I appreciate you describing brain fog as psychological torment.
I think most severe/life-disrupting cases of long COVID are indistinguishable from ME/CFS. (I think it would be correct to say long COVID “causes” ME/CFS.) As someone living with ME/CFS: yes, the cognitive dysfunction is torture. And pushing to do stuff anyway just makes things worse—this is called post-exertional malaise.
The comparison to sleep deprivation is good, but I’ll note that the brain fog I regularly experience due to ME/CFS is much worse than any sleep deprivation I had ever experienced in my life beforehand.
The cognitive dysfunction itself is awful. And the way it crushes your dreams is heartbreaking. Say goodbye to your career and all your intellectual interests.
(I mean, say goodbye to your interests in general. Your physical stamina gets wrecked too. I rarely have the physical stamina to cook simple meals without post-exertional malaise.)
The social isolation stemming from the mental fatigue is threefold:
1) I feel stupid when talking to my friends, because I kind of *am* stupid now. Especially in the context of real-time conversations. My memory and processing speed is not good.
2) When I try calling friends anyway, I am punished by post-exertional malaise afterwards. e.g. I spend the following day very uncomfortable and unable to function well enough to even distract myself. In this state, even watching simple TV can be uncomfortably exhausting.
3) My healthy friends just don’t understand what it’s like to be going through such a horrible illness. I feel boring. They don’t know what to say. It works out to be very alienating and bad for mental health.
On top of all that, so many people don’t believe this illness is “real” in some sense. They think it’s just laziness, or aging, or psychological. (FWIW, my illness started at 23, and I saw multiple psychologists who concluded there was no plausible psychological basis for my illness.)
Imagine being psychologically tortured, socially isolated, and gaslit by a ton of people arguing that you aren’t even sick. Potentially with no light at the end of the tunnel. It’s extremely upsetting.
Lots of healthy people argue that lockdowns are bad for their mental health. I’d argue that ME/CFS is orders of magnitude worse—even in my case, which is relatively mild. Up to you to decide if the risk is worth it in your case.
I’ve skimmed a lot of long COVID prevalence studies, and unfortunately, they often have huge sample biases and don’t ask the right questions to track ME/CFS incidence. Overall, I agree with Scott’s range of “a few tenths of a percent to a few percent” as the risk of really bad long COVID symptoms.
I appreciate you describing brain fog as psychological torment.
I think most severe/life-disrupting cases of long COVID are indistinguishable from ME/CFS. (I think it would be correct to say long COVID “causes” ME/CFS.) As someone living with ME/CFS: yes, the cognitive dysfunction is torture. And pushing to do stuff anyway just makes things worse—this is called post-exertional malaise.
The comparison to sleep deprivation is good, but I’ll note that the brain fog I regularly experience due to ME/CFS is much worse than any sleep deprivation I had ever experienced in my life beforehand.
The cognitive dysfunction itself is awful. And the way it crushes your dreams is heartbreaking. Say goodbye to your career and all your intellectual interests.
(I mean, say goodbye to your interests in general. Your physical stamina gets wrecked too. I rarely have the physical stamina to cook simple meals without post-exertional malaise.)
The social isolation stemming from the mental fatigue is threefold:
1) I feel stupid when talking to my friends, because I kind of *am* stupid now. Especially in the context of real-time conversations. My memory and processing speed is not good.
2) When I try calling friends anyway, I am punished by post-exertional malaise afterwards. e.g. I spend the following day very uncomfortable and unable to function well enough to even distract myself. In this state, even watching simple TV can be uncomfortably exhausting.
3) My healthy friends just don’t understand what it’s like to be going through such a horrible illness. I feel boring. They don’t know what to say. It works out to be very alienating and bad for mental health.
On top of all that, so many people don’t believe this illness is “real” in some sense. They think it’s just laziness, or aging, or psychological. (FWIW, my illness started at 23, and I saw multiple psychologists who concluded there was no plausible psychological basis for my illness.)
Imagine being psychologically tortured, socially isolated, and gaslit by a ton of people arguing that you aren’t even sick. Potentially with no light at the end of the tunnel. It’s extremely upsetting.
Lots of healthy people argue that lockdowns are bad for their mental health. I’d argue that ME/CFS is orders of magnitude worse—even in my case, which is relatively mild. Up to you to decide if the risk is worth it in your case.
I’ve skimmed a lot of long COVID prevalence studies, and