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Medicine Science

Many Severe Covid-19 Survivors Die Within a Year, Study Finds (gizmodo.com) 338

fahrbot-bot shares a report from Gizmodo: New research this week finds that people hospitalized with severe covid-19 often pay a heavy price afterward. The study concluded that these survivors were more than twice as likely to die in the subsequent 12 months compared to people who had tested negative for the virus. This relatively increased risk of death was even higher for people under the age 65. While there remains much research to be done, studies thus far have made it clear that many covid-19 survivors can experience lingering symptoms even after the infection itself has cleared up. And those who are hospitalized are all the more vulnerable to these aftereffects. Severe covid often seriously damages the lungs and other organs, while life-saving interventions like steroids, ventilators, and life support devices like ECMO can take a toll on the body as well.

Researchers from the University of Florida had already published a study in July showing that hospitalized survivors were significantly more likely to be hospitalized again within six months, compared to those with mild to moderate covid-19. This new study of theirs, based on an examination of anonymous electronic health records, instead looked at the long-term mortality risk of patients up to a year later. Nearly 14,000 patients in the same health care system were studied. These included 178 diagnosed with severe COVID-19 and 246 diagnosed with mild to moderate covid-19, as well as many others who tested negative for the virus but may have been sick for other reasons and received medical care in some way. Compared to covid-negative patients, and even after accounting for other factors like age and sex, those with severe covid were 2.5 times more likely to die in the next 12 months after their illness. Overall, just over 52% of severe covid patients died in a year's time. There was no significant increased risk of mortality for mild to moderate cases, however.
"About 20% of the deaths among these patients post-infection were attributed to problems with either the respiratory or cardiovascular system," the report adds. "[A]mong patients in this study, the associated risk of dying was actually relatively greater for survivors of severe covid under age 65 than it was for patients over 65. Compared to similarly aged but non-infected people, they were more than three times more likely to die in the months after their hospitalization."

The findings have been published in the journal Frontiers in Medicine.
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Many Severe Covid-19 Survivors Die Within a Year, Study Finds

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  • Totally fine (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 02, 2021 @08:06AM (#62039011)

    Just like the common cold, except for the severe organ damage.

    • Yeah, but the common cold has plenty of history so we know the long term effects.

      COVID is only a year or so old so the long term effects are just coming to light.

    • Re:Totally fine (Score:4, Insightful)

      by hey! ( 33014 ) on Thursday December 02, 2021 @12:43PM (#62040217) Homepage Journal

      Actually any severe illness is going to be associated with an increase in all-cause mortality and subsequent rehospitalization. It used to be assumed that if an ICU saved a patient's life and that patient was discharged, the patient simply recovered. We now know that's often not the case. Patients who have been very sick suffer a wide range of impairments [wikipedia.org] not directly related to their original illness, including higher all-cause mortality and hospital admissions.

      It wouldn't be surprising, given COVID's propensity to affect many organs and to produce long term sequelae, for it to be worse than most comparable respiratory disease, but this study doesn't appear to show that. IIRC, the study groups consisted of people with severe COVID, people with mild COVID, and people who consistently tested COVID-negative. Given these study groups it *can't* show that COVID is any different than other diseases of similar acute severity. Nor, do I think, was the study intended to show that.

      Science is painstaking, and there never is enough funding to do the research you really want to do. So it takes a while to resolve a question, and you often have to start out by showing something you expect *probably* happens actually *does* happen.

  • Choices... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AndyKron ( 937105 ) on Thursday December 02, 2021 @08:13AM (#62039039)
    Spend $50,000 going to the hospital and die, or get a free shot. Choices, choices...
    • Re:Choices... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Thursday December 02, 2021 @08:26AM (#62039079) Homepage Journal

      It's also why some governments (like the UK's) have decided that for it to count as a COVID death it has to be within 28 days of a positive diagnosis/test. If you factor in the people who didn't die within a month but whose lives were shortened significantly, the figures are much worse.

      Then we have the number living with Long COVID, with estimates from 10-25%.

