“But 99% of people don’t die”.
First off, this is NOT true for specific populations. If you’re going to spread this stat, please at least get the number right. The most accurate way to measure death is IFR and this is the distribution of IFR across ages in the United States:
0-19 years: 0.003%
20-49 years: 0.02%
50-69 years: 0.5%
70+ years: 5%
Second, death isn’t the only outcome. Period. There isn’t one body system that COVID19 hasn’t left a mark.
Why? Because organs have doors called ACE2 receptors. The little spikes on the COVID19 virus are keys to these doors. It takes about 10 minutes for COVID19 to open the door and make a cell its home. Once in, the virus starts multiplying eventually killing the cell (and sometimes even killing all the cells in the organ). On top of this, our immune system then “overreacts” to these cells dying causing even more problems. We have these COVID19 doors on almost all of our organ systems. This leads to short- and long-term health problems (yes, among young and healthy individuals too).
We have so much science on this it’s insane. I’ve posted on this before (August), but thought it was worth resharing with updated science and statistics.
Lungs: Lose the ability to pass oxygen to the blood and remove carbon dioxide. This leads to distress (and sometimes requires ventilation). The type of pneumonia often associated with COVID-19 can cause long-standing damage to the tiny air sacs (alveoli) in the lungs. The resulting scar tissue can lead to long-term breathing problems. We’ve also seen long-term lung function abnormalities.
Heart: Chest pain, heart racing, and heart attacks. 20-30% of patients have heart damage. Imaging tests taken months after recovery from COVID-19 have shown lasting damage to the heart muscle, even in people who experienced only mild COVID-19 symptoms. This may increase the risk of heart failure or other heart complications in the future.
Nervous System/Brain: 33% patients experience neurological or psychological “COVID19 fog”. Even in young people, COVID-19 can cause strokes, seizures and Guillain-Barre syndrome. Break in communication between the nerves and muscles, causing MS like symptoms (tingling, numbness, weakness). Smell and taste problems (10% people aren’t getting their smell back long term), sleep issues, difficulty with concentration, memory problems
Kidney: 78% of patients in ICU develop kidney injury.
Skin: rash, hair loss
Digestive system (stomach, pancreas, gallbladder): 33% report diarrhea, nausea, abdominal pain. 17% have severe pancreatic damage leading to chronic disease
Blood: COVID-19 can make blood cells more likely to clump up and form clots. While large clots can cause heart attacks and strokes, much of the heart damage caused by COVID-19 is believed to stem from very small clots that block tiny blood vessels (capillaries) in the heart muscle. Extensive clotting in the veins and other small blood vessels have also been seen in patients’ kidneys, liver, brain, and lungs. Lymphopenia- the mass destruction of WBCs our immune fighting cells
Psychological: Mental health issues lead to struggling for words, simple math, or just trying to think. Simply surviving mechanical ventilation can make a person more likely to later develop post-traumatic stress syndrome, depression and anxiety.
Bottom line: Get your vaccine. If you don’t want the vaccine, that’s okay. If you want to wait, that’s okay too. But do NOT spread misinformation to people that are genuinely interested in the truth and making data-informed decisions. Especially, on my page.
Love, YLE
Lungs:
https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m2426
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/938683_4
https://www.ersnet.org/the-society/news/covid-19-patients-suffer-long-term-lung-and-heart-damage-but-it-can-improve-with-time
https://bmcpulmmed.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12890-020-01286-5
https://www.ajronline.org/doi/pdf/10.2214/AJR.20.23034
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02598-6#ref-CR1
https://radiologyassistant.nl/chest/covid-19/covid19-imaging-findings
Heart: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamacardiology/fullarticle/2769182; https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamacardiology/fullarticle/2768916; https://www.heartrhythmjournal.com/article/S1547-5271(20)30625-1/fulltext
Nervous system: https://academic.oup.com/brain/advance-article/doi/10.1093/brain/awaa240/5868408https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/L20-0845; https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2768351https://els-jbs-prod-cdn.jbs.elsevierhealth.com/pb/assets/raw/Health%20Advance/journals/jmcp/jmcp_ft95_5_18.pdf; https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/L20-0845 ; https://cp.neurology.org/content/early/2020/06/30/CPJ.0000000000000897 ; https://cp.neurology.org/content/early/2020/06/30/CPJ.0000000000000897
Kidney: https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1996 ; www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/coronavirus-kidney-damage-caused-by-covid19%3famp=true
Digestive System: https://www.cghjournal.org/article/S1542-3565(20)30646-7/pdf; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7194639/https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.040204v1.abstract
Skin: https://www.aad.org/public/diseases/hair-loss/causes/covid-19
Blood: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(20)30178-4/fulltext
CDC IFR list: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scenarios.html
Also liked this source: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/in-depth/coronavirus-long-term-effects/art-20490351