this is concerning
On May 11, 2023, the federal public health emergency declaration for COVID-19 came to an end. Only a few months later, and cases are already starting to surge across the country again . This decision was made despite emerging science surrounding long COVID – a condition in which symptoms of the disease linger for months or even years. While the general public ignores and downplays the risk of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID, long COVID may well prove to be one of the biggest health problems of the 21st Century, presenting a real risk that a secondary pandemic of chronic illness will be overlooked.
While things seem to be getting back to normal for most people, those with long COVID are still suffering – and this suffering will likely continue on indefinitely if nothing is done to change course.
As previously reported by Salon, an alarming scientific pattern is revealing itself across intersecting areas of research, which suggests that long COVID could be linked to neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s – having to do with the misfolding of alpha-synuclein proteins in the human nervous system. This misfolding is possibly triggered by an initial COVID infection and can lead to unwanted accumulation of alpha-synuclein and the formation of Lewy bodies, resulting in neurological disorders.
It’s imperative that we follow this trail of science all the way through to the end. We can hope it’s disproved, but ignoring it will leave us headed in the direction of disaster: debilitating, chronic, irreversible health conditions — or what some are calling a “mass-disabling event.”
However, as a result of the Public Health Emergency Act expiring, COVID research and tracking has become more difficult. Coverage for tests, contact tracing, research funding, data reporting – it’s all been thrown out the window, along with what little COVID precaution was left. Yet every COVID infection still puts an individual at risk of developing long COVID – which, according to the data, is increasingly likely among the less vaccinated and the more times you’ve contracted the virus.
It remains unclear whether certain COVID variants have greater potential to cause long COVID, but what is clear is that long haulers (people with long COVID) often report symptoms that line up with what those going through the prodromal (subclinical) phases of various brain diseases describe – meaning that long COVID patients are quite possibly experiencing the early stages of neurodegeneration.
The article is quite long and if you’re following this I highly recommend that you read it. This information is starting to surface all over the place and it’s quite concerning. Don[t throw those masks away. You may need them.