Posted on 07/31/2022 11:58:20 AM PDT by BenLurkin
More than two years after Georgia Linders first got sick with COVID, her heart still races at random times.
She's often exhausted. She can't digest certain foods.
Most days, she runs a fever, and when her temperature gets up past a certain point, her brain feels like goo, she says.
These are commonly reported symptoms of long COVID.
Linders really noticed problems with her brain when she returned to work in the spring and summer of 2020. Her job required her to be on phone calls all day, coordinating with health clinics that service the military. It was a lot of multitasking, something she excelled at before COVID.
After COVID, the brain fog and fatigue slowed her down immensely. In the fall of 2020, she was put on probation. After 30 days, she thought her performance had improved. She'd certainly felt busy.
"But my supervisor brought up my productivity, which was like a quarter of what my coworkers were doing," she says.
It was demoralizing. Her symptoms worsened. She was given another 90-day probation, but she decided to take medical leave. On June 2, 2021, Linders was terminated.
She filed a discrimination complaint with the government, but it was dismissed. She could have sued but wasn't making enough money to hire a lawyer.
As the number of people with post-COVID symptoms soars, researchers and the government are trying to get a handle on how big an impact long COVID is having on the U.S. workforce. It's a pressing question, given the fragile state of the economy. For more than a year, employers have faced staffing problems, with jobs going unfilled month after month.
Now, millions of people may be sidelined from their jobs due to long COVID. Katie Bach, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution, drew on survey data from the Census Bureau, the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and the Lancet to come up with what she says is a conservative estimate: 4 million full-time equivalent workers out of work because of long COVID.
"That is just a shocking number," says Bach. "That's 2.4% of the U.S. working population."
Long COVID can be a disability under federal law The Biden administration has already taken some steps to try to protect workers and keep them on the job, issuing guidance that makes clear that long COVID can be a disability and relevant laws would apply. Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, for example, employers must offer accommodations to workers with disabilities unless doing so presents an undue burden.
Linders now she thinks back to what she should have asked for after her return to work. She was already working from home due to the pandemic, but perhaps she could have been given a lighter workload. Maybe her supervisor could have held off on disciplinary action.
"Maybe I wouldn't have gotten as sick as I got, because I wouldn't have been pushing myself to do the things that I knew couldn't do, but I kept trying and trying," she says.
Dr. Monica Verduzco-Gutierrez, professor of rehabilitation medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, has seen COVID play out in similar ways in other patients.
"If someone has to go back 100% when they start feeling a little bit better, they are going to crash and burn fast," she says.
The problem with coming up with accommodations for long COVID is that there are so many unknowns. The duration and severity of symptoms varies wildly from person to person.
Gutierrez finds herself stumped by questions on disability forms that ask how long an individual might be out or how long their illness may last.
"This is a new condition," she says. "We don't know."
Accommodations in the workplace might include flexibility in where someone works, extended leave, or a new role in a different department. The goal is to get workers on a path back, says Roberta Etcheverry, CEO of Diversified Management Group, a disability management consulting firm.
But with long COVID, it's difficult to measure whether an employee is in fact on a path back.
"This isn't a sprain or strain where somebody turns an ankle and we know in x amount of months, they're going to be at this point," she says. "It's not — somebody was helping move a patient, and they hurt their back, and they can't do that kind of work anymore. They need to do something else."
With long COVID, symptoms come and go, and new symptoms may arise.
The Labor Department is urging employers not to rule out accommodations for employees who don't get an official long COVID diagnosis.
"Rather than determining whether an employee has a disability, your focus should be on the employee's limitations and whether there are effective accommodations that would enable the employee to perform essential job functions," the Labor Department says in its long COVID guide for employers.
Accommodations may be harder to come by in some jobs Still, not all employers have the means to offer the kind of accommodation an employee may need given their symptoms.
Bilal Qizilbash believes he would have been fired long ago had he not been the boss of his own company.
"Majority of my team has no idea that I'm working from bed most of the time," says Qizilbash, a COVID long hauler who suffers chronic pain that he compares to wasp stings.