      • Actually, I think this rule is set that way because you need to count something that you can count easily and unambiguously, so a doctor in London and one in Birmingham will count in exactly the same way. So yes, Covid deaths 29 days after infection are not counted, and run over by a bus 7 days after infection is counted - that way we know _exactly what has been counted_.

        Once that is done you can use statistics to calculate how many deaths are due to Covid, but you need an exact number to start with.
        • I also see that serious cases of covid that don't kill the patient aren't always included in the stats. So some people look at "deaths" and see that the chances of dying are low, especially with younger people, but they overlook that the chances are much higher than the chance of dying. It's sort of like noticing that automobile deaths are going down and deciding that you don't need to wear your seatbelt anymore. Add into that the misinformation that "it's just like the flu" and people are thinking "why

    • Hey you can always take the still on the experimental list regeneron treatment. It's only $2100 a pop!

      • Re:Choices... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Thursday December 02, 2021 @01:24PM (#62040433)

        Hey you can always take the still on the experimental list regeneron treatment. It's only $2100 a pop!

        Ya, I always found it hypocritical (and sad and funny) that people in Florida shunned / eschewed a free, small vaccine injection, because it was (in their words) too new, untested, experimental and (was) only approved for emergency use, but when they got sick flocked to get an IV bag of Regeneron in their arm, heavily promoted by their Governor Ron DeSantis, which is also too new, untested, experimental and only approved for emergency use. The things stubborn people do for their politics...

    • Third choice:

      Get your shot and quit worrying about what other people do.

      People have a right to make stupid decisions.

  • Get vaccinated (Score:5, Insightful)

    by VeryFluffyBunny ( 5037285 ) on Thursday December 02, 2021 @08:26AM (#62039081)
    The more we find out about the effects of COVID on the human body, the worse it seems. By now, it should be a no-brainer to everyone with access to high quality information: get vaccinated ASAP. The German health minister's blunt comment captured it, "Everyone's going to be vaccinated, recovering or dead." There's already 5 million+ dead. People who are refusing vaccination are the ones dying in developed countries now & they're stressing our already overburdened healthcare systems & degrading the care available for non-COVID patients who need ICUs.
    • Re:Get vaccinated (Score:5, Informative)

      by Inglix the Mad ( 576601 ) on Thursday December 02, 2021 @08:40AM (#62039121)
      Well, they've got to stick it to the libs. I mean, it's no big deal according to the far right wing... just the flu. Yeah, and so was the "Spanish" flu. Personally, if it only affected them, I'd let them skip the shot and suffer the consequences. Unfortunately their choice is like handing an active shooter magazines full of bullets to keep shooting that little bit longer, and maybe get really lucky with a mutation that kills drastically more people.

      I think it's time for governments to stop pretending. We didn't (effectively) kill of smallpox by dragging our feet. We did it by telling people, "This isn't just about you. This is bad, and we have to worry about this for the human race." Why? Because it only takes one bad mutation and suddenly we have millions dying in short order, quite probably even vaccinated people. I know for a fact in the US we have precedent a mile high that we can tell people to get vaccinated or face penalties. Time to get tough with these anti-science, anti-intellectual, anti-reality morons and protect the species.
      • by CohibaVancouver ( 864662 ) on Thursday December 02, 2021 @09:02AM (#62039191)

        Well, they've got to stick it to the libs. I mean, it's no big deal according to the far right wing... just the flu.

        The thing that is so STUPID with this "it's just the flu" line from antivaxx nutjobs is the flu is *horrible*. It's two weeks of hell.

        Even if it was "just like the flu" why on EARTH would you choose that over a free, safe, vaccination?

      • It's crazy, too, because the rapid development of the vaccines was considered a Republican triumph right up until the 2020 election. I remember people saying they were going to get vaccinated just to 'stick it to libs' who were distrustful of the Trump Administration's involvement in the process.
      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        The right wing conspiracy theorists seem to be slowly waking up to vaccines being a good idea. Of course they have to have a conspiracy theory for it, in this case that liberals knew that if they all got vaccinated it would make conservatives not want to get jabbed and die.

        Whatever gets them to take the vaccine I guess.

