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It’s estimated that more than a third of people who have had COVID-19 experience neurological complications such as brain fog that persist or develop 3 months after infection. And two thirds of so-called long haulers still have neurological symptoms after 6 months.
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The COVID-19 pandemic catalyzed a major shift in the way Americans live and work, and a new analysis from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York shows that workers in the U.S. are taking advantage of a widespread shift toward remote work to spend more time sleeping and engaging in leisure activities.
“One of the most enduring shifts [resulting from the pandemic] has occurred in the workplace, with millions of employees making the switch to work from home,” wrote David Dam, a former New York Fed research analyst, in a Tuesday blog post.
“Even as the pandemic has waned, more than 15 percent of full-time employees remain fully remote and an additional 30 percent work in hybrid arrangements,” he wrote. “These changes have substantially reduced time spent commuting to work; in the aggregate, Americans now spend 60 million fewer hours traveling to work each day.”
Dam and his colleagues drew on the American Time Use Survey to better understand how remote workers are using the time saved on commutes. They found “a substantial fall in time spent working,” with the “decrease in hours worked away from home only partially offset by an increase in working at home,” according to the post.
Changes in behavior differ among age groups, with younger Americans using the saved commuting time to engage in leisure activities like eating out, exercising or attending social events. Americans over the age of 30 spent more time on childcare, home maintenance and meal preparation.
The flexibility of remote working arrangements, and the apparent fact that remote workers are able to spend less time overall working, will likely mean that workers will bargain hard to maintain the ability to work from home, Dam said.
“The findings lend credence to the various reports on employees’ preferences for flexible work arrangements, given that cutting the commute enables people to spend their time on other activities, such as childcare or leisure,” he wrote. “This added benefit of working from home — for those who want it — will be an important consideration for the future of flexible work arrangements.”
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Oct. 13, 2022 – It’s a devastating series of setbacks for long COVID patients. First, they get the debilitating symptoms of their condition. Then they are forced to give up their jobs, or severely curtail their work hours, as their symptoms linger. And next, for many, they lose their employer-sponsored health insurance.
While not all long COVID patients are debilitated, the CDC’s ongoing survey on long COVID found a quarter of adults with long COVID report it significantly affects their day-to-day living activities.
Estimates have shown that long COVID has impacted the lives of anywhere from 16 million to 34 million Americans between the ages of 18 and 65.
While hard data is still limited, a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis found that more than half of adults with long COVID who worked before getting the virus are now either out of work or working fewer hours.
According to data from the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey, out of the estimated 16 million working-age adults who currently have long COVID, 2 million to 4 million of them are out of work due to their symptoms. The cost of those lost wages ranges from $170 billion a year to as much as $230 billion, the Census Bureau says. And given that approximately 155 million Americans have employer-sponsored health insurance, the welfare of working-age adults may be under serious threat.
“Millions of people are now impacted by long COVID, and oftentimes along with that comes the inability to work,” says Megan Cole Brahim, PhD, an assistant professor in the Department of Health Law, Policy, and Management at Boston University and co-director of the school’s Medicaid Policy Lab. “And because a lot of people get their health insurance coverage through employer-sponsored coverage, no longer being able to work means you may not have access to the health insurance that you once had.”
The CDC defines long COVID as a wide array of health conditions, including malaise, fatigue, shortness of breath, mental health issues, problems with the part of the nervous system that controls body functions, and more.
Gwen Bishop was working remotely for the Human Resources Department at the University of Washington Medical Centers when she got COVID-19. When the infection passed, Bishop, 39, thought she’d start feeling well enough to get back to work – but that didn’t happen.
“When I would log in to work and just try to read emails,” she says, “it was like they were written in Greek. It made no sense and was incredibly stressful.” .
This falls in line with what researchers have found out about the nervous system issues reported by people with long COVID. People who have survived acute COVID infections have reported lasting sensory and motor function problems, brain fog, and memory problems.
Bishop, who was diagnosed with ADHD when she was in grade school, says another complication she got from her long COVID was a new intolerance to stimulants like coffee and her ADHD medication, Vyvanse, which were normal parts of her everyday life.
“Every time I would take my ADHD medicine or have a cup of coffee, I would have a panic attack until it wore off,” says Bishop. “Vyvanse is a very long-acting stimulant, so that would be an entire day of an endless panic attack.”
In order for her to get a medical leave approved, Bishop needed to get documents by a certain date from her doctor’s office that confirmed her long COVID diagnosis. She was able to get a couple of extensions, but Bishop says that with the burden that has been placed on our medical systems, getting in to see a doctor through her employer insurance was taking much longer than expected. By the time she got an appointment, she says, she had already been fired for missing too much work. Emails she provided showing exchanges between her and her employer verify her story. And without her health insurance, her appointment through that provider would no longer have been covered.
In July 2021, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued guidance recognizing long COVID as a disability “if the person’s condition or any of its symptoms is a ‘physical or mental’ impairment that ‘substantially limits’ one or more major life activities.”
But getting access to disability benefits hasn’t been easy for people with long COVID. On top of having to be out of work for 12 months before being able to qualify for Social Security Disability Insurance, some of those who have applied say they have had to put up a fight to actually gain access to disability insurance. The Social Security Administration has yet to reveal just how many applications that cited long COVID have been denied so far.
David Barnett, a former bartender in the Seattle area in his early 40s, got COVID-19 in March 2020. Before his infection, he spent much of his time working on his feet, bodybuilding, and hiking with his partner. But for the last nearly 3 years, even just going for a walk has been a major challenge. He says he has spent much of his post-COVID life either chair-bound or bed-bound due to his symptoms.