As the CEO of a small business that manufactures health supplements, Qizilbash says he tries to be compassionate and at the same time, ruthlessly efficient. Having one employee whose productivity is severely compromised could end up negatively impacting the whole company, he says.
In other professions, it may be challenging to find accommodations that work, no matter how generous.
In South Florida, Karyn Bishof was a new recruit with the Palm Beach Gardens Fire Rescue team in 2020 when she contracted COVID, likely at a training, she says. She comes from a family of firefighters, and it was her lifelong dream to follow suit. She was excelling in her training and receiving high marks when she got sick, she says. Now long COVID has left her with profound brain fog, fatigue, light-headedness and a slew of other symptoms incompatible with fighting fires.
In other professions, it may be challenging to find accommodations that work, no matter how generous.
In South Florida, Karyn Bishof was a new recruit with the Palm Beach Gardens Fire Rescue team in 2020 when she contracted COVID, likely at a training, she says. She comes from a family of firefighters, and it was her lifelong dream to follow suit. She was excelling in her training and receiving high marks when she got sick, she says. Now long COVID has left her with profound brain fog, fatigue, light-headedness and a slew of other symptoms incompatible with fighting fires.
"I couldn't run into a burning building if I can't regulate my temperature," she says. "If I can't control having hypertension, I can't lift up a patient or I'm going to pass out."
The city of Palm Beach Gardens told NPR Bishof was terminated from her job for not meeting performance-related probationary standards. Bishof recently filed a discrimination lawsuit against the city and has become an advocate for COVID long haulers.
The Labor Department is crowdsourcing ideas for how to keep workers employed Taryn Williams, Assistant Secretary of Labor for Disability Employment Policy, wants to hear from workers and employers. Through the middle of August, the Labor Department is holding an online dialogue, asking for input on policies that may help with workplace challenges arising from long COVID.
"We want to be responsive," says Williams. "We're considering how can we support these workers in what is a transformative time in their life."
She says the government has encountered situations in the past when there was a sudden rise in the number of people needing accommodations at work. Significant numbers of service members returned from Iraq and Afghanistan with traumatic brain injuries, for example. Williams says such times have led to shifts in disability policy in the U.S.
From her home in La Crosse, Wisconsin, Linders has contributed a number of comments to the Labor Department's online dialogue. Like Bishof, she also spends a lot of time helping other COVID long haulers navigate what she's been through, including qualifying for Social Security disability insurance.
Her advocacy helps her feel as if she's contributing something to society, even if it's not the life she wanted.
there is someone here that has a professional tennis player as a relative. he got Covid. it really messed with his career. not sure if he can now play .
They tried to dump me in the fibromyalgia category and said I could try Lyrica. I said I am not accepting that..it’s a catchall when you can’t figure it out. I am not taking Lyrica if it is really something else...and as it turns out..it was really something else.
I am hacked off at what I have been through but apparently it is pretty common with people dealing with autoimmune issues
I’m skeptical of “long Covid”. Seems like a catch-all version of so-called fibromyalgia…
Right.
I’m currently writing an ebook on long covid.
My research shows that people with any kind of autoimmune or or otherwise chronic disease or diabetes prediabetes or are otherwise have high bmi—also have very low glutathione. They also have low NAD+.
To increase glutathione you take glycine and NAC. To increase NAD+ you take high dose NMN NR and/or EXTENDED Release Niacin. (You have to look for the specific words Extended Release Niacin.) That gives the niacin without the flush.
I think you’ve made a good connection there. Long Covid. Fibromyalgia. Attention. No work.
So do I. Regarding Long-Covid, it’s obviously a thing, and like anything else, some people are going to exaggerate and try to take advantage — but it’s real enough.
I’m just glad my wife and daughter put their dainty feet down and refused to allow me to get the vax. I’m no scientist, but just looking around, I can see that most of the people who are getting sick with repeat cases are vaxed and don’t seem to be any better off, so why take the chance?
Apparently long Covid doesn’t result in loss of appetite.
I had my glutathione tested. I expected it to be low. It was normal. Haven’t had my NAD tested.
I suspect a significant amount of long Covid people had something percolating and then COVID jump started the issue. Or a genetic factor that got the switch turned.