    • by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Thursday December 02, 2021 @08:42AM (#62039123)

      My body my choice!

      Alright I'd like to take recreational drugs

      Oh certainly not, have a drink instead

      How about an abortion then since it's my body and my choice?

      Oh hell no, in fact you're being sued by random people for having that done you heathen

      My baby is sick and needs medical treatment and I'm unable to afford groceries, can you help me?

      Well sucks to be you now, good luck

      I thought you cared about children?

      What ever gave you that idea?

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The German health minister's blunt comment captured it, "Everyone's going to be vaccinated, recovering or dead."

      It's a pity that in practice the message gets dumbed down to the binary "vaccinated or dead" to the exclusion of the not so glamorous "recovered".

      My situation is that I have already recovered from an infection, but also was cautioned against vaccinating by my specialist doctor due to a rare chronic disease with a lot of risk factors (the doctor, in somewhat CYA fashion - which I don't blame her

      • by Octorian ( 14086 ) on Thursday December 02, 2021 @09:53AM (#62039379) Homepage

        Given how far this thing has spread, and how contagious it has become, "don't get vaccinated and don't get infected" does not seem to be a realistic choice anymore. (Theoretically, it is the best/safest choice, but is only available to you if no one else opts for it.)

        So yeah, at this point, you pretty much have to pick one. You can take your chances with an infection, or with a vaccine. And anything the vaccine could do to you, the real virus is likely to do far worse.

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          It's a horrible position for people with existing conditions that mean they can't safely be vaccinated. They end up trying to figure out which is worse, the vaccine or COVID, and there is very little data available to them to make that determination.

      • by jacks smirking reven ( 909048 ) on Thursday December 02, 2021 @10:09AM (#62039475)

        That's great that you can make the best decision for yourself but you have to realize you are likely in the 0.1% or 0.01% of all humans at this point with a legitimate "rare" condition that would preclude you from receiving any of the available covid vaccine choices (it's not simplythe vaccine) which all have varying ingredients and risk factors.

        The point is that other 99.9% of people don't have any real excuse. As time has gone on the pool of who can take them has grown and grown and now the recommendation for even most immunocompromised people has changed from "maybe hold off" to "you should absolutely get it considering your condition".

        Even the infamous Israel study that showed a high immunity for people with recovered immunity showed they have exponentially greater protection if they boost their immunity with a vaccine.

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          There do seem to be major differences between the vaccines in terms of the reaction people have to them and how they interact with existing conditions. The problem is that there are a lot of conditions, a lot of anecdotal evidence, and very little money available to do studies to figure out exactly which ones are safe for which people.

          This is often the way with rare conditions. There isn't much money to be made in researching them, and governments with limited budgets mostly spend them where they will help

          • Absolutely, and those people with those very specific conditions likely already know the risks with any vaccine in regards to their condition. Almost all the covid vaccines follow the same risk patterns as vaccines for previous ones as in almost every case the majority of risk in terms of allergies or side effects is not in the active ingredient but the packaging and preservatives. Many people who are severly immunocompromised are in fact now able to take mRNA shots since there is 0 risk of any accidental

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by swillden ( 191260 )

        My situation is that I have already recovered from an infection, but also was cautioned against vaccinating by my specialist doctor due to a rare chronic disease with a lot of risk factors

        No vaccine mandate I've ever heard of fails to include a medical exemption, so I don't see what your concern is.

        Your health is best served by an extremely harsh mandate that forces everyone who doesn't have a medical exemption to get vaccinated, because that is the best way to keep you from getting infected (again).

  • Even if you survive covid screws up your lungs and sometimes you're nervous system. You're not walking away from something like that unscathed.
    • This is something that has been talked about among researchers for quite a while. We did not have the data needed to verify it yet but it seemed inevitable. You can't infect this many areas of the human body and do so much damage without there being long term consequences. I actually expect a lot more research to show even longer term effects as we go. You see severe measles effects 10 years after people recover and I think we will see the same with covid.

      The idea that you either die or you recover was idio

    • The overall drop of life expectancy in 2020 is also very hard to refute.