He is currently on his partner’s health insurance plan but is still responsible for copays and out-of-network appointments and treatments. After being unable to bartend any more, he started a GoFundMe account and dug into his personal savings. He says he applied for food stamps and is getting ready to sell his truck. Barnett applied for disability in March of this year but says he was denied benefits by the Social Security Administration and has hired a lawyer to appeal.
He runs a 24-hour online support group on Zoom for people with long COVID and says that no one in his close circle has successfully gotten access to disability payments.
Alba Azola, MD, co-director of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine’s Post-Acute COVID-19 Team, says at least half of her patients need some level of accommodations to get back to work; most can, if given the proper accommodations, such as switching to a job that can be done sitting down, or with limited time standing. But there are still patients who have been more severely disabled by their long COVID symptoms.
“Work is such a part of people’s identity. The people who are very impaired, all they want to do is to get back to work and their normal lives,” she says.
Many of Azola’s long COVID patients aren’t able to return to their original jobs. She says they often have to find new positions more tailored to their new realities. One patient, a nurse and mother of five who previously worked in a facility where she got COVID-19, was out of work for 9 months after her infection. She ultimately lost her job, and Azola says the patient’s employer was hesitant to provide her with any accommodations. The patient was finally able to find a different job as a nurse coordinator where she doesn’t have to be standing for more than 10 minutes at a time.
Ge Bai, PhD, a professor of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, says the novelty of long COVID and the continued uncertainty around it raise questions for health insurance providers.
“There’s no well-defined pathway to treat or cure this condition,” Bai says. “Right now, employers have discretion to determine when a condition is being covered or not being covered. So people with long COVID do have a risk that their treatments won’t be covered.”
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Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Resilience is the ability to adapt successfully and recover from challenging life experiences. It is the ability to endure adversity and grow despite challenges. Resiliency doesn’t mean there won’t be setbacks, but it’s the strength and will to continue through pain. Take the COVID-19 pandemic as an example. Many people showed resilience by finding means to cope and work through a very challenging period.
Resilience is not a lack of stress, emotional disturbance or suffering. It is the strength to work through whatever disturbance and suffering life throws you.
Related: 5 Ways to Adapt to Change and Build a More Resilient Business Model
Resilience is important because it’s an essential life skill. Perhaps the best example of resilience was shown by the late Nelson Mandela, who said, “Do not judge me by my success, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.”
Without resilience, you get easily overwhelmed by challenges and what was supposed to be a temporary setback paralyzes you. Our very survival in this new world depends on our ability to adjust and thrive in the face of trauma and hardship. Without resilience, we fall back on unhealthy traits like avoidance and helplessness. Resilience not only empowers us to accept, adapt and move forward in difficult situations, but it is also the core strength that makes bearing the load of life possible.
When I was in eighth grade, one of my teachers called a student to the front of the class to express how disappointed he was in the student for his performance with school work, despite his obvious potential. The student was none other than me.
As I stood in front of the class, he explained why he was disappointed in me and how I showed up late to class even though my house was just a few minutes from school. It wasn’t that I flunked; my grades were mostly average. The reason for his disappointment was the potential and opportunity going to waste.
Related: 8 Ways Successful People Master Resilience
Although I felt his gesture was harsh, his assessment was accurate. I devoted my time to other things, like playing sports and messing around with my friends. I was an excellent reader as long as it wasn’t schoolwork. I was slacking, my teacher knew it, and I knew it too.
Anytime results came out, I got nervous and promised myself that “I would change” and put in real effort. Deep down, I knew I was capable of much better than my grades suggested. I felt I just needed to put in real effort to become a success. I had to change something. But how?
At the end of my senior year, I became so uncomfortable with some of my antics and the kind of person I was becoming. I wanted to be a role model for my siblings; someone others could admire. I realized this was something I would have to do for myself. What I wanted to make out of my life was up to me. And that was when I began to change.
I was going to college, but I decided to do things differently this time. Right from that moment, I began to direct my energy toward building life skills and habits that reflected the kind of person I wanted to become. I began to spend my weekends getting familiar with the courses I was going to do not only in college but also in my private time. I began to plan and work toward my success.
There were times I lost focus, but I put myself back on track. I knew I would be a few steps ahead of my colleagues by planning for my success, which gave me a positive feeling. I could see myself changing; I would not be the class clown. I was going to become a more responsible and committed student.
And that was how it happened. I showed up in college as a student enthusiastic to succeed. After the first semester, I had a reputation as an A student. Sticking to that path of success was no longer an option; I had already set higher standards for myself.
Related: 7 Keys to Developing Resilience
Sometimes I think about what would have become of me if I didn’t have that resilience and courage to change. What kind of life would I have? One thing I know for sure is it may have been a life filled with regrets. Regrets for taking the easier way out, regret for not putting in enough effort even though I knew I was capable of more. And even though the change happened slowly and gradually, there were times my friends who knew me as the class clown made fun of me and times I slipped up. The fact that I made the decision to change and showed resilience made me ready at the right moment.
However, what brought about this much-desired change? Having my new girlfriend certainly influenced me; however, it was nothing more than the fact that I had reached my emotional rock bottom and wasn’t happy with the lack of focus in my life. I began to think of myself and my actions in line with what I wanted to be. More importantly, I didn’t wait to be in college to start changing, I started the journey immediately, even though I was still in high school.
Perhaps you find yourself in a challenging or overwhelming situation and need to pull through. Resilience will play an essential role in getting you over that line. As a first step, if you can make and stick to the decision to change the way you work, reflect on yourself, and challenge your thought patterns. Over time, you’ll begin to see changes in your life too. By tapping into resilience, you can change how you think and behave to achieve your definition of success. My lived experience says don’t wait, start now!
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Oct. 12, 2022 – About 1 in 20 people with long COVID continue to live with symptoms at 18 months, and another 42% reported only some improvement in their health and wellbeing in the same time frame, a large study out of Scotland found.
