The figures I have seen for Long Covid start at about 10 percent. You can have Long Covid without knowing it; there can be organ damage, including brain damage, without you having symptoms, but that damage will effect your future health and lifespan. Ironically, it may create a co-morbidity if you get Covid again and you’ll be considered part of a vulnerable population.
For some, it is very severe. One acquaintance had enough brain damage to cause aphasia, and needs speech therapy. Others go from fit to out-of-breath walking down the street.
As the policy in most Western nations is “Everyone will get it, let’s just make sure it doesn’t swamp the hospitals,” let’s run some numbers. Assume everyone is 80 percent. The US population is 329 million, so 263 million people will get Covid. Of those, assume 10 percent (and I’ve seen double that number, but we’re going with conservative estimates), about 33 million people, will get Long Covid.
In the EU, numbers run to about 36 million. Worldwide, excluding China and Japan (who seem to be handling Omicron), there are about 5.9 billion people (with some generous rounding against Long Covid). 80 percent of that is 3.9, so you’re talking 390 million people with Long Covid.
These are VERY conservative numbers. Long Covid estimates go as high as 20 percent that I’ve seen, and there is the issue of re-infection. If you get Covid multiple times, do you have multiple chances to get Long Covid? Bear in mind that there will be new variants as well, so immunity will not carry forward that well.
So it wouldn’t be hard for those headline numbers to double: 780 million worldwide, 72 million in the EU, and 66 million in the US.
These are—staggering numbers, and their affect on our societies cannot be underestimated. The deaths are terrible, but the bad health and disabling of many (and remember, that organ damage will lead to disabling later in people who seem fine now) will require us to restructure large chunks of our society to support those who are injured. Many people will not be able to work, or their working lives will be reduced in length and intensity.
What’s worse about this is that, while people die only once, they can remain sick and disabled for decades. So unlike the Spanish Flu, say, Covid will be with us in ways we can’t ignore — every time someone looks at a friend or loved one who is sick because of it. No matter what people “feel” now, years to decades of watching the consequences will sour them.
Letting Covid run wild through the world was a choice. We made it. A few societies didn’t.
Ironically (or not?), the Chinese Communist Party decided to not let their population die in droves and acquire long-term health problems (the number for China would be 112 million at the conservative end). Most Western “democracies” chose to have mass deaths and Long Covid.
This isn’t just about the horrid consequences of our choice to let Covid rage and mutate, this is also a mass legitimacy loss event for the West and for democracy, though a very few democracies have proved non-psychopathic.
If “freedumb” means governments that let you die or get Long Covid, is it “freedumb” worth having? If being ruled by “commies” means that you live and stay healthy and so do your parents, grandparents, and kids, is “Communism with Chinese characteristics” so bad?
That’s a question a lot of people are going to be asking themselves.
Chicago Clubs
You want this to be true, but then how much legitimacy did these governments have for your before covid? The fact is that most Americans, even many of those with actual, bad covid, just don’t care, and the only legitimacy loss for them is related to mask mandates and lockdowns, because “muh freedum” on one side and “but I am le tired of covid and just want live life” on the other. You want it to be one way, but it’s another way.
Ian Welsh
The people who oppose masks/vaccines, etc… are loud, but I see no polling that indicates they are a majority.
Even people strongly pro-Covid will change. Give them years to decades of caring for their disabled relatives. I’m assuming, degraded as they are, Americans are still capable of caring for a few people other than themselves.
But if you’re right, and you may be, so be it. China will whale your ass, because they won’t be carrying around 10 to 20% of their population disabled. This is similar to people not overthrowing governments due to failure to handle climate change. OK, but the real world exists.
(Also, of course, this isn’t just about America. Not everyone is insane, and seeing “system A can handle and a plague and system B can’t” will have its affect no matter how crazy Americans and many other Westerners are.)
BlizzardOfOzzz
“Long Covid” is even more fake than regular Covid, which is a glorified case of the sniffles.
Ché Pasa
@Ian
This post needs to be reinforced and repeated again and again so that these fundamental truths can be seen, known and understood.
