, even though I'd be more in need of it. Which is both funny to think and perfectly reasonable -- I'm not charismatic nor an e-celebrity.
My point is that it's easy to give money to a Youtuber you like who posts a video with sad piano music and call it a day (I have done this too). It's harder to spend a bit of time to find a way to help the invisible people in your community who may be more in need. You can do both, I would just prioritize the latter.
Very intensive with cardio. A big wall climb is probably 2-3k vertical feet or more of climbing. That's like climbing hundreds and hundreds of floors in a building (but even steeper and harder). Speed climbers can ascend something that high in a matter of hours. It's a big cardio and endurance demand.
Hopefully firmly in the had serious health challenges category.
If you don’t know her videos, I think Simone produces some of the greatest content on youtube. Deeply authentic, highly skilled, with a really funny subtext of knowing absurdist humor to them. Really great content.
I dunno, I thought it was brilliant. Not the device itself, but the dramatic narrative that she wove around it. The machine itself was almost just a MacGuffin.
Yes. Absolutely. One of my favorites is this video that shows a robot she built to argue with people on <strike>the Internet</strike> Hacker News. (7 seconds)
Cara Santa Maria also had a cancer run in last year[0]. It seems is was caught about as early as possible and she'll be fine, but still a bit bizarre. I've also personally known 3 women who got kidney cancer in the last 2 years. One was in her late 30's and died within weeks of diagnosis. One had a kidney removed and so far is doing fine, and the last will die of it within months.
That's unfortunate. I had some complications after COVID as well (with blood tests showing decreased T cell counts and a CD4+/CD8+ T ratio that's well below the healthy range.
I think one thing that took me by surprise is just how COVID seems to damage the immune system in some people, causing T cell exhaustion (chronic exposure to an antigen causing molecular changes in T cell expression so there's more inhibitory receptors and they're not as functional).
If you've noticed some strange symptoms a few months after having COVID, like thrush, unexpected autoimmune issues, or just feel like infections hit you a lot harder nowadays, I highly recommend doing a lymphocyte subpanel blood test.
You can order them online. Might help clarify some things.
I'm currently using a protein called Thymic Protein-A to increase my CD4+ T cell counts and it's been somewhat successful in making me feel better (doubled my lymphocytes which were on the low end for a few years in about a week), though time will tell whether or not it's ultimately a successful treatment (especially since CD4+ T cell counts increase at a rate of about 10 cells per microliter in healthy human adults).
Just my two cents. Obviously it's different for everyone. But I think every bit of information counts while we're still trying to figure this thing out.
This always pops up when someone says they have long covid. My favorite is when someone got long covid after contracting covid in April 2020, and people came out of the woodwork to blame the vaccine--almost a year before the vaccine was rolled out to the general public.
Ask yourself -why- this always pops up. We're learning a lot more about the side-effects of mRNA vaccines since a court denied Pfizer the 75-year moratorium it requested on releasing its test results to the public, and since studies have been released into the safety of the vaccines
Massari M. et al: Postmarketing active surveillance of myokarditis and pericarditis following vaccination with COVID-19 mRNA vaccines in persons aged 12 to 39 years in Italy: A multi-database, self-controlled case series study https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34849657/
Another possibility is that the ME/CFS diagnosis is correct, but it's unrelated to the covid-19 infection. I think the initial symptoms of ME/CFS are sometimes mild and ignored, and it's difficult to have a definite starting day and be sure it didn't star before the covid infection, or started after but is unrelated.
A streamer I watch has autoimmune diseases and CFS. Since she got Covid last year, they both got worse. Not even close to what’s the case here, but still enough to force her to take extended breaks more often than usual.
And for more anecdotes, "extremely atypical"? Extreme fatigue is pretty much the most common symptom of long COVID I heard of, why would that be atypical?
You miss my point. You are assuming this has something to with COVID. Given the high prevalence of COVID, it might not at all. Do the Bayesian statistics.