Multiple studies are evaluating people with long COVID in the hopes of figuring out why some people experience debilitating symptoms long after their primary infection ends and others either do not or recover more quickly.
This current study is notable for its large size – 96,238 people. Researchers checked in with participants at 6, 12 and 18 months, and included a group of people never infected with the coronavirus to help investigators make a stronger case.
“A lot of the symptoms of long COVID are non-specific and therefore can occur in people never infected,” says senior study author Jill P. Pell, head of the School of Health and Wellbeing at the University of Glasgow in Scotland.
Ruling Out Coincidence
This study shows that people experienced a a wide range of symptoms after becoming infected with COVID-19 at a significantly higher rate than those who were never infected, “thereby confirming that they were genuinely associated with COVID and not merely a coincidence,” she says.
Among 21,525 people who had COVID-19 and had symptoms, tiredness, headache and muscle aches or muscle weakness were the most common ongoing symptoms.
Loss of smell was almost 9 times more likely in this group compared to the never infected group in one analysis where researchers controlled for other possible factors. The risk for loss of taste was almost 6 times greater, followed by risk of breathlessness at 3 times higher.
Long COVID risk was highest after a severe original infection and among older people, women, Black and South Asian populations, people with socioeconomic disadvantages and those with more than one underlying health condition.
Adding up the 6% with no recovery after 18 months and 42% with partial recovery means that between 6 and 18 months following symptomatic coronavirus infection, almost half of those infected still experience persistent symptoms.
Vaccination Validated
On the plus side, people vaccinated against COVID-19 before getting infected had a lower risk for some persistent symptoms. In addition, Pell and colleagues found no evidence that people who experienced asymptomatic infection were likely to experience long COVID symptoms or challenges with activities of daily living.
The findings of the Long-COVID in Scotland Study (Long-CISS) were published Wednesday in the journal Nature Communications.
‘More Long COVID Than Ever Before’
“Unfortunately, these long COVID symptoms are not getting better as the cases of COVID get milder,” says Thomas Gut, DO, Medical Director for the Post COVID recovery program at Staten Island University Hospital in New York City. “Quite the opposite – this infection has become so common in a community because it’s so mild and spreading so rapidly that we’re seeing more long COVID symptoms than ever before.”
Although most patients he sees with long COVID resolve their symptoms within 3 to 6 months, “We do see some patients who require short-term disability because their symptoms continue past 6 months and out to 2 years,” says Gut, who is also , hospitalist at Staten Island University Hospital / Northwell Health.
Patients with fatigue and neurocognitive symptoms “have a very tough time going back to work. Short-term disability gives them the time and finances to pursue specialty care with cardiology, pulmonary and neurocognitive testing,” he says.
Support the Whole Person
The burden of living with long COVID goes beyond the persistent symptoms. “Long COVID can have wide-ranging impacts — not only on health but also quality of life and activities of daily living [including] work, mobility, self-care and more,” Pell says. “So, people with long-COVID need support relevant to their individual needs and this may extend beyond the health care sector, for example including social services, school or workplace.”
Still, Lisa Penziner, RN, Founder of the COVID Long Haulers Support Group in Westchester and Long Island, NY, says while people with the most severe cases of COVID-19 tended to have the worst long-COVID symptoms, they’re not the only ones.
“We saw many post-COVID members who had mild cases and their long-haul symptoms were worse weeks later than the virus itself,” says Penziner.
Penziner estimates that 80% to 90% of her support group members recover within 6 months. “However, there are others who were experiencing symptoms for much longer.”
Respiratory treatment, physical therapy and other follow-up doctor visits are common after 6 months, for example.
“Additionally, there is a mental health component to recovery as well, meaning that the patient must learn to live while experiencing lingering, long-haul COVID symptoms in work and daily life,” says Penziner, who is also director of special projects at North Westchester Restorative Therapy & Nursing.
In addition to ongoing medical care, people with long COVID need understanding, Penziner says.
“While long-haul symptoms do not happen to everyone, it is proven that many do experience long-haul symptoms, and the support of the community in understanding is important.”
Limitations of the Study
Pell and colleagues note some strengths and weaknesses to their study. For example, “as a general population study, our findings provide a better indication of the overall risk and burden of long-COVID than hospitalized cohorts,” they note.
Also, the Scottish population is 96% white, so other long-COVID studies with more diverse participants are warranted.
Another potential weakness is the response rate of 16% among those invited to participate in the study, which Pell and colleagues addressed: “Our cohort included a large sample (33,281) of people previously infected and the response rate of 16% overall and 20% among people who had symptomatic infection was consistent with previous studies that have used SMS text invitations as the sole method of recruitment.”
“We tell patients this should last 3 to 6 months, but some patients have longer recovery periods,” Gut says. “We’re here for them. We have a lot of services available to help get them through the recovery process, and we have a lot of options to help support them.”
“What we found most helpful is when there is peer-to-peer support, reaffirming to the member that they are not alone in the long-haul battle, which has been a major benefit of the support group,” Penziner says.
If you or someone you know is experiencing long COVID and could benefit from peer support, Penziner can be contacted at [email protected]
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Oct. 11, 2022 – Weeks after Jeannie Volpe caught COVID-19 in November 2020, she could no longer do her job running sexual assault support groups in Anniston, AL, because she kept forgetting the details that survivors had shared with her. “People were telling me they were having to revisit their traumatic memories, which isn’t fair to anybody,” the 47-year-old says.
Volpe has been diagnosed with long-COVID autonomic dysfunction, which includes severe muscle pain, depression, anxiety, and a loss of thinking skills. Some of her symptoms are more commonly known as brain fog, and they’re among the most frequent problems reported by people who have long-term issues after a bout of COVID-19.