Our rulership does not believe they are insane. No, they sincerely believe they are doing what is right and just for the long term, not simply for themselves but for the Good of All. As for those who sicken and suffer with Long Covid? Ah, there’s an answer for it; soon enough, they won’t be able to survive, either.
The fact that China and Japan and some other countries have done a pretty good job keeping their populations relatively healthy and alive speaks well for their public health agencies and the cooperation they receive from the government and their plutocrats (after all, China and Japan have them too). But if the rest of the world is being ravaged by this disease, what is the ultimate advantage to them unless they become Hermit Kingdoms again? I think that’s what our rulers are counting on.
And you’re right, the Resisters and Deniers in this country are nowhere near a majority. They may be 10%. Maybe. Just because some of the news outlets inflate them into a Huuuuuuge Majority doesn’t make it so. But let’s remember that 10% of any population can cause enormous disruption and chaos. Which they seem intent on doing.
NR
You heard it here first, people – a glorified case of the sniffles killed a million Americans. That’s the world right-wingers live in.
anon
I have a colleague who got Covid. She and her husband recovered but she has reported feeling very fatigued and having a strange sensation in her leg. She did not go to the doctor for these symptoms. What if that sensation in the leg becomes more serious, like a blood clot? She won’t know for sure unless she brings it up at her next annual physical or if something serious happens to her at a point when it may be too late to treat.
I assume most Americans with mild symptoms like her will not go to the doctor because they have a habit of not going to the hospital until they are at death’s door. I have friends in other countries with universal health care who go to the hospital for the common cold because they never have to worry about a massive hospital bill.
Universal health care needs to be implemented in the USA asap because of Covid and the potentially life threatening symptoms that people are ignoring. We may not know the long-term consequences of Covid until 10-20 years from now, similar to 9/11 first responders who started dying of cancer many years after the event.
Also, based on anecdotal evidence, Americans in general are against following mask wearing rules. It amazes me to see workers at grocery stores and restaurants who don’t wear masks. It would be considered “communism” and “socialism” if these rules were more strictly enforced. I see most people not wearing masks where I live unless it is a place where mask wearing is strictly enforced (public libraries, post offices, and hospitals, for instance).
js
I mean if there is no way of knowing you have long covid (obviously not true in many cases, but in the invisible cases) who is to say many of us didn’t get it in Feb 2020? Because people I know were sick then, quite sick and I had contact. Maybe I’m just the asymptomatic one. I still don’t think it’s a good idea to go out and get covid (for the first time or again). So precautions may be warranted, but the ship may have sailed for most everyone even those who don’t know it because they were among the asymptomatic, or among the asymptomatic even in Feb 2020 or earlier.
different clue
Perhaps “communism versus democracy” is the binary the establishment will try forcing the populations facing the deliberate “spread covid everywhere” policy are herded into considering. Perhaps that is why the MSM and etc. are so silent about Western Australia’s success at keeping NotWestern Australia’s “spread covid” approach out of Western Australia, thereby keeping covid itself out of Western Australia. Which shows that a Western Demcratish Freeish jurisdiction can suppress covid.
In early December I attended the Acres USA conference in Cincinnati , Ohio. One of the speaker/presenters was Don Huber, Professor Emeritus of Plant Pathology at Purdue University. His presentation was plant-soil mineral nutrition management related.
In strictly informal conversation afterwards, the subject of covid came up. I did not have notepad or pen with me and could only remember and recollect afterwards what was said, both at that conversation I had with him, and the next day in a conversation I overheard parts of. Here is a partial curriculum vitae for Professor Emeritus of Plant Pathology Don Huber for credibility assessment purposes. ( He is also a retired Army Colonel who was in charge of the biological terror/counterterror threat surveillance and countering efforts after 9/11 . His speciality was agricultural diseases).
https://www.nvlv.nl/downloads/Dr_Huber_bio.pdf
The gist is this . . . . that based on all his knowledge of genetics, microbiology, etc., Prof. Huber considers covid to be a very strictly and entirely artificially engineered virus. He said the principals involved in each step of the engineering ( and each vaccinology-relevant gene-engineering devolopment, each patentable gene sequence, etc.) patented every relevant patentable step. He said this is discussed in detail in 3 books. One by Robert Kennedy Jr., one by Joseph Mercola I think, one by David Martin.