As an example:
You could be Anti Jo positive and not know it. Maybe it really hasnt started to do anything to you yet. You get COVID. Now you have Myositis and ILD. You think it is Long Covid because no one has bothered to check to see if you are Anti Jo positive
Also, for anyone experience weird stuff try COQ10. For whatever reason it helps some people with rheumatology type problems
I am trying 40 blueberries a day because a few people have said it has helped them for psoriasis. It probably wont do jack for me but still trying it. I am one of the lucky ones. I just have psoriasis in one spot
“Now long COVID has left her with profound brain fog, fatigue, light-headedness ...”
It’s convenient than NONE of those things can be medically diagnosed.
And the other symptoms ... what are they? Are they able to be diagnosed?
It really isn’t “convenient”. I have bouts of all three of those things. Had one this morning and I had to go back to bed. I haven’t had COVID
I am going to do a restrictive diet to see if something could be an issue that just isnt showing up on allergy tests. Like silent Celiac disease because I have the HLA-DQ 8 gene.
I encourage people to spend the money and get genetic testing if you are in diagnosis hell. It helped me target testing to get. You can get brain fog from Sjogren’s. You can also get it from Celiac Disease. If you have tested negative for Sjogren’s there is an early Sjogren’s test at Quest.
Unfortunately, people are at the mercy of the Doctors to lead them to the right testing. You have to take control of your medical situation.
“I myself got covid sans vaccination. I was down and out about 2 weeks and ironically have been feeling better then I have in a long time after recovering.”
Same here. September 2021. About two weeks start to finish. Feel better now than I have in years. I attribute it to the Ivermectin I took.
Who knows what crud some (many) of us have inside us causing unexplained feelings of punkiness...
A FReeper farmer once posted that she takes two regimens of Ivermectin a year just to be on the safe side. Not a bad idea.
“You have to take control of your medical situation.”
That is so true. Gone are the days when your physician had his patients’ best interests as a priority.
In figuring out what restrictive diet I am going to go on I looked at Whole 30 and what people had to say about it. After your body goes through the shock of not having sugar, grains, or dairy it seems a lot of people feel better.
They may not have any kind of official disease that makes them feel that way. It’s interesting. Perhaps some people could get by with just doing no high fructose corn syrup and feel better.
Certainly, if I thought I had long haul Covid I might try a restrictive diet to see if it helped.
I am going to ease into the restrictive diet so as not to put my body into shock. Plus my Diet Coke is the last thing I want to give up for 30 days..even though I know it is bad for you.
It’s real.
I’m living it.
It’s interesting to see what happens on certain diets. I’ve never paid much attention in my life — just ate what I wanted and was comfortable being consistently about 25 pounds more than I should be.
When a blood test showed my blood sugar was a little high I paid more attention to what I was eating.
No bananas (lotsa sugar) at all instead of one a day. One diet Coke a week instead of one a day (the body “reads” artificial sweetener as sugar).
Bread, pasta, potatoes, rice were cut by about 75—80%. I love carbs, so that hurt at first. I never was one for actual sweets.
My next blood test 6 months later showed a lower number, although I expected much lower. But I had lost 15 pounds. I knew my clothes fit better but never weighed myself at home. Haven’t stood on a bathroom scale in decades — LOL!
I guess I’ll stick with this, but maybe not as drastic, for a while longer. Overall, I feel pretty darn good and am lucky, I guess. I realize chronic pain can rear its head at any time.
My brother, non-vaxxed, caught Covid January 2021, one night in hospital with low blood oxygen, recovered in about two weeks. Prior to infection he had chronic pain with Psoriatic Arthritis, post infection he had little to none problems with the arthritis. A year and a half later the arthritis is beginning to return; he jokingly says it’s time to go another round with the Covid because the time without the arthritis was worth it. He didn’t take any ivermectin. There’s my anecdote.
Do you remember what meds they gave him that might have had an effect on the psoriatic arthritis. Interesting story.
“Long Covid”
aka
“I had 2 experimental mRNA spike-protein jabs and 2 boosters, and thank goodness, or my Long Covid might have been even worse!”
She can’t work, but boy can she communicate with the CDC or anybody else who will listen. Not buying it for a second.
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