Many experts and medical professionals say they haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of what impact this will have in years to come.
“I’m very worried that we have an epidemic of neurologic dysfunction coming down the pike,” says Pamela Davis, MD, PhD, a research professor at Case Western Reserve University’s School of Medicine in Cleveland.
In the 2 years Volpe has been living with long COVID, her executive function – the mental processes that enable people to focus attention, retain information, and multitask – has been so diminished that she had to relearn to drive. One of the various doctors assessing her has suggested speech therapy to help Volpe relearn how to form words. “I can see the words I want to say in my mind, but I can’t make them come out of my mouth,” she says in a sluggish voice that gives away her condition.
All of those symptoms make it difficult for her to care for herself. Without a job and health insurance, Volpe says she’s researched assisted suicide in the states that allow it but has ultimately decided she wants to live.
“People tell you things like you should be grateful you survived it, and you should; but you shouldn’t expect somebody to not grieve after losing their autonomy, their career, their finances.”
The findings of researchers studying the brain effects of COVID-19 reinforce what people with long COVID have been dealing with from the start. Their experiences aren’t imaginary; they’re consistent with neurological disorders – including myalgic encephalomyelitis, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome, or ME/CFS – which carry much more weight in the public imagination than the term brain fog, which can often be used dismissively.
Studies have found that COVID-19 is linked to conditions such as strokes; seizures; and mood, memory, and movement disorders.
While there are still a lot of unanswered questions about exactly how COVID-19 impacts the brain and what the long-term effects are, there’s enough reason to suggest people should be trying to avoid both infection and reinfection until researchers get more answers.
Worldwide, it’s estimated that COVID-19 has contributed to more than 40 million new cases of neurological disorders, says Ziyad Al-Aly, MD, a clinical epidemiologist and long COVID researcher at Washington University in St. Louis. In his latest study of 14 million medical records of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the country’s largest integrated health care system, researchers found that regardless of age, gender, race, and lifestyle, people who have had COVID-19 are at a higher risk of getting a wide array of 44 neurological conditions after the first year of infection.
He noted that some of the conditions, such as headaches and mild decline in memory and sharpness, may improve and go away over time. But others that showed up, such as stroke, encephalitis (inflammation of the brain), and Guillain-Barre syndrome (a rare disorder in which the body’s immune system attacks the nerves), often lead to lasting damage. Al-Aly’s team found that neurological conditions were 7% more likely in those who had COVID-19 than in those who had never been infected.
What’s more, researchers noticed that compared with control groups, the risk of post-COVID thinking problems was more pronounced in people in their 30s, 40s, and 50s – a group that usually would be very unlikely to have these problems. For those over the age of 60, the risks stood out less because at that stage of life, such thinking problems aren’t as rare.
Another of study of the veterans’ system last year showed that COVID-19 survivors were at a 46% higher risk of considering suicide after 1 year.
“We need to be paying attention to this,” says Al-Aly. “What we’ve seen is really the tip of the iceberg.” He worries that millions of people, including youths, will lose out on employment and education while dealing with long-term disabilities – and the economic and societal implications of such a fallout. “What we will all be left with is the aftermath of sheer devastation in some people’s lives,” he says.
Igor Koralnik, MD, chief of neuro-infectious disease and global neurology at Northwestern University in Chicago, has been running a specialized long COVID clinic. His team published a paper in March 2021 detailing what they saw in their first 100 patients. “About half the population in the study missed at least 10 days of work. This is going to have persistent impact on the workforce,” Koralnik said in a podcast posted on the Northwestern website. “We have seen that not only patients have symptoms, but they have decreased quality of life.”
For older people and their caregivers, the risk of potential neurodegenerative diseases that the virus has shown to accelerate, such as dementia, are also a big concern. Alzheimer’s is already the fifth leading cause of death for people 65 and older.
In a recent study of more than 6 million people over the age of 65, Davis and her team at Case Western found the risk of Alzheimer’s in the year after COVID-19 increased by 50% to 80%. The chances were especially high for women older than 85.
To date, there are no good treatments for Alzheimer’s, yet total health care costs for long-term care and hospice services for people with dementia topped $300 billion in 2020. That doesn’t even include the related costs to families.
“The downstream effect of having someone with Alzheimer’s being taken care of by a family member can be devastating on everyone,” she says. “Sometimes the caregivers don’t weather that very well.”
When Davis’s own father got Alzheimer’s at age 86, her mother took care of him until she had a stroke one morning while making breakfast. Davis attributes the stroke to the stress of caregiving. That left Davis no choice but to seek housing where both her parents could get care.
Looking at the broader picture, Davis believes widespread isolation, loneliness, and grief during the pandemic, and the disease of COVID-19 itself, will continue to have a profound impact on psychiatric diagnoses. This in turn could trigger a wave of new substance abuse as a result of unchecked mental health problems.
Still, not all brain experts are jumping to worst-case scenarios, with a lot yet to be understood before sounding the alarm. Joanna Hellmuth, MD, a neurologist and researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, cautions against reading too much into early data, including any assumptions that COVID-19 causes neurodegeneration or irreversible damage in the brain.
Even with before-and-after brain scans by University of Oxford researchers that show structural changes to the brain after infection, she points out that they didn’t actually study the clinical symptoms of the people in the study, so it’s too soon to reach conclusions about associated cognitive problems.
“It’s an important piece of the puzzle, but we don’t know how that fits together with everything else,” says Hellmuth. “Some of my patients get better. … I haven’t seen a single person get worse since the pandemic started, and so I’m hopeful.”