I went to high school with Dianna and was good friends with her older sis. They were both super genuine and truly wonderful people back then. I saw this on social media a few days ago from mutual friends, it's really sad to hear how much she's been impacted. Really heartening to see this community cares too. I've seen a lot of go-fund-me grift over the years and am usually an extremely skeptical person, but if Dianna's family is asking for support fwiw I believe that means they really do need it and likely don't have any other options.
I know taylor from high school and trust him. And know many that know Dianna. I would trust whatever support they get will go to good use. Also, taylor we going to 20 yr this summer? :| :) good to see you on this corner of the internet.
This is very sad to see and I wish Dianna and her family the very best for her recovery. I'm into year three of long COVID (ME/CFS) and was fortunate to not reach this level of severity, and to have improved slowly with time to mostly housebound rather than bedbound, but it is a remarkable disease.
The name does it little justice, and fatigue - while certainly pathological and disabling - is not the primary feature. The disease appears unique in terms of an abnormal response to exertion. This has been characterised via two-day cardiopulmonary exercise testing. Healthy controls and even those with other severely limiting diseases will show improvement on day 2, but ME/CFS uniquely shows a reduction on the second day.
Other key features are orthostatic intolerance with demonstration of reduction in cerebral blood flow in the majority on sitting/standing. Neurological symptoms including extreme sensitivity to light and sound explain her blindfold and ear protectors. Many have fluctuating cognitive slowing ("brain fog").
New insights into the metabolic derangements are being gained. Recently[1] evaluation of urine metabolomics demonstrated that healthy sedentary controls excrete many metabolites at 4 and 24 hours following an exercise challenge, while ME/CFS patients do not.
Apart from the devastating effects on patients and the economic impacts of losing so many from the workforce[2], I believe that understanding the immune and metabolic derangements underlying this condition will lead to major insights across many health domains.
That was a heartbreaking video to watch. My heart goes out to this woman and her family.
In my experience, having caught covid in March 2020, fatigue is the problem. It's just that calling it "fatigue" doesn't spell out how dehabilitating that aspect is. It's maybe 100 ft/30 meters from my bed to the kitchen. At the worst of my long covid, I was getting winded walking from my bed to the kitchen. So then I'm in the kitchen, I'm supposed to make food for myself. But it's not like I could stand up for any amount of time. Chopping vegetables is right out. Making anything more advanced than microwave food was too difficult at the worst of it. And even then, figuring out the directions on them was sometimes too complicated. And I figured out C pointers and passed calculus. You don't know how your body can fail you until you can't do something that should be trivial to do but you simply can't. It's easier to see for physical maladies - you'd not ask someone with two broken legs why they can't stand up.
Fatigue in a Long Covid context means it's too tiring even to just watch Netflix. That the exertion to sit there and focus your mind even slightly is beyond you. People are able to put Netflix on in the background and still fall grasp most of the story. With long covid, following a plot, just listening, with all the power you have remaining, is simply asking too much of your body.
The most damning part of it is the aftermath from any significant physical exertion. Like going to the doctor in person. Remember, it's a marathon of exhaustion going from bed to the kitchen, so leaving the bed, getting dressed, going to the doctor, sitting the waiting room, filling out forms - remember your brain only barely works so writing out the answer to eben the first question, name, is a challenge. Seeing the Dr, hopefully they're of any use. Then you have to dance for them and take their tests. Finally you get home and crawl back in to bed, exhausted, so you take a nap. You wake up after that nap get some water and go back to sleep becy you're still tired. When you wake up it's literally been 4 days. You pushed yourself because going to see the doctor was important, but the overexertion of going to see the doctor wiped you out and not only were you bedridden for four days, but you were unconscious. That forces you to recalibrate your whole life. You can't just push through things and stay up a bit late or go out to see friends without stopping to think (which, again, is in and of itself a challenge in ways it never was before)
is there anything I need to be conscious for in the next four days?