He said Fauci was very involved in channeling money to the covid design engineering project at various stages. He considers covid to NOT be engineered BY China. He considers it to be engineered on behalf of Fauci and others who directed funding to the effort and guided and targeted some of the research, including research done IN China but not FOR China, but rather done FOR Fauci IN China.
He also said he once met someone who had been a graduate student along with Fauci many decades ago and he claimed that this person said that Fauci told this person several decades ago that he ( Fauci) stated having the personal ambition and goal of developing a disease that could only be prevented or controlled by a vaccine that he ( Fauci) would have total control over. Perhaps an enterprising investigative journalist could try getting in touch with Huber while Huber is still alive and see if Huber would have anything to say about this on the record to a journalist with a notepad and/or a tape recorder.
DMC
Mercola is a well known dingbat and crank magnet. Anything he has to say about anything should be considered specieous at the best. I question the relevant knowledge of a plant geneticist to viral epidemiology and have never heard of the third guy. “He said he once met someone…”isn’t even hearsay.
hickory
I hate to say it, but I second Chicago Club’s view. Past errors don’t seem to affect future legitimacy!
For example, the US consistently takes poor care of vets who suffer PTSD plus physical injuries war after war, and their families see it, and it inhibits the warmaking none that I can see. And every war the soldiers can see that warmaking is not about democracy/human rights/etc, and yet the same cover stories persist.
Has there ever been a mining/fossil fuel extraction project that put aside sufficient funds to cover its cleanup costs after it finished? Or has every single one simply gone bankrupt after the taps run dry and skedattled leaving an indignant local/state gov’t asking who could’ve known!?!? And yet every time a new project sets up the the gov’t and corporation assure the locals funds will be set aside… and the project goes forward.
America has lied to itself so many times, and the vast majority have succeeded for the liar: lies to get into war from the Lusitania to Gulf of Tonkin to babies in incubators, and still if you don’t support the next war you’re not a proper american.
Besides, both parties own the vaccine: Trump started it, and Biden continued it. The right hated masks and lockdowns and really any pandemic measure, where the liberals happily took off the masks the moment they got vaccinated so they could lord over the unvaxxed. Who exactly is there gonna be to get upset? No major faction now is pushing for a stronger response to covid that involves things besides vaccines. It’s either no response/let’r’rip (republicans) or vaxvaxvax (liberals)… if everyone gets covid, and 30mil have long covid, the only political response I’m fairly certain of is republicans mocking democrats for how poorly the vaccines protected people from long covid.
Ian, Americans are the masters of wishful thinking. Or not thinking about it all, and pretending things are ok and being happy, which is different. Sure, some Americans care – I’d say many do in some personal ways towards those around them, and in generic ways about the broader world- but loss of legitimacy seems like a stretch, not a guarantee.
What seems much more sure is that as a county, should it even exist in 10 years, it’ll be much less vital than it would otherwise be, less productive and creative.
Lex
Whoa. So the evil mastermind behind the sniffles is a career bureaucrat? I mean was Fauci’s first crack at this AIDS, cause he performed badly then too? I’d wager that Fauci’s greatest skill is politics and knowing what the boss wants without the boss having to say it.
bruce wilder
If the long, always frustrated struggle to institute single-payer health care has not de-legitimated government, I doubt the experience of long COVID will have an appreciable effect.
The U.S. is a deeply corrupted polity and most people don’t enough to care, beyond blaming the “other” guy. We’ve seen now that the Biden Administration is at least as stupid and reckless and inhumane as Trump. I suppose we could hope that the “contrast” (or lack thereof) between the Parties with regard to competence or humane good will might serve to de-legitimate the kayfabe of “our democracy”. That would be an achievement that might open up some possibilities. But, in the meantime, we slunk onward and downwards.