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By Cara Murez HealthDay Reporter
HealthDay Reporter
MONDAY, Oct. 10, 2022 (HealthDay News) — At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 40% of Americans were untruthful about whether they had the virus or were ignoring safety precautions, a nationwide survey shows.
The December survey of 1,700 people found 721 respondents had either misrepresented their COVID status or failed to follow public health recommendations.
Folks ignored quarantine rules, told someone they were about to see that they had been taking more precautions than they actually were, and didn’t mention they might or did have COVID when they entered a doctor’s office. They were also untruthful about vaccination status, claiming they were vaccinated when they weren’t or that they were unvaccinated when they had taken the jab, the survey revealed.
The most common reasons for the lack of transparency were that people wanted to feel normal or to exercise personal freedom.
“COVID-19 safety measures can certainly be burdensome, but they work,” said co-author Andrea Gurmankin Levy, a professor of social sciences at Middlesex Community College in Connecticut.
Co-author Angela Fagerlin, head of population health sciences at University of Utah Health, said the survey raises concerns about how reluctance to truthfully report health status and adherence to masking, social distancing and public health measures could lengthen the pandemic and spread infectious diseases.
“Some individuals may think if they fib about their COVID-19 status once or twice, it’s not a big deal,” Fagerlin said in a University of Utah news release. “But if, as our study suggests, nearly half of us are doing it, that’s a significant problem that contributes to prolonging the pandemic.”
Respondents gave a variety of reasons for their deception. Among them: They didn’t think COVID was real or a big deal; they didn’t feel sick; they couldn’t miss work or stay home; they were following the advice of a public figure or celebrity; and finally, it was no one else’s business.
“When people are dishonest about their COVID-19 status or what precautions they are taking, it can increase the spread of disease in their community,” Levy said in the release. “For some people, particularly before we had COVID vaccines, that can mean death.”
Those most likely to engage in misrepresentation included all age groups under 60 and those with a greater distrust of science. About 60% of respondents said they had sought a doctor’s advice for COVID-19 prevention or treatment.
The study did not find an association between misrepresentation and political beliefs, party affiliation or religion.
Fagerlin said this survey asked about a broader range of behaviors compared to previous studies on this topic and included far more participants.
But the researchers said they could not determine if respondents answered honestly and the findings may underestimate how often people were dishonest about their health status.
“This study goes a long way toward showing us what concerns people have about the public health measures implemented in response to the pandemic and how likely they are to be honest in the face of a global crisis,” said co-author Alistair Thorpe, a postdoctoral researcher at University of Utah Health. “Knowing that will help us better prepare for the next wave of worldwide illness.”
The findings were published Oct. 10 in JAMA Network Open.
More information
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on COVID-19.
SOURCE: University of Utah Health, news release, Oct. 10, 2022
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A man named Jeff Reitz went to Disneyland every day for over eight years, 2,995 consecutive days, and only stopped because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Top global CEOs expect the recession to be mild and shorter, according to a survey by KPMG. As per KPMG 2022 CEO Outlook, 86 per cent of CEOs surveyed believe a recession over the next 12 months will happen, but 58 per cent feel it will be mild. The risk of recession has risen in the last few months as central banks across the world are hiking interest rates to contain super-hot inflation caused by a combination of factors such as the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Nearly nine out of 10 (86 percent) CEOs believe a recession will happen over the next 12 months, but three out of five (58 percent) feel it will be mild and short,” the survey said.
Most of the top executives are of the opinion that the recession will make the post-pandemic recovery difficult. As per the survey, 73 per cent of CEOs believe the recession will upend anticipated growth over the next three years, and 75 per cent also believe a recession will make post-pandemic recovery harder.
“71 percent of CEOs predict a recession will impact company earnings by up to 10 per cent over the next 12 months,” the survey stated.
Tata Steel CEO and MD TV Narendran said the pandemic and the events in Europe “have shown us how interconnected we are as a world. “To me, geopolitical issues are the number one risk. I think we all need to build optimized and resilient supply chains,” he said.
Earlier this week, International Monetary Fund MD Kristalina Georgieva said that the outlook for the global economy was ‘darkening’ due to shocks caused by the pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and climate disasters on all continents, and it could get worse.
Georgieva said the world’s largest economies like the US, Europe, and China were now slowing down, dampening demand for exports from emerging and developing countries. The IMF, she said, will next week downgrade its forecast for 2.9% global growth in 2023.
In a comprehensive new study, the World Bank last month said that as central banks hike interest rates to control inflation, the world may be edging toward a global recession in 2023, and a string of financial crises in emerging markets and developing economies would do them lasting harm.
The US Fed has already hiked 75 basis points three times in a row, and it is expected to raise the rate by similar points next month.
World Bank Group President David Malpass recently said that global growth was slowing sharply, “with further slowing likely as more countries fall into recession”.
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Oct. 8, 2022 — The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it will start updating COVID-19 case and death counts on a weekly instead of a daily basis starting Oct. 20.
“To allow for additional reporting flexibility, reduce the reporting burden on states and jurisdictions, and maximize surveillance resources, CDC is moving to a weekly reporting cadence for line level and aggregate case and death data,” the CDC said Thursday.
The CDC is still providing daily data on COVID hospitalizations, using information from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. It’s unknown if that will change when the National Healthcare Safety Network takes responsibility for the collection of COVID hospital data mid-December, the CDC said.
The CDC has been publishing daily COVID data for more than two years. The CDC’s COVID community level ratings are already updated once a week, on Thursdays. State and local governments use community level ratings in deciding when and where citizens should be advised to wear masks.
The change is another sign of a de-escalation in COVID response as the major pandemic statistics drop. The New York Times reported that on Oct. 7 the United States was averaging 40,186 new COVID cases a day (a 26% drop over two weeks), 26,994 COVID-related hospitalizations (an 11% drop), and 380 COVID-related deaths (an 11% drop). Health experts say the case counts are actually higher because many home testing results are not reported to health agencies.