So at least for me, "fatigue" was the primary complaint (followed by "brain fog"), it's just that without spelling out what fatigue actually means in the context of long covid, it's not apparent what that actually means.
Post exertion symptom exacerbation however is worse because many other symptoms get worse the follow days, weeks even months after that visit to the doctors. This is what makes the disease so horrific because doing things you need to do worsen everything afterwards and sometimes you don't recover so you get iller and iller the more you push through. That isn't just fatigue.
At the risk of being labeled a quack, try taking an L-citrulline supplement of about 1g/10kg of weight. This greatly helped my long COVID recovery.
My thesis, which I have no direct science to back up, is that the blood vessel damage done by COVID may be partially responsible. Citrulline metabolizes in the liver into arginine, which is used in either to produce ATP or by epithelial cells to repair vascular damage. The body prioritizes vascular repair, so the arginine you normally produce if you have vascular damage is directed away from “energy” leaving you chronically fatigued. This is the same process by which sickle cell anemia leads to chronic fatigue - the shape of the sickle cell irritates the blood vessel lining. Citrulline is effective in phase II/III trials (sadly the primary researcher died and the research stopped) with sickle cell patients.
This helped me a great deal, within a few hours of my first consumption of a citrulline malate blend I bought on Amazon I was myself again after a year of suffering. Within a few months I was able to stop supplementing and felt generally normal. YMMV.
I asked several doctors before starting the regime about safety concerns and they had none (the body urinates any excess it can’t process, and citrulline is a non essential amino acid fundamental to the nitric oxide cycle) and they generally expected it would improve energy - as it did.
Very sad to see. I've seen a few posts recently from her accounts suggesting that things really haven't been good at all. I really do hope things get better, and quickly at that.
Post viral wise, things can get really nasty, even if being infected with the virus doesn't appear to be that bad. I had shingles five or six years ago and have had chronic fatigue since. I'd say I was pretty fit being able to cycle 30 miles a day going back and forth between work, and now I'd consider myself lucky if I could do 1/8 that. I have a stick on me at all times in case I collapse. Congitively I'm pretty borked at points as well. I am better than a few years ago, but it's clear that I'll never be back to where I was -- I experience good days and bad weeks.
Avoid COVID if you can, get your boosters and if you do get COVID or any other illness, really, please try to rest well and avoid returning back to normal too quickly if life allows for that (I know it isn't that easy). I went back to work too quickly and belive that had a significant impact on my recovery.
During my first round of COVID I suddenly developed Terry's nails and extreme exercise intolerance.
The tips of my fingernails were bands of dark red and the rest of my nail bed was completely white. I showed it to something like 5 different doctors and was shrugged off every time. I also started to develop skipping heart beats that got so bad it was happening hundreds of times a day.
Prior to COVID I was highly active 6 days a week and had been for nearly a decade. After COVID I was finding it hard to exercise once or twice a week. This went on for years, all the while I was trying to figure out WTF was going on with me. Eventually I started supplementing copper and my heart issues went away completely within a week. I then started to supplement Iron and my nail beds started to fill back in.
After a month of supplementing I got my Iron/Copper levels checked out of pocket and my ferritin was below range and my copper was just in range. I don't know if I was susceptible to this and COVID kicked me into this territory or what but man was it a shitty ride.
Okay, this does not add up. She's sick and her friend's reaction is to whip out a camera and start filming and begging? Beyond that, "chronic fatigue" is mixed far more with mental illness than it is physical illness. And more often than not, long Covid fatigue does not get notably worse over time, it stays consistent or improves.
I've seen long Covid first hand. I'm not sure I buy this, especially with the e-begging attached.
