Speaker 1: It's Friday, November six. I'm Oscar Ramirez from the Daily
Speaker 1: Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America.
Speaker 1: Doctors are beginning to figure out why some people have
Speaker 1: long term symptoms from COVID nineteen, called post acute COVID
Speaker 1: or chronic COVID. Many are continuing to deal with symptoms
Speaker 1: for weeks or months after they were expected to recover.
Speaker 1: These symptoms range from severe fatigue and brain fog, two
Speaker 1: digestive problems, and erratic heart rates. Simothy Ready Wall Street Journals,
Speaker 1: your health columnist joints for what could be causing these
Speaker 1: long term effects. Thanks for joining us, Simmothy, Thanks for
Speaker 1: having me. I wanted to talk about these long haul
Speaker 1: COVID patients, people that are experiencing symptoms for weeks, maybe
Speaker 1: months after they were expected to recover. You know, they say,
Speaker 1: my old normal cases of COVID nineteen can last year,
Speaker 1: about two weeks before you recover. But this is part
Speaker 1: of what this novel coronavirus is. We're finding out that
Speaker 1: everybody is responding to this differently, and a lot of
Speaker 1: times people are experiencing these long symptoms of severe fatigue,
Speaker 1: cognitive issues, memory loss, they call it brain fog. People
Speaker 1: are experiencing digestive problems, the erratic heart rates, and there's
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff that is that is going into this.
Speaker 1: So Simothy tell us a little bit more about what
Speaker 1: we're learning of these long term effects people are experiencing.
Speaker 1: It's they're really interesting phenomenon to to have people who
Speaker 1: in many cases they're sort of acute COVID. Their initial
Speaker 1: COVID isn't that bad. That's not everyone, but and just
Speaker 1: in many cases, so you know, they're sick, they sick
Speaker 1: for a couple of weeks, they think they've recovered or
Speaker 1: feel better, only they haven't. So for some of them,
Speaker 1: they're developing new symptoms weeks later, and they symptoms will
Speaker 1: persist for months and sumptions are going on for now six, seven,
Speaker 1: eight months, and in others they're actually getting worse. So
Speaker 1: what was sort of a mild case of cod initially
Speaker 1: has now evolved into way sort of chronic condition whe
Speaker 1: they're developing new and even worsening symptoms, you know, months
Speaker 1: later and really not getting any better. You spoke to
Speaker 1: a lot of people that are these long haulers are
Speaker 1: experiencing these types of symptoms, and I think one of
Speaker 1: the people you spoke to put it best, and it
Speaker 1: can just feel the frustration of it. They said, I
Speaker 1: feel like there has to be some sort of next
Speaker 1: step because I'm not ready to accept that this is
Speaker 1: my new reality. Basically, like, there has to be this
Speaker 1: point where I get over it. You know, it can't
Speaker 1: be like this forever. Um. In many cases, these are
Speaker 1: young and extremely healthy people. I mean, I've reviewed dozens
Speaker 1: of them over the past four months, and I've interviewed
Speaker 1: marathon runners, I've interviewed avid skiers, surfers, and these are
Speaker 1: people who were extremely active and athletics beforehand. Again, that's
Speaker 1: not everyone, but it seems like a large percentage of
Speaker 1: them are so to go from having no chronic conditions
Speaker 1: to be young and healthy and active to basically being
Speaker 1: debilitated to the point where you know, a lot of
Speaker 1: them can't walk more than five blocks down the street
Speaker 1: or even all without a wheelchair or a cane or
Speaker 1: something to support them. You know, it's quite like transforming
Speaker 1: and obviously extremely frustrating. Let's try to put some numbers
Speaker 1: to this, and you know, it's it's hard to do that,
Speaker 1: but there was a recent study of more than four
Speaker 1: thousand COVID patients and they found out that about ten
Speaker 1: percent of those they were eighteen forty nine struggled symptoms
Speaker 1: for four weeks after becoming sick. That's just one part
Speaker 1: of it. You know, there's people that are obviously experiencing
Speaker 1: things longer than that. Those numbers drop off, and there's
Speaker 1: sort of the rough estimate that you get from a
Speaker 1: lot of different places that this affects. It seems to
Speaker 1: effect about ten to fiftcent of the population, or at
Speaker 1: least those people that are still sick after a month.
Speaker 1: It's hard to know how many of them get better.