Earlier this week, the CDC announced it would no longer maintain a list of travel advisories for foreign countries because “fewer countries are testing or reporting COVID-19 cases,” The New York Times reported. Instead, the CDC will publish health notices when only for “a concerning Covid-19 variant” in a particular nation.
Anthony Fauci, the White House chief medical advisor, said Tuesday that COVID cases may rise this winter, especially if a new COVID variant emerges.
“Although we can feel good that we’re going in the right direction, we can’t let our guard down,” Fauci said in a discussion hosted by the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism. “We are entering into the winter months, where no matter what the respiratory disease is, there’s always a risk of an uptick.”
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They’re leading the way in part because the federal government has made only limited efforts, says Lisa McCorkell, a co-founder of the Patient-Led Research Cooperative. The international group was founded in spring 2020 by researchers who are also long COVID patients.
“It’s a big reason why long COVID isn’t talked about as much,” McCorkell says. “It’s definitely a national issue. But it trickles down to state and local health departments, and there’s not enough resources.”
The government clinics may be accessible to people without insurance and often are cheaper than clinics at private hospitals.
Harborview has treated more than 1,000 patients with long COVID, and another 200 patients are awaiting treatment, says Jessica Bender, MD, a co-director of the University of Washington Post-COVID Rehabilitation and Recovery Clinic in Seattle’s First Hill neighborhood.
At Harborview, Bender says the public hospital’s post-COVID clinic initially began with a staff of rehabilitation doctors but expanded in 2021 to include family and internal medicine doctors. And it offers mental health programs with rehabilitation psychologists who instruct on how to deal with doctors or loved ones who don’t believe that long COVID exists.
“I have patients who really have been devastated by the lack of support from co-workers [and] family,” Bender says.
In Campbell County, WY, the pandemic surge did not arrive in earnest until late 2021. Physical therapists at Campbell County’s Health Rehabilitation Services organized a rehabilitation program for residents with long COVID after recognizing the need, says Shannon Sorensen, rehabilitation director at Campbell County Health.
“We had patients coming in showing chest pain, or heart palpitations. There were people trying to get back to work. They were frustrated,” Sorensen says.
Myalgic encephalomyelitis and chronic fatigue syndrome activists have embraced the fight to recognize and help long COVID patients, noting the similarities between the conditions, and hope to help kickstart more organized research, treatment and benefits for long COVID sufferers and ME/CFS patients alike.
In Ft. Collins, CO, disability activist Alison Sbrana has long had myalgic encephalomyelitis. She and other members of the local chapter of ME Actionhave met with state officials for several years and are finally seeing the results of those efforts.
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis has created the full-time position of policy adviser for long COVID and post-viral infection planning.
“This is one way forward of how state governments are (finally) paying attention to infection-triggered chronic illnesses and starting to think ahead on them,” Sbrana says.
New York City’s Health + Hospitals launched what may be the most expansive long COVID treatment program in the nation in April 2021. Called AfterCare, it provides physical and mental health services as well as community support systems and financial assistance.
A persistent issue for patients is that there isn’t yet a test for long COVID, like there is for COVID-19, says Amanda Johnson, MD, assistant vice president for ambulatory care and population health at New York Health + Hospitals. “It’s in many ways a diagnosis of exclusion. You have to make sure their shortness of breath isn’t caused by something else. The same with anemia,” she says.
California’s Department of Public Health has a detailed website devoted to the topic, including videos of “long haulers” describing their experiences.
Vermont is one of several states studying long COVID, says Mark Levine, MD, the state health commissioner. The state, in collaboration with the University of Vermont, has established a surveillance project to determine how many people have long COVID, as well as how severe it is, how long it lasts, and potential predispositions.
The University of Utah in Salt Lake City established a comprehensive COVID-19 clinic more than a year ago that also handles long COVID patients, says Jeannette Brown, MD, PhD, an associate professor at the school and director of the COVID-19 clinic.
Jennifer Chevinsky, MD, MPH, already had a deep understanding of long COVID when she landed in Riverside County, CA, in the summer of 2021. She came from Atlanta, where as part of her job as an epidemic intelligence service officer at the CDC, she heard stories of COVID-19 patients who were not getting better.
Now she is a deputy public health officer for Riverside County, in a region known for its deserts, sizzling summer temperatures and diverse populations. She says her department has helped launch programs such as post-COVID-19 follow-up phone calls and long COVID training programs that reach out to the many Latino residents in this county of 2.4 million people. It also includes Black and Native American residents.
“We’re making sure information is circulated with community and faith-based organizations, and community health workers,” she says.
McCorkell, at the Patient-Led Research Cooperative, says there is still much work to do to raise public awareness of the risks of long COVID and how to obtain care for patients. She would like to see a national public health campaign about long COVID, possibly spearheaded by the CDC in partnership with local health workers and community-based organizations, she says.
“That,” she says, “could make a big difference.”
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The U.S. is at risk of prolonging the COVID pandemic if it fails to back an initiative that aims to get vaccines, diagnostics and treatments to lower-income countries, a congressional group has told President Joe Biden.
In a letter to Biden from the group led by Earl Blumenauer, a Democrat from Oregon, the group urged him to back the World Trade Organization’s agreement in June to ease exports of lifesaving therapies.
“With more than 600 million shots in arms, 21,500 free testing sites, the ability to order at-home tests for free, and more treatments available now than at any point in the pandemic, the outlook in the United States is better than ever. Unfortunately, however, the prospect for many low-income countries is not so positive — putting the United States’ own success in jeopardy,” the lawmakers wrote.
The letter was sent ahead of a meeting of the WTO council for trade-related aspects of IP rights that is due to kick off Thursday.