116 comments
[ 1.6 ms ] story [ 102 ms ] threadIf you want to present a minority/contrarian view you need to go about it in a completely different way. Venting and fulminating will only alienate others, get you banned for breaking the site rules, and ultimately discredit your own point of view, which isn't in your interest.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Heart attack?
https://www.jcdr.net/article_fulltext.asp?id=223
The data is probably not wrong. It’s probably taken out of context though. But you can get the same issues from contracting COVID.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7035e5.htm
Which looks like an order of magnitude greater from getting the real thing.
I find people are really not good at considering other scenarios and ball parking risk. Or maybe they just want to be contrarian.
Which is fun, since 200,000 is a LOT of people and would normally (assuming independence and randomness) be seen as more than enough, but there's probably not a lot of true randomness/independence in cohorts of people who got Covid in that period. Probably a lot of shared characteristics.
In any case, the sample that's 7 times longer is probably the one to go with.
So the express article talks about risk increases of 75% and 557% (Pfizer/Moderna). The COVID cohort in the March 2020-January 2021 US study is a 16x increase. So quite likely several multiples worse to get "original" Covid unvaccinated, also a lot of unknowns around new variants and immune response, of course, but...
It's all pretty straightforward, no? Vaccine causes similar effects to a real infection intentionally, to stimulate the immune system. Sometimes this has side effect. The actual virus - which is much more, ahem, viral - hits the body even harder, the immune system produces much larger effects, including more frequent instances of the same side effects.
And these numbers all around are still infrequent, and viral infection has caused myocarditits for a long time pre-Covid too, so the hysteria seems like confirmation bias (either of "Covid is the source of all my problems" or "vaccines are bad" reactionary silliness.)
How frequently you do or don't get boosters should depend on disease prevalence, patient history, risk factors, etc, but.... the idea that people are commonly dropping dead from these vaccines or this disease super frequently, and worringly more than the whole world full of previous diseases? I'm unconvinced. And that it's "mRNA specific" vs "immune system stimulation" related? Seems to be zero reason to jump to that conclusion.
The CDC mentions a substantial number of limitations in their methodology. One very big one is that they did not consider underlying conditions. In the limited data that they provided [1] you'll notice black individuals and those on medicare are both substantially overrepresented in the myocarditis group. Neither of those factors cause myocarditis, but both are correlated strongly with obesity - which does. And black individuals, especially early on in the pandemic, were substantially overrepresented in infection rates. In other words a sample of the population that is disproportionately obese, which can cause myocarditis, were also disproportionately diagnosed with COVID.
And those sort of biases, among many others, were not considered. Notably all unconsidered biases share the common characteristic of likely inflating the estimated COVID:myocarditis relationship. By contrast in the Israeli study these factors (and many more) were carefully controlled for, alongside a consideration of how their results may differ, and why, relative to other major studies.
[1] - https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/109261
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35456309/
Heh. Was that a clever one or am I seeing things?
https://www.consumerfinance.gov/ask-cfpb/what-is-a-surprise-...
Got a $2,200 ambulance bill for taking my daughter 6 miles that was balance billed last year after insurance paid $600. Don’t know how land ambulances in particular managed to avoid being covered by the act, but just something to keep in mind if you have a non-critical injury and don’t need an ambulance.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/22/upshot/ground-ambulances-...
I assume that the patreon is to cover loss of income, health costs which are not covered by insurance, and to support her husband who is caring for her.
Yes, there's value in supporting the things you said, but ~9k patrons to support a creator who isn't creating, and her husband, and her medical costs and andandand... that's not actually very much, especially if she lives in a major city in the US where rent is frequently ridiculous.
Am I missing something here? The cut that Patreon gets is 5-12% of revenue and processing payments for 2-3$ are 5% + 10c. At worst, she's getting $2.2 for every $3/m user.
Are they rolling in it, no not at all. I'm not sure what your point is, they don't think they can work, it's been going on for a bit, they get a nice community pay out ... do people live on less, yes definitely. But she didnt' win the lottery here.
