Long COVID puzzle pieces are falling into place – the picture is unsettling

Ziyad Al-Aly, Washington University in St. Louis (from The Conversation) Since 2020, the condition known as long COVID-19 has become a widespread disability affecting the health and quality of life of millions of people across the globe and costing economies billions of dollars in reduced productivity of employees and an overall drop in the work force. The intense scientific effort that long COVID sparked has…

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Into the future with COVID: stress, depression, endemic/pandemic … will there ever be “normal” again?

Will we ever return to the world of 2019? A time before COVID-19 dominated the education, work, mental and physical health–the very existence of billions of people. Globally, millions have died, hundreds of millions have tested positive, and those estimated numbers are surely all undercounts (Johns Hopkins University, Coronavirus Resource Center). The coronavirus is still with us and will continue to be into the future….

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Long COVID: what it is, impacts, and treatments

“Long COVID refers to a variety of symptoms affecting different organs reported by people following Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection” (Taquet, 2021). “The symptoms of Long Covid include fatigue, dyspnea, cardiac abnormalities, cognitive impairment, sleep disturbances, symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, muscle pain, concentration problems, and headache” (Crook, 2021). Long Covid can be terribly debilitating and have profound effects on the people it impacts. See…

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Face shields and their effectiveness in preventing transmission of COVID-19

The transmission of COVID-19 “is believed to be predominantly through respiratory droplets from infected persons in close proximity to uninfected persons, although airborne transmission may also play a role. Face shields have been proposed to prevent transmission in the community.” This study describes “transmission in a community setting [in India] before and after the use of face shields.” Featured article: Bhaskar ME, Arun S. (2020)….

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Essential workers: economic and health vulnerability

We live in a very unequal society in the United States. Many have pointed this out for years and the COVID-19 pandemic has starkly illustrated this inequality. The poor, the sick, the old, the young, those who are “different”, those with little political power, and on and on … these people have borne the brunt for decades. These people have seen little benefit from economic…

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Physical distancing, face masks, and eye protection to prevent person-to-person transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) causes COVID-19 and is spread person-to-person through close contact. This review investigated the effects of physical distance, face masks, and eye protection on virus transmission in health-care and non-health-care settings. The review covered “172 observational studies in health-care and non-health-care settings across 16 countries and six continents; 44 comparative studies were included in a meta-analysis, including 25 697 patients…

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