The group noted that lower-income countries are facing a higher risk of severe illness, hospitalization and death as only a small percentage of their populations are vaccinated. Just 19% of people in those countries are vaccinated, compared with about 75% in high-income countries, according to the Multilateral Leaders Taskforce on COVID-19, a joint initiative of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the World Health Organization and the WTO.
U.S. known cases of COVID are continuing to ease and now stand at their lowest level since late April, although the true tally is likely higher given how many people are testing at home, where the data are not being collected.
The daily average for new cases stood at 43,149 on Wednesday, according to a New York Times tracker, down 23% from two weeks ago. Cases are rising in most northeastern states by 10% of more, while cases in the western states Montana, Washington and Oregon are rising.
The daily average for hospitalizations was down 11% at 27,184, while the daily average for deaths is down 8% to 391.
Coronavirus Update: MarketWatch’s daily roundup has been curating and reporting all the latest developments every weekday since the coronavirus pandemic began
Other COVID-19 news you should know about:
• China’s huge Xinjiang region has been hit with sweeping COVID travel restrictions ahead of a key Communist Party congress later this month, the Associated Press reported. Trains and buses in and out of the region of 22 million people have been suspended, and passenger numbers on flights have been reduced to 75% of capacity in recent days, according to Chinese media reports. The region is home to minorities who have been forced into prison-like re-education centers to force them to renounce their religion, typically Islam, and allegedly subjected to human-rights abuses.
• Five current or former Internal Revenue Service workers have been charged with fraud for illegally getting money from federal COVID-19 relief programs and using a total of $1 million for luxury items and personal trips, prosecutors said, the AP reported. The U.S. attorney’s office in Memphis said Tuesday that the five have been charged with wire fraud after they filed fake applications for the Paycheck Protection Program and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program, which were part of a federal stimulus package tied to the pandemic response in 2020.
• Peloton Interactive Inc.
PTON,
said it plans to cut about 500 jobs, roughly 12% of its remaining workforce, in the company’s fourth round of layoffs this year as the connected fitness-equipment maker tries to reverse mounting losses, the Wall Street Journal reported. After enjoying a strong run early on in the pandemic, Peloton has struggled since the start of the U.S. recovery, and CEO Barry McCarthy, who took over in February, said he is giving the unprofitable company another six months or so to significantly turn itself around and, if it fails, Peloton likely isn’t viable as a stand-alone company.
Don’t miss: Peloton CEO says ‘naysayers’ are looking at the company’s $1.2 billion quarterly loss all wrong.
Here’s what the numbers say:
The global tally of confirmed cases of COVID-19 topped 619.9 million on Wednesday, while the death toll rose above 6.55 million, according to data aggregated by Johns Hopkins University.
The U.S. leads the world with 96.6 million cases and 1,061,490 fatalities.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tracker shows that 225.3 million people living in the U.S., equal to 67.9% of the total population, are fully vaccinated, meaning they have had their primary shots. Just 109.9 million have had a booster, equal to 48.8% of the vaccinated population, and 23.9 million of those who are eligible for a second booster have had one, equal to 36.6% of those who received a first booster.
Some 7.6 million people have had a shot of one of the new bivalent boosters that target the new omicron subvariants that have become dominant around the world.
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Oct. 5, 2022 – Anthony Fauci, MD, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, said this week that he isn’t ready to say that we are nearing the end of COVID-19. But as a country, we seem to be on the right track, Fauci said during a virtual conversation for the University of Southern California’s Annenberg’s Center for Health Journalism.
This comes just 2 weeks after Biden said that “the pandemic is over” on CBS’s 60 Minutes. Last month, the World Health Organization also said the end of COVID is in sight.
“It’s obvious that [the president’s statement] could be problematic because people would interpret it as ‘it’s completely over and we’re done for good,’ which is not the case, no doubt about that,” Fauci said.
Instead, he interpreted the comment as a reference to the country’s improvement in case numbers and death rates over the last several months — that the worst is likely behind us.
Fauci, who has been the subject of harsh criticism for his public messaging, chooses his words carefully, even with the promise of a brighter future ahead.
“I think it would be cavalier to all of the sudden say we’re through with [COVID],” he said. “Because remember, we were going in the right direction in the summer of 2021, and along came Delta. Then in the winter, along came Omicron. And since then, we’ve had sublineages of Omicron.”
Especially as the winter months approach, Fauci said, precautions still need to be taken to reduce the chances of yet another spike. When asked about the precautions that he himself takes, Fauci explained that he still doesn’t go to indoor, sit-down dinners. He continues to attend receptions — noting that most of them are outdoors — without a mask on, but if he’s in an indoor setting “for a considerable period of time,” he keeps a mask on.
A large portion of the conversation also reflected on the lessons that can be learned from mixed messages delivered by public health experts, including Fauci, during both the COVID pandemic and the more recent developments in monkeypox.
“I have tried always to give the hard truth, but very often the hard truth is not heard under the circumstance under which it’s given,” Fauci said. He blames social media for the misrepresentation of public comments and the spread of misinformation for the overall lack of clarity that many have attributed to his and the CDC’s statements regarding COVID.
Fauci said that if he could go back and do certain things differently, he would. If he had the choice, he would have tried to be much more careful during the early months of the pandemic in underlining the uncertainty of the situation we were going through.
The major shortcoming the U.S. continues to face regarding the pandemic is the resistance to getting vaccinated and ultimately boosted for COVID, Fauci added. And when it comes to vaccines, he doesn’t see the message as polarizing.
“People say [I’m a] polarizing figure,” Fauci said. “Well, when I say we should get vaccinated because it saves lives, and someone says no, am I the polarizing figure? Or is the person who is saying something that’s completely untrue creating the polarization?”