For a creator of her size, patreon takes 12% right off the top. ($39k)
In addition, there is a transaction fee of 2.9% + $0.30. ($9.5k + $32.5k = $42k)
Then you have to pay taxes. Self employment taxes on $283k are $26.5k. Federal/state/local income taxes are $82k.
189k of your earnings are GONE.
So, you’re at $135k takehome. Not $325k, but not bad, right?! Well, maybe, except this does not include any of the benefits of a traditional job. No health insurance, dental, retirement, etc. Hopefully, they have good health insurance, otherwise they are probably already close to bankrupt.
If you’re wondering whether $135k takehome can support a couple through a catastrophic health issue like this long term, I have the personal experience to say that it can’t. I won’t elaborate further, but maybe someone else can.
She is apparently in her 30s. Same with me. I pay for an excellent Marketplace health insurance policy. My premium, annualized, is around $6,500, and my annual out-of-pocket maximum is $8,000. That’s $14,500 a year. Double that to liberally cover two people, and you’re still under $30k/year.
How is $135k/year inadequate?
My comment was a rebuttal to someone who argued that $135k/year in take-home is insufficient to support a couple - any couple - through a catastrophic health issue.
...and so definitely needs your charity more than people with only $25k/yr.
So yeah maybe 8,000 is enough now but maybe 1,000 was not :)
My point is that it's easy to give money to a Youtuber you like who posts a video with sad piano music and call it a day (I have done this too). It's harder to spend a bit of time to find a way to help the invisible people in your community who may be more in need. You can do both, I would just prioritize the latter.
It seems that cardio health was the biggest contributor to not getting serious Covid, seems surprising that an athlete would get this.
Worth noting that Simone [1] had some serious health challenges of her own not too long ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7x5XRQ07sjU
Something about being a female STEM YouTuber...
:-(
---
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simone_Giertz
> Giertz is a descendant of Lars Magnus Ericsson, founder of Ericsson.
If you don’t know her videos, I think Simone produces some of the greatest content on youtube. Deeply authentic, highly skilled, with a really funny subtext of knowing absurdist humor to them. Really great content.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKv_N0IDS2A
Just the first 50 seconds are pure gold.
Bubble wrap player machine is deeply pointless and amazing https://youtu.be/nLGs7auWdgE
https://youtu.be/M1B3gATS0GE the proud parent machine was profoundly disturbing.
I dunno, I thought it was brilliant. Not the device itself, but the dramatic narrative that she wove around it. The machine itself was almost just a MacGuffin.
Almost :-)
https://youtu.be/PJiRijiLwbQ
https://twitter.com/CaraSantaMaria/status/154449776549699584...
I think one thing that took me by surprise is just how COVID seems to damage the immune system in some people, causing T cell exhaustion (chronic exposure to an antigen causing molecular changes in T cell expression so there's more inhibitory receptors and they're not as functional).
If you've noticed some strange symptoms a few months after having COVID, like thrush, unexpected autoimmune issues, or just feel like infections hit you a lot harder nowadays, I highly recommend doing a lymphocyte subpanel blood test.
You can order them online. Might help clarify some things.
I'm currently using a protein called Thymic Protein-A to increase my CD4+ T cell counts and it's been somewhat successful in making me feel better (doubled my lymphocytes which were on the low end for a few years in about a week), though time will tell whether or not it's ultimately a successful treatment (especially since CD4+ T cell counts increase at a rate of about 10 cells per microliter in healthy human adults).
Just my two cents. Obviously it's different for everyone. But I think every bit of information counts while we're still trying to figure this thing out.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36055877/
https://twitter.com/thephysicsgirl/status/160143868747614208...
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Autopsy Histopathologic Cardiac Findings in 2 Adolescents Following the Second COVID-19 Vaccine Dose https://meridian.allenpress.com/aplm/article/146/8/925/47778...