      I'm surprised nobody responding to this story has pointed out that correlation != causation. The fact is this is not a controlled study, and you will get different results based on how you (retroactively) decide to create comparison groups. Overall susceptibility to disease is not possible to fully characterize before the body is actually challenged, so it's impossible to know what else might have happened to somebody if Covid didn'

    • I know 5 people who had it. 2 made full recoveries, even though it took a few months until they were back. 2 are still struggling.

      What really pains me is the brother of a close friend of mine. Used to run in Ironman competitions and now can barely walk 5 minutes without being completely exhausted and needs to sit down. No later than at this point this fucking scared me shitless. I mean, this guy was about as healthy as you can possibly be, what would that crap do to me, a geek who spends 99% of his time sit

  • by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Thursday December 02, 2021 @08:40AM (#62039117) Journal
    Considering people with severe covid have lung, heart, and other organ damage [mayoclinic.org], have highly lowered blood oxygen levels [umn.edu] for a sustained period of time, and all the drugs needed to keep them alive, is it any wonder they die more readily. The body's been brutally punished. Why would it not fail more than those who didn't get as sick?
    • Also in many cases they are not showing signs of healing and we also know that covid damages neural tissue also. Nothing that does so much damage to your body just goes away with you being fine. It is likely that survivors are permanently damage without a technological fix. There is a lot of research going on now for how to repair these areas of the body. Our medical technology is progressing quickly but I think for many it will be too late.

    • Considering people with severe covid have lung, heart, and other organ damage [mayoclinic.org], have highly lowered blood oxygen levels [umn.edu] for a sustained period of time, and all the drugs needed to keep them alive, is it any wonder they die more readily. The body's been brutally punished. Why would it not fail more than those who didn't get as sick?

      The issue with Covid-19 is that it may have severe symptoms, it may not.

      But we can make an analogy, and a good one - The vaccine is like wearing a seat belt or a motorcycle helmet.

      You don't necessarily need either of them. you might get in a minor fender bender or just lay the bike down gently. Or they might save your life or prevent debilitating injury. So I wear my helmet, I wear my seat belt.

      Yet we see people who ride without helmets, we see people who won't wear seat belts. I've seen many peopl

  • by LatencyKills ( 1213908 ) on Thursday December 02, 2021 @08:53AM (#62039159)

    I've got news for you - ANYONE who ends up in the ICU on a ventilator for a dozen plus days is far more likely to die in the next year compared to someone who didn't, whether they ended up there because of COVID or if a Gilligan's Island coconut struck them in the head, though COVID could well be making those mortality numbers even worse (that would make a pretty interesting study, and I'm going to recommend it to my sister who is the director of anesthesiology at the VA). Really, you don't want to end up in the ICU for any reason if you can avoid it - the best possible outcome is months of intense physical therapy with no long term disability. That's the best outcome you can hope for and everything goes downhill from there. So stop rolling the freaking dice and get the shot, and, uh, don't stand under coconut trees.

    • by kackle ( 910159 )
    • So I guess the goal should be to not get Covid or at least try everything you can that you won't have to go on a ventilator?

    • Or perhaps that majority of people that get severe covid have comorbidities or compromised immune system and are more likely to die in the next year anyway.
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      A useful metric is to compare the average mortality rate for previous years and COVID years. That figure will be influenced by many factors, such as lockdowns reducing road accidents and increasing mental health problems, as well as deaths directly linked to COVID. That makes them a good metric to judge a country's performance by.

  • by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Thursday December 02, 2021 @09:10AM (#62039213) Journal

    COVID is no party. It wrecks you. I have a friend who lives on the other side of the country who got it in June of 2020 and still isn't right.

    I get absolutely no joy from reading about people like Marcus Lamb, the anti-vaxx televangelist who dies from COVID this week at age 64. No serious pre-existing conditions (he had diabetes type 2, but it was well controlled). They gave him all the monoclonal antibodies and Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine and I'm sure it cost a ton, but he could have gotten a little jab and maybe he still would have caught COVID but probably he wouldn't be dead from it. I get no schadenfreude whatsoever from his death. I do get mad about all the people in his "congregation" that bought into his evil bullshit and got sick and maybe died or will.

