New top story from Time: Largest Study of Lingering COVID-19 Effects Suggests a Looming Problem

https://ift.tt/3ykuT6x

In the largest long-term study of COVID-19 patients yet to be published, researchers in China report in the Lancet worrying results of the disease’s lingering impact on people’s health.

The scientists, led by Dr. Bin Cao from the China-Japan Friendship Hospital in Beijing, studied 1,276 people discharged between January to May 2020 from Jin Yin-Tan Hospital in Wuhan after being hospitalized for COVID-19. The patients all agreed to health visits at six and 12 months after their symptoms first appeared; at each of those points, the researchers compared the health status of the study participants with that of comparable people from the Wuhan area who did not experience COVID-19 infection.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Among those hospitalized for COVID-19, 68% reported at least one continued, COVID-19-related symptom six months after their first symptoms appeared. While this percentage decreased by the 12-month mark, it remained relatively high, at 49%. And overall, patients who had been hospitalized for COVID-19 self-reported being in poorer health and having lower quality of life—including mobility issues— compared to controls.

The most common symptom patients reported 12 months later was fatigue or muscle weakness; other issues included sleep disturbances, changes in taste and smell, dizziness, headache and shortness of breath. Certain symptoms were actually worse at the 12-month mark than they were earlier on in the study: the proportion of patients reporting breathing problems increased slightly, from 26% to 30%, from six months to a year following their first symptoms. The patients also filled out questionnaires about their mental health, and while 23% reported feeling anxious or depressed six months after their first symptoms appeared, 30% did so at a year.

The findings highlight the complicated nature of COVID-19’s effects on people’s health, and the range of longer-term consequences emerging in what some experts are referring to as Long COVID. This recent study is the largest to date of such extended effects among hospitalized patients; while it suggests that about half of patients with serious COVID-19 recover from their symptoms, the other half—and especially those who were sicker during their hospitalization—may continue to battle the mental and physical effects of the virus for over a year.

“I would not say this is a glass-half-full story,” says David Putrino, director of rehabilitation innovation at Mount Sinai Health Systems who oversees the network’s Long COVID rehabilitation program. “After most hospital stays, including for, say, walking pneumonia, I would not be expecting people at 12 months to still be reporting symptoms to me.”

The increase in the proportion of patients experiencing anxiety or depression is especially “worrying,” say the authors, and they speculate that in addition to the isolation, unemployment, and loss of physical health that could be fueling these conditions, the virus itself may be driving abnormal immune responses that could affect the delicate work of brain chemicals contributing to people’s mental states.

“Taken together, the implications are that people with persistent COVID-19 symptoms are looking at a long recovery,” says Putrino. At Mount Sinai’s Long COVID program that involves a personalized approach to addressing patients’ diverse symptoms, which could range from kidney, heart and lung problems to generalized fatigue and muscle weakness. For the latter, rehabilitation might include a tedious process of gradually stimulating the autonomic nervous system with carefully supervised exercises to slowly stimulate normal nerve activation, which could take as long as three to four months before patients feel better.

“This virus doesn’t end once you get discharged from the hospital or once you get over the initial acute symptoms,” says Putrino. “This virus persists.” He notes that while the recent Lancet study only focused on hospitalized COVID-19 patients, other, albeit smaller, studies have shown that COVID-19 symptoms may linger in around 20% of those who get infected but don’t get sick enough to go to the hospital.

That means the issue of persistent COVID-19 symptoms looms over any post-COVID-19 public health plan; currently, there isn’t much clarity about whether, or how much, insurers will cover rehabilitation for these patients. And that’s if patients know of and can access these services to begin with. “It’s the tip of the iceberg of enormous potential inequity and disparities in health,” says Putrino. “Most persistent symptoms are invisible symptoms, and walking into a doctor’s office and saying you have extreme fatigue”—a symptom many COVID-19 sufferers have reported experiencing months after infection—”[only] gets treated seriously when you’re not a member of a historically excluded group. And when you are, in many cases you don’t bother to even go to the doctor’s office because who is going to believe you?”