Risks of myocarditis, pericarditis, and cardiac arrhythmias associated with COVID-19 vaccination or SARS-CoV-2 infectionhttps://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01630-0#Aff1
Vaccine-Associated Myo/Pericarditis in Adolescents: A Stratified Risk-Benefit Analysis https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eci.13759
Persistent Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Imaging Finfings in a Cohort of Adolescents with Post-Coronavirus Disease 2019 mRNA Vaccine Myopericarditis https://www.jpeds.com/article/S0022-3476(22)00282-7/fulltext
Epidemiology of Acute Myocarditis/Pericarditis in Hong Kong Adolescents Following Comirnaty Vaccination https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34849657/
Age and sex-specific risks of myokarditis and pericarditis following Covid-19 messenger RNA vaccines https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9233673/
Goddard K.et al: Risk of myokarditis and pericarditis following BT162b2 and mRNA-1273 COVID-19 vaccination, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9273527/
Bardosh K.et al: COVID-19 Vaccine Boosters for Young Adults: A Risk-Benefit Assessment and Five Ethical Arguments against Mandates at Universities https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4206070
Oster M.E. et al: Myocarditis Cases Reported After mRNA-Based COVID-19 Vaccination in the US From December 2020 to August 2021 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2788346
Lai F.T. et al: Carditis After COVID-19 Vaccination With a Messenger RNA Vaccine and an Inactivated Virus Vaccine https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/full/10.7326/M21-3700?rfr_da...
Massari M. et al: Postmarketing active surveillance of myokarditis and pericarditis following vaccination with COVID-19 mRNA vaccines in persons aged 12 to 39 years in Italy: A multi-database, self-controlled case series study https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34849657/
SARS-CoV-2 Vaccination and Myocarditis in a Nordic Cohort Study of 23 Million Residents https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamacardiology/fullarticle/...
A Case of Vaccine-Induced Thrombocytopenic Thrombosis Manifesting as Cerebral Venous Thrombosis and Intracerebral Bleed [dead] dgeiser13 ↗ [flagged] [deleted] ↗ (comment deleted) [dead] BenFranklin100 ↗ [flagged] [deleted] ↗ (comment deleted) [deleted] ↗ (comment deleted) gus_massa ↗ Another possibility is that the ME/CFS diagnosis is correct, but it's unrelated to the covid-19 infection. I think the initial symptoms of ME/CFS are sometimes mild and ignored, and it's difficult to have a definite starting day and be sure it didn't star before the covid infection, or started after but is unrelated. Semaphor ↗ A streamer I watch has autoimmune diseases and CFS. Since she got Covid last year, they both got worse. Not even close to what’s the case here, but still enough to force her to take extended breaks more often than usual. BenFranklin100 ↗ You miss my point. You are assuming this has something to with COVID. Given the high prevalence of COVID, it might not at all. Do the Bayesian statistics. Semaphor ↗ You ignored half my message. lamontcg ↗ > Chronic and severe fatigue existed long before SARS-CoV-2 appeared. superb-owl ↗ ME/CFS is one of those diseases that truly scares me. It’s wildly debilitating, and we have no idea what causes it. [deleted] ↗ (comment deleted) taylorfinley ↗ I went to high school with Dianna and was good friends with her older sis. They were both super genuine and truly wonderful people back then. I saw this on social media a few days ago from mutual friends, it's really sad to hear how much she's been impacted. Really heartening to see this community cares too. I've seen a lot of go-fund-me grift over the years and am usually an extremely skeptical person, but if Dianna's family is asking for support fwiw I believe that means they really do need it and likely don't have any other options. [dead] hummus_bae ↗ [dead] keizo ↗ I know taylor from high school and trust him. And know many that know Dianna. I would trust whatever support they get will go to good use. Also, taylor we going to 20 yr this summer? :| :) good to see you on this corner of the internet. taylorfinley ↗ Woah, keizo! Great to hear from you. Man that 20 years snuck up on me quick, I just might have to try to make it home. keizo ↗ :) not sure i'll ever understand time. quenched ↗ This is very sad to see and I wish Dianna and her family the very best for her recovery. I'm into year three of long COVID (ME/CFS) and was fortunate to not reach this level of severity, and to have improved slowly with time to mostly housebound rather than bedbound, but it is a remarkable disease. zamnos ↗ That was a heartbreaking video to watch. My heart goes out to this woman and her family. PaulKeeble ↗ Post exertion symptom exacerbation however is worse because many other symptoms get worse the follow days, weeks even months after that visit to the doctors. This is what makes the disease so horrific because doing things you need to do worsen everything afterwards and sometimes you don't recover so you get iller and iller the more you push through. That isn't just fatigue. fnordpiglet ↗ At the risk of being labeled a quack, try taking an L-citrulline supplement of about 1g/10kg of weight. This greatly helped my long COVID recovery. stndef ↗ Very sad to see. I've seen a few posts recently from her accounts suggesting that things really haven't been good at all. I really do hope things get better, and quickly at that. [dead] nirvgorilla ↗ [flagged] [dead] nirvgorilla ↗ [flagged] [dead] nirvgorilla ↗ [flagged] [dead] nirvgorilla ↗ [flagged] zingababba ↗ During my first round of COVID I suddenly developed Terry's nails and extreme exercise intolerance. anshumankmr ↗ Is there a GoFundMe or something? DoItToMe81 ↗ Okay, this does not add up. She's sick and her friend's reaction is to whip out a camera and start filming and begging? Beyond that, "chronic fatigue" is mixed far more with mental illness than it is physical illness. And more often than not, long Covid fatigue does not get notably worse over time, it stays consistent or improves. [dead] nirvgorilla ↗ [dead]
And for more anecdotes, "extremely atypical"? Extreme fatigue is pretty much the most common symptom of long COVID I heard of, why would that be atypical?
Yeah, and it was thought to be often triggered by viral infections.
The history of controversy surrounding it is worth a read: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_related_to_chr...
The name does it little justice, and fatigue - while certainly pathological and disabling - is not the primary feature. The disease appears unique in terms of an abnormal response to exertion. This has been characterised via two-day cardiopulmonary exercise testing. Healthy controls and even those with other severely limiting diseases will show improvement on day 2, but ME/CFS uniquely shows a reduction on the second day.
Other key features are orthostatic intolerance with demonstration of reduction in cerebral blood flow in the majority on sitting/standing. Neurological symptoms including extreme sensitivity to light and sound explain her blindfold and ear protectors. Many have fluctuating cognitive slowing ("brain fog").
New insights into the metabolic derangements are being gained. Recently[1] evaluation of urine metabolomics demonstrated that healthy sedentary controls excrete many metabolites at 4 and 24 hours following an exercise challenge, while ME/CFS patients do not.
Apart from the devastating effects on patients and the economic impacts of losing so many from the workforce[2], I believe that understanding the immune and metabolic derangements underlying this condition will lead to major insights across many health domains.
[1] https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/24/4/3685 [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-022-00846-2
In my experience, having caught covid in March 2020, fatigue is the problem. It's just that calling it "fatigue" doesn't spell out how dehabilitating that aspect is. It's maybe 100 ft/30 meters from my bed to the kitchen. At the worst of my long covid, I was getting winded walking from my bed to the kitchen. So then I'm in the kitchen, I'm supposed to make food for myself. But it's not like I could stand up for any amount of time. Chopping vegetables is right out. Making anything more advanced than microwave food was too difficult at the worst of it. And even then, figuring out the directions on them was sometimes too complicated. And I figured out C pointers and passed calculus. You don't know how your body can fail you until you can't do something that should be trivial to do but you simply can't. It's easier to see for physical maladies - you'd not ask someone with two broken legs why they can't stand up.