    Seriously, I don't want to see anyone here get sick when there's a free shot. Not even SuperKendall.

    And of course, besides the normal precautions and vaccinations, the best way to keep yourself from dying from COVID is to be healthy. So eat right, get your sleep, and take care of yourselves. I don't want to leave Slashdot to a bunch of trolls with user IDs in the high seven digits. At least not for a while yet.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      "I don't want to see anyone here get sick when there's a free shot. Not even SuperKendall."

      Do not forget that SuperKendall claimed that humans have natural immunity to COVID, as though the initial cruise ship incident proved this. He then argued for HCQ and claimed that omitting Zinc as part of the treatment was conspiratorial, and then moved on to be a megaphone for every destructive Trump lie about COVID that came along. It's what he has done with every issue since the very beginning, it is who he is.

      • I'm not into the virtual signaling that you are, I would be happy if SuperKendall got what was coming to him.

        What kind of damage do you have to have to see any show of human compassion and empathy as "virtue signaling"?

    • COVID is no party. It wrecks you. I have a friend who lives on the other side of the country who got it in June of 2020 and still isn't right.

      I get absolutely no joy from reading about people like Marcus Lamb, the anti-vaxx televangelist who dies from COVID this week at age 64.

      At this point, I don't get joy. But I truly have zero sympathy. I just think "Another stupid ass gets more than he signed up for, so he was happy to die for his conviction".

      It's a hellava hill to choose to die on. But at least now they are dead.

  • by Sloppy ( 14984 ) on Thursday December 02, 2021 @09:10AM (#62039215) Homepage Journal

    These included 178 diagnosed with severe COVID-19 and 246 diagnosed with mild to moderate covid-19, as well as many others who tested negative for the virus but may have been sick for other reasons and received medical care in some way.

    If it's severe, use uppercase. For mild to moderate, use lowercase. Less than that or not sure? Don't use its name directly.

  • I wouldn't have predicted this result, but it sure doesn't surprise me. One of the effects of COVID, and in my non-expert theory the cause of many of the enduring symptoms, is that it creates small circulating blood clots (which sometimes grow). These get stuck in capillaries in various unexpected places, and occasionally cause reduced or blocked blood flow to something important. Brains, hearts, kidneys, livers, that kind of thing. Sometimes this can be cleared or worked around. Other times it does ir

  • I'll take UK numbers. 68 million people, 140,000 Covid deaths in total, about 650,000 deaths in total per year. Let's say another 140,000 cases of survivors of severe Covid.

    Out of 140,000 average people, about 1,340 would normally die in a year. Of the 140,000 survivors of severe Covid, 2,680 would die. That's just 1,340 added to the 140,000 who are already dead. It's bad, but only one percent added to the total number of deaths.

    Unless there is some more statistics that they didn't tell us about.
    • people that get severe covid are more likely to have poorer overall health before getting it than those that don't
  • by Virtucon ( 127420 ) on Thursday December 02, 2021 @10:41AM (#62039643)

    I got the vaccine, I did it when it was first available to me and I had no COVID symptoms or diagnosis prior to getting it. Now after the initial round and a booster I have chronic symptoms associated with the vaccine. I'm one of those rare cases it seems where side effects hit and are associated with the vaccine, not the disease.

    Lucky Me

    Now I'll go and cough awhile.

  • by reanjr ( 588767 ) on Thursday December 02, 2021 @10:57AM (#62039711) Homepage

    My takeaway is that people who are going to be hospitalized and die in the next year are much more likely to acquire a severe case of the rona.

    This fits the other things we know about severe cases.

  • by MiniMike ( 234881 ) on Thursday December 02, 2021 @01:49PM (#62040571)

    Among patients in this study, the associated risk of dying was actually relatively greater for survivors of severe covid under age 65 than it was for patients over 65.

    I would suspect this is because of the lower percentage of patients over 65 who survived the initial infection and hospitalization. The weak ones in that demographic didn't survive to be included in this study.

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