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Oct. 1, 2022 — Movie, TV, and theatrical productions will continue to follow COVID-19 safety protocols as unions and studios negotiate a new return-to-work agreement, according to the Directors Guild of America.
The current agreement, which was previously scheduled to expire on Friday, will be extended until the groups reach a new compromise. First adopted in September 2020, the agreement was originally set to expire in April 2021 but has been extended several times.
The safety protocols have allowed industry productions to move forward during the pandemic, taking into account the potential risk of infection among actors and crew members based on the production location and employee vaccination status. During the past two years, revised agreements have included rules for mandatory vaccination, physical distancing, COVID compliance officers, travel and transportation restrictions, and testing and mask requirements while filming or on stage.
Several weeks ago, talks over a new version began between several unions — including the Directors Guild of America (DGA), Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), Hollywood Basic Crafts, and International Brotherhood of Teamsters — and the negotiating entity for studios, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP).
Many producers and directors have said they plan on instructing productions to comply with protocols in the current agreement, regardless of whether the requirements are loosened, according to The Hollywood Reporter
In recent weeks, SAG-AFTRA has had internal debates about the safety protocols, the news outlet reported. An outspoken group in the organization has opposed certain aspects of the vaccine requirements for actors and crew members. Despite a board meeting in mid-September, however, the union decided not to modify any policies regarding vaccine mandates.
When the industry-wide agreement underwent a renegotiation in July, unions and studios made two small changes to protocols around transportation and meals in locations where COVID case numbers are high, the news outlet reported.
Now that the current infection rates are low around Hollywood, Los Angeles County health officials have ended a rule requiring masks on public transportation. However, a potential fall or winter surge in infections could change the precautions again, the news outlet reported.
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Sept. 30, 2022 — COVID-19 causes DNA damage to the heart, affecting the body in a completely different way than the flu does, according to a recent study published in Immunology
The study looked at the hearts of patients who died from COVID-19, the flu, and other causes. The findings could provide clues about why coronavirus has led to complications such as ongoing heart issues.
“We found a lot of DNA damage that was unique to the COVID-19 patients, which wasn’t present in the flu patients,” Arutha Kulasinghe, one of the lead study authors and a research fellow at the University of Queensland in Australia, told the Brisbane Times.
“So in this study, COVID-19 and flu look very different in the way they affect the heart,” he said.
Kulasinghe and colleagues analyzed the hearts of seven COVID-19 patients, two flu patients, and six patients who died from other causes. They used transcriptomic profiling, which looks at the DNA landscape of an organ, to investigate heart tissue from the patients.
Due to previous studies about heart problems associated with COVID-19, he and colleagues expected to find extreme inflammation in the heart. Instead, they found that inflammation signals had been suppressed in the heart, and markers for DNA damage and repair were much higher. They’re still unsure of the underlying cause.
“The indications here are that there’s DNA damage here, it’s not inflammation,” Kulasinghe said. “There’s something else going on that we need to figure out.”
The damage was similar to the way chronic diseases such as diabetes and cancer appear in the heart, he said, with heart tissue showing DNA damage signals.
Kulasinghe said he hopes other studies can build on the findings to develop risk models to understand which patients may face a higher risk of serious COVID-19 complications. In turn, this could help doctors provide early treatment. For instance, all seven COVID-19 patients had other chronic diseases, such as diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease.
“Ideally in the future, if you have cardiovascular disease, if you’re obese or have other complications, and you’ve got a signature in your blood that indicates you are at risk of severe disease, then we can risk-stratify patients when they are diagnosed,” he said.
The research is a preliminary step, Kulasinghe said, due to the small sample size. This type of study is often difficult to conduct because researchers have to wait for the availability of organs, as well as request permission from families for post-mortem autopsies and biopsies, to be able to look at the effects on dead tissues.
“Our challenge now is to draw a clinical finding from this, which we can’t at this stage,” he added. “But it’s a really fundamental biological difference we’re observing [between COVID-19 and flu], which we need to validate with larger studies.”
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Newswise — In widely covered remarks during an interview with 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley, President Biden claimed, “the pandemic is over.” Biden elaborated, adding, “we still have a problem with COVID, we’re still doing a lot of work on it, but the pandemic is over. If you noticed, no one’s wearing masks, everybody seems to be in pretty good shape. And so I think it’s changing, and I think this is a perfect example of it.”
According to the Washington Post, Biden’s remarks caught some senior officials off guard, particularly since the U.S. government has started its fall vaccination campaign. Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced more relaxed COVID-19 guidelines last month, the agency specifically said that the pandemic was not over in a press release issued on August 11th. Therefore, this statement has earned a rating of “Half True.”
With the rollout of boosters of life-saving vaccines, new treatments, and a large population already infected, the U.S. is in a less vulnerable place than it was in 2020. However, the death toll, while lower than before, is still at around 400 deaths per day from COVID-19 in the U.S. Many health experts say we’re not out of the woods yet.
“Saying that the pandemic is over has much larger and more serious ramifications, it means we take away resources allocated by Congress and other agencies. We must be careful about saying it is over. We still need resources to continue vaccination and to address vaccine hesitancy.” says Bernadette Boden-Albala, MPH, DrPH, Founding Dean and Director of the UCI Program in Public Health.
The end of masking restrictions and relaxing of other major guidelines has given many Americans a sense of moving on from the national health crisis that has festered for more than two years. Biden’s remarks, though perhaps an oversimplification, reflect national sentiment. However, COVID-19 is still very much evident in our U.S. population, and will likely continue for the foreseeable future.
“This is in great part due to human behaviors and motivations,” says Halkitis, “including subpar vaccination uptake, which continues to place all of us at risk for infection.”
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