Comments

FOX NEWS: Father who was given months to live speaks out on thyroid cancer misconceptions A father who was told he had six months to a year to live when he got gravely ill from medullary thyroid cancer in 2019 has surpassed his doctor’s prediction, and he hopes others become “purveyors of positivity” after hearing his story.

Father who was given months to live speaks out on thyroid cancer misconceptions A father who was told he had six months to a year to live when he got gravely ill from medullary thyroid cancer in 2019 has surpassed his doctor’s prediction, and he hopes others become “purveyors of positivity” after hearing his story. via FOX NEWS https://ift.tt/2XlinXm

New top story from Time: How Spirited Away Changed Animation Forever

https://ift.tt/3xVoGP5 Twenty years ago, on July 20, 2001, a film that would become one of the most celebrated animated movies of all time hit theaters in Japan. Directed by Hayao Miyazaki and produced by Studio Ghibli, Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi, titled Spirited Away in English, would leave an indelible mark on animation in the 21st century. The movie arrived at a time when animation was widely perceived as a genre solely for children, and when cultural differences often became barriers to the global distribution of animated works. Spirited Away shattered preconceived notions about the art form and also proved that, as a film created in Japanese with elements of Japanese folklore central to its core, it could resonate deeply with audiences around the world. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The story follows an ordinary 10-year-old girl, Chihiro, as she arrives at a deserted theme park that turns out to be a realm of gods and spirits. After an overeating incident ...

A Green Light for Muni Customers

A Green Light for Muni Customers By Stephen Chun Have you ever been on a Muni vehicle and realized that if the light had only stayed green for just a few more seconds you wouldn’t have been trapped at a red light? SFMTA’s Connected Corridor Pilot approached this problem with a new state of the art solution. Most signals in San Francisco do not have sensors to detect vehicles at an intersection. However, through a grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation, our project team was able to test an advanced technology for signal timing based on who is present at an intersection. In this way, transit platform and traffic signal sensor data can be used to activate signal timing adjustments, responding to traffic conditions in real time. These adjustments provide more opportunities for transit vehicles to make it through intersections on a green light. The project team turned on the adaptive signal timing program during several days in Jul...

New top story from Time: Deaths and Blackouts Have Hit the U.S. Northwest Due to the Unprecedented Heat Wave

https://ift.tt/2UgzckI SPOKANE, Wash. — The unprecedented Northwest U.S. heat wave that slammed Seattle and Portland, Oregon, moved inland Tuesday — prompting a electrical utility in Spokane, Washington, to resume rolling blackouts amid heavy power demand. Officials said a dozen deaths in Washington and Oregon may be tied to the intense heat that began late last week. The dangerous weather that gave Seattle and Portland consecutive days of record high temperatures exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.7 degrees Celcius) was expected to ease in those cities. But inland Spokane saw temperatures spike. The National Weather Service said the mercury reached 109 F (42.2 C) in Spokane— the highest temperature ever recorded there. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] About 9,300 Avista Utilities customers in Spokane lost power on Monday and the company said more planned blackouts began on Tuesday afternoon in the city of about 220,000 people. “We try to limit outages to one hour per...

New top story from Time: The ‘Badass Chief of Staff’ of Turkey’s Opposition Faces Years in Jail After Challenging Erdogan’s Power. She’s Not Backing Down

https://ift.tt/2ZKUTZP Snow brings back memories for Dr. Canan Kaftancioglu. Of recess snowball fights in the Black Sea village where she grew up, of warming her hands at her elementary school’s stove before class — and of discovering a poem by Turkish writer Ataol Behramoglu, a favorite of a beloved uncle who would bring left-wing newspapers to her childhood home and discuss the articles inside. “It is about how the snow brings equality between people,” Kaftancioglu says of the poem. “In the snow, we build a new, more equal world.” The Turkish politician is speaking through an interpreter at her friends’ apartment in Istanbul’s Beyoglu district, seated in an armchair with a beige and brown-spotted dog curled up beside her. In a matter of days or weeks but likely not months, Kaftancioglu expects she will be taken to jail. For now, she’d rather focus on her work: the poverty rate is increasing, and people in her city are suffering. Kaftancioglu represents something unfamil...