Chicago Clubs
“But if you’re right, and you may be, so be it. China will whale your ass”
Probably, and we will mostly deserve it.
“Also, of course, this isn’t just about America.”
Quite right. My perspective is limited to the US. I have no idea what other nations’ populations are saying about their governments’ (lack of) covid response.
Trinity
Research has shown that covid can affect many other organs than the respiratory system, including heart, brain, liver, and kidneys. In other words, critical organs that we need to live. One project even said it can affect our skin (which is just another very vital human organ). Just do a search for multi-organ covid.
Even worse, it’s not just long covid. Our food has fewer nutrients than ever, due to industrial agriculture but also the constant spraying that goes on to eliminate nuisance insects (which puts the balance of the insect population out of whack, which in turn leads to overpopulation/underpopulation of certain insect populations). Fewer nutrients means reduced health in general.
Then there are the GMOs, no one knows what that has done to our bodies, but we know what it has done to heritage produce, and farmers all over the world, etc.
And then top off all this with climate change and the stresses that puts on both humans, animals, and plants, and we have a sharply increased threat to our general health. There have been several articles that deer now have covid, and this is probably true for other less visible wildlife (or less managed). This is a virus that purportedly jumped species to begin with.
So we can argue all day long about covid’s virulence, and masking, or vaccines, which are equivalent to the band playing on as the Titanic sinks.
All of this is because we continue to ignore the interconnection of everything and continue to pretend we are independent of nature. Heck, many can’t even admit connection with their neighbors, and continually do exactly what they want us to do: turn on our neighbors instead of focusing on those who are really to blame for this sad situation.
This is becoming an extinction level event.
Keith in Modesto
I feel like we are in a slow-moving avalanche – the land is shifting already, but it’s starting so slowly and over such a wide area, we find it hard to notice. Once it’s moving enough to be undeniable, it will be too late to attempt an escape. It’s already too late to really stop it.
There’s a great Kosh quote about this: “The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote.”
I should probably learn Chinese, but I feel so old.
DMC
https://bulletin.represent.us/american-government-isnt-democracy/
It’s official. The one percent have more than 99 percent of the influence on what the government does and the 99 percent of the population have less than one percent of the influence. So tell me again about how important it is to vote in national elections, when corporate stooges are all that’s offer.
the hanged man
What I find fascinating is that in the last two years, and especially last several weeks to Omicron, I don’t think I remember the media being on one side of this big of an issue since the run up to the Iraq War. (maybe the 2016 election?)
“You’re going to get covid. Deal with it. There’s nothing we can do about it, and it’s your fault if you get it.”
“TINA”
“China/NZ isn’t keeping its citizens safe, and besides if they were, that’s somehow still bad?”
“The economy must stay open because I must have my treats and free refills. See point 1.”
It’s amazingly coordinated, and I’m somehow still astonished, even though I see myself as relatively cynical, especially regarding the PMC.
different clue
@DMC,
One wonders if America’s 100 million or so non-voters could all decide to troll the national elections by entering the polls and voting at personal individual random all over the 3rd and 4th and 5th party map. Would the biparty depublicrats be embarrassed and humiliated? What about the MSM and all the other brainshapers of opinion?
What if a hundred million troll-voters all saw themselves see eachother witness the humiliation of the Establishment? Any effect on anything? Maybe just a good laugh, anyway?
DMC
It would be a hoot to see the Republicrats voted out for the Greens and the Libertarians and the Constitution party. But you have to ask yourself, how long would it be before all of them were bought off, or scared off by the plutocrats. Without some kind of guarantee of incorruptibility, I just don’t see where elective representative democracy can possibly thrive in an environment where there are a billionaires.
NR
the hanged man:
Can you give us some examples of the kind of stories you’re talking about?
different clue
I begin to think that the next few elections will see two slogans battling . . .
Rock the vote versus
Troll the vote.
Burn the fucker down. Make the system scream. Troll the vote.