Fatigue in a Long Covid context means it's too tiring even to just watch Netflix. That the exertion to sit there and focus your mind even slightly is beyond you. People are able to put Netflix on in the background and still fall grasp most of the story. With long covid, following a plot, just listening, with all the power you have remaining, is simply asking too much of your body.
The most damning part of it is the aftermath from any significant physical exertion. Like going to the doctor in person. Remember, it's a marathon of exhaustion going from bed to the kitchen, so leaving the bed, getting dressed, going to the doctor, sitting the waiting room, filling out forms - remember your brain only barely works so writing out the answer to eben the first question, name, is a challenge. Seeing the Dr, hopefully they're of any use. Then you have to dance for them and take their tests. Finally you get home and crawl back in to bed, exhausted, so you take a nap. You wake up after that nap get some water and go back to sleep becy you're still tired. When you wake up it's literally been 4 days. You pushed yourself because going to see the doctor was important, but the overexertion of going to see the doctor wiped you out and not only were you bedridden for four days, but you were unconscious. That forces you to recalibrate your whole life. You can't just push through things and stay up a bit late or go out to see friends without stopping to think (which, again, is in and of itself a challenge in ways it never was before) is there anything I need to be conscious for in the next four days?
So at least for me, "fatigue" was the primary complaint (followed by "brain fog"), it's just that without spelling out what fatigue actually means in the context of long covid, it's not apparent what that actually means.
My thesis, which I have no direct science to back up, is that the blood vessel damage done by COVID may be partially responsible. Citrulline metabolizes in the liver into arginine, which is used in either to produce ATP or by epithelial cells to repair vascular damage. The body prioritizes vascular repair, so the arginine you normally produce if you have vascular damage is directed away from “energy” leaving you chronically fatigued. This is the same process by which sickle cell anemia leads to chronic fatigue - the shape of the sickle cell irritates the blood vessel lining. Citrulline is effective in phase II/III trials (sadly the primary researcher died and the research stopped) with sickle cell patients.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11688916/
This helped me a great deal, within a few hours of my first consumption of a citrulline malate blend I bought on Amazon I was myself again after a year of suffering. Within a few months I was able to stop supplementing and felt generally normal. YMMV.
I asked several doctors before starting the regime about safety concerns and they had none (the body urinates any excess it can’t process, and citrulline is a non essential amino acid fundamental to the nitric oxide cycle) and they generally expected it would improve energy - as it did.
Good luck!
Post viral wise, things can get really nasty, even if being infected with the virus doesn't appear to be that bad. I had shingles five or six years ago and have had chronic fatigue since. I'd say I was pretty fit being able to cycle 30 miles a day going back and forth between work, and now I'd consider myself lucky if I could do 1/8 that. I have a stick on me at all times in case I collapse. Congitively I'm pretty borked at points as well. I am better than a few years ago, but it's clear that I'll never be back to where I was -- I experience good days and bad weeks.
Avoid COVID if you can, get your boosters and if you do get COVID or any other illness, really, please try to rest well and avoid returning back to normal too quickly if life allows for that (I know it isn't that easy). I went back to work too quickly and belive that had a significant impact on my recovery.
The tips of my fingernails were bands of dark red and the rest of my nail bed was completely white. I showed it to something like 5 different doctors and was shrugged off every time. I also started to develop skipping heart beats that got so bad it was happening hundreds of times a day.
Prior to COVID I was highly active 6 days a week and had been for nearly a decade. After COVID I was finding it hard to exercise once or twice a week. This went on for years, all the while I was trying to figure out WTF was going on with me. Eventually I started supplementing copper and my heart issues went away completely within a week. I then started to supplement Iron and my nail beds started to fill back in.
After a month of supplementing I got my Iron/Copper levels checked out of pocket and my ferritin was below range and my copper was just in range. I don't know if I was susceptible to this and COVID kicked me into this territory or what but man was it a shitty ride.
I've seen long Covid first hand. I'm not sure I buy this, especially with the e-begging attached.