New top story from Time: A Conversation with Filmmaker Adam Curtis on Power, Technology and How Ideas Get Into People’s Heads

https://ift.tt/2NQRzcY The British filmmaker Adam Curtis may work for the BBC, a bastion of the British elite, but over a decades-long career, he has cemented himself as a cult favorite. He is best known as the pioneer of a radical and unique style of filmmaking, combining reels of unseen archive footage, evocative music, and winding narratives to tell sweeping stories of 20th and 21st century history that challenge the conventional wisdom. “I’ve never thought of myself as a documentary maker,” he says. “I’m a journalist.” On Feb. 11, Curtis dropped his latest epic: Can’t Get You Out of My Head , an eight hour history of individualism, split up over six episodes. Subtitled “An emotional history of the modern world,” the goal of the series, Curtis says, was to unpack how we came to live in a society designed around the individual, but where people increasingly feel anxious and uncertain. It’s a big question, and Curtis attempts to answer it by taking us on a winding journ...

New top story from Time: How Are Activists Managing Dissension Within the ‘Defund the Police’ Movement?

https://ift.tt/3qRRGDU In June 2020, the Minneapolis city council announced plans to disband its police department following the killing of George Floyd . The council’s decision came after days of protesting and unrest in the city—and across the country —related to Floyd’s death and calls for larger-scale accountability from law enforcement. Central in many of these calls-for-action was a phrase soon to go global: “defund the police.” Eight months later, however, and the city’s police department has not been dissolved, though a lot has happened in the interim; Minneapolis’ struggle to implement meaningful reforms serves as a microcosm of how the “defund the police” movement has impacted the country. Council members who initially supported the idea have walked back their positions. In August the city charter delayed the council’s proposal to disband the police pending further review, only to reject the proposal entirely in November. ( Instead, there have been some rollback...

US NSA Jake Sullivan dials Indian counterpart Ajit Doval, reaffirms commitment for strong, enduring relations https://ift.tt/3agErFM

America’s new National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan in his first call with his Indian counterpart Ajit Doval on Wednesday reaffirmed the commitment of President Joe Biden to a strong and enduring bilateral strategic partnership based on shared commitment to democracy, the White House said.

New top story from Time: What Learned About Ourselves In the First Year of the Pandemic

https://ift.tt/3dTjNPp A version of this article appeared in this week’s It’s Not Just You newsletter . SUBSCRIBE HERE to have an It’s Not Just You essay delivered to your inbox every Sunday. March is the anteroom of months. It’s both the end of last year’s winter and the beginning of the new year’s spring. It’s half slush, half-quixotic hope. I had my first baby in March–a child that arrived nine days late, already a solid little being with startling almond eyes and the appetite of a toddler. I had no idea what I was doing; we two just hunkered down and tried to figure each other out. I still flounder at the start of every March, for different reasons every year, staggering out of February a soggy, angsty creature whose clothes don’t fit. But somehow, I slip-slide toward the end of the month, and things start to make sense. Maybe the vernal equinox is what helps get us back on track every spring. It’s that moment, usually, on the 20th or 21st of March, wh...

New top story from Time: The Split in How Americans Think About Our Collective Past Is Real—But There’s a Way Out of the ‘History Wars’

https://ift.tt/3gOBoti What are Americans supposed to know about the history of their country? Whose stories should be taught in classrooms, whose should be omitted and who decides? Such questions inform recent education bills like Louisiana’s HB564 and Iowa’s HF802 , which prohibit the teaching of “divisive concepts” and are just two of the latest entrants in an often-contentious dialogue reaching back to the founding of the Republic itself. But while there’s been a steady stream of opinions from politicians, pundits and professors about where to find “Historical Truth,” it’s always been hard to know how exactly the American public would answer these questions. Our recent national survey of people’s understandings and uses of the past, the full results of which will be published this summer, gives voice to the unheard masses. A collaboration between the American Historical Association and Fairleigh Dickinson University , and funded by the National Endowment for the Hu...

My precise view

Search This Blog