Speaker 1: I mean, according to that one sort of symptom tracker,
Speaker 1: it seemed to drop by about half that by two
Speaker 1: months you had about four or five percent of people
Speaker 1: that were still sick, and then after three months it
Speaker 1: was down to two. But there is a lot of
Speaker 1: criticism from sort of patient groups about that to Go
Speaker 1: app just because it's a daily app. So obviously some people,
Speaker 1: particularly if they're really stick, gets sick of sort of
Speaker 1: logging on every day, they might just stop doing the app.
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean they're better or recovered, but it's translated
Speaker 1: that way, so it probably those mems are a very
Speaker 1: conservative estimate. There's other long term symptoms associated with other
Speaker 1: viral outbreaks, things like stars and mers and all that,
Speaker 1: But what makes COVID different is all the different organs
Speaker 1: that it can affect. And the leading explanation for this
Speaker 1: that doctors really thing why people get affected in so
Speaker 1: many different ways and and then get these longer symptoms
Speaker 1: is that they think it has a lot to do
Speaker 1: with inflammation sort of. The leading theory is that inflammation
Speaker 1: and possibly in the body has an autoimmune response, so
Speaker 1: it's sort of attacking its own tissue in Oregon, that
Speaker 1: might be what's driving the damage. You know, it's also
Speaker 1: obviously under investigation and being researched. It's unclear whether that's
Speaker 1: being written by sort of viral fragments that are left
Speaker 1: in the body that aren't enough for anyone to be infectious,
Speaker 1: but that are triggering inflammation and sort of autoimmune response,
Speaker 1: or if there's actual virus vile traces like actually lodged
Speaker 1: in in a different part of the body that could
Speaker 1: be kind of reactivating almost like a dormant virus and
Speaker 1: causing symptoms. A lot of patients do complain of sort
Speaker 1: of like cyclical systems like feeling better for a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks and then redopting and feeling sick. So that
Speaker 1: sort of theory might drive with that. And you've been
Speaker 1: looking into this for a long time, Like you said,
Speaker 1: you've spoken to many people, even children that come down
Speaker 1: with COVID nineteen in some cases are getting some longer
Speaker 1: term effects. A lot of that has to do with
Speaker 1: gas row intentional stuff, headache, shortness of breath, things like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is really all consuming. I've talked to
Speaker 1: patients who have severe g I issues, severe cognitive issues,
Speaker 1: brain fogs, rashes, hair loss, high, very high heart rates,
Speaker 1: very multi some symptoms. And one of the leading sort
Speaker 1: of theory is that these people are developing disautonomia, which
Speaker 1: is sort of a dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system.
Speaker 1: And it's an umbrella term, and it's commonly triggered by viruses,
Speaker 1: so not just COVID, but it's just triggered by influenza
Speaker 1: or stars or other things, and it affects different organ systems,
Speaker 1: so it can affective breathing, your heart rate, your blood pressure, digestion.
Speaker 1: So that's some of these patients are starting to sort
Speaker 1: of get a digohoster and treated for that. And so
Speaker 1: how are doctors trying to treat these other things? I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously you have to wait for these symptoms to persist
Speaker 1: to actually you start addressing it. But what are doctors
Speaker 1: figuring out? What are they going to try to do
Speaker 1: with it? There's a lot of caution how to treat this,
Speaker 1: Like I just mentioned disautonomia, this audoonomia. You know, it
Speaker 1: causes tachocardia, which is an erratic heart rate, but it's
Speaker 1: not you don't have damage to your actual heart. The
Speaker 1: way you might treat someone like disautonomia would be really
Speaker 1: bad if you actually did have heart damage. So the
Speaker 1: patients have to undergo very careful evaluations. Like before you
Speaker 1: would treat disarnomia, you'd want to get an echo cardiogram
Speaker 1: or cardiac MR. I make sure that person that doesn't
Speaker 1: have myocardiais or something you know, cardiac problem with more
Speaker 1: cardiac in nature that would have to be treated differently.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of tests were ruling out of
Speaker 1: things like to make sure there's no permanent sort of
Speaker 1: organ damage that's going on, and they are finding since
Speaker 1: the organ damage but in a very small minority of patients.
Speaker 1: Best of luck to these people that do get these
Speaker 1: long term symptoms, and hopefully doctors can get better at
Speaker 1: treating it. And you know where we're going through this.
Speaker 1: We're still learning constantly more things about COVID nineteen, so
Speaker 1: we'll see what happens. Simothy Ready, Wall Street Journals, your
Speaker 1: health columnist, Thank you very much for joining us. Thanks
Speaker 1: so much for having me. I'm Oscar Ramirez and this
Speaker 1: has been reopening America. Don't forget effort today's big news stories.
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