Tom2
The main problem with Long covid and that probably most countries do not even try to diagnose it. Rather, they don’t want. I know two persons who’ve lost audition on one ear, both ca 60, both were still working on site (a year and a half ago). They were never told about the possibility it was long covid and that they had caught it without knowing it. After one of them was persistant, she now moved to another doctor who seems specialized in these kind of cases (earlier considered as caused by “stress”) and who is happy she has found a new guinea pig. But nowhere do they talk or write about long covid, and certainly not to employers. This is a major EU country known for its good capacity at keeping full vaults and cooking books.
Tom2
Trinity, thanks for these sane words. Talking GMOs elsewhere would get you banned. I still look at the tofu sticker to check if it is not GMO, but now… I am a GMO myself, after adenovirus, am I not?
someofparts
Well, all of those people with long covid who will need the solicitous care of loving friends and relations, if they are lucky, will also be at special risk f they get infected again, which apparently happens repeatedly.
How are such people to organize? For that matter, if the disease is global, how is anyone to organize? Regardless of how any of us feel about it, this disease is a direct attack on the human capacity to organize or work together in large groups everywhere.
Ché Pasa
On the question of Legitimacy:
Beyond the issue of the US’s bizarre and anachronistic electoral system which has produced and perpetuated anomalies over and over again, I think we see in the current “let ‘er rip” attitude toward the virus a very clear reflection of the will and desires of a handful of ultra-rich libertarians who have no interest in anything but increasing their wealth and power. The State and the People be damned.
They are obviously in complete control. Whatever opposition there may have been to that particular elite faction has clearly given up. We are at their mercy.
Many of us will die; many more will be disabled. And if there is no uprising against them and their lack of…. anything but self-interest, it will happen again. And again and again.
Until they and only they are left to oversee the wreckage.
They are not in office and no one elected them. Yet they control practically all the levers of power and are quite capable of ordering their elected and appointed servants around as they wish.
I thought for a time that the ruling paradigm was shifting. Well, yes. But not in a positive direction.
Astrid
Hyper normalization.
The legitimacy was lost long ago and only small children and the well off elderly still really believe in it (and the latter only for themselves and as much as they need to justify nagging for grandchildren).
Everyone knows that collapse is coming and unstoppable but almost nobody wants to look beyond. We’ve all been in the Wile E. Coyote mid air moment for years, desperately not looking down.
https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/s2p35d/i_think_i_know_why_people_just_dont_care/
DMC
Astrid and Che:
WORD!!
different clue
@someofparts,
How to organize? Those who are still physically well enough to withstand the physical and emotional rigors of organizing can still organize. How? Over the computernet till that is shut down for good. Concurrently and also after . . . by landmail and over the phone. And meeting in outdoor spaces from Spring through Fall sitting 6 feet apart in each direction and wearing N ( or whatever ) 95 masks.
Organizing will be slower and more tedious, with speedbumps and circuit breakers built in. It could have the unintended benefit of filtering out the unserious.
Organize for what? That is up to every groupload of people who would want to organize for one thing or another. Hopefully the different grouploads could avoid the
spiteful envy and jealousy which has always been the Mother’s Milk and Prime Directive of left wing political culture till now. If the different grouploads of differently organized people can avoid that, then they can avoid wasting their lives and the life and energy of every single person around them with typical leftist petty raids on eachothers’ groupmembers for recruitment and conversion.
If they can’t, then they too will become a series of sumps into which all the Intensely Passionate Worst drain. And all the Convictionless Best will avoid organizing and organizations totally and completely.
And the Upper Class which we will still have will seed every embryonic new organization with false-flag members designed to perpetuate and advance every such leftist instinct of spite and envy and jealousy to keep any emergent left groups stuck in the same old leftist tarpit of leftist spite and envy and jealousy.
So any wannabe change-seekers will have to reformat and reprogram themselves for a whole new batch of instincts and prime directives. They will have to program their deep brains for a genuine instinct of non-recruiting and non-conversionizing and non-missionizing among and between the groups.
Otherwise it will be just like J. P. Morgan once said . . . ” I can always hire half the Sparts to shoot half the Trots. And then I can hire the remaining half of the Trots to shoot the remaining half of the Sparts.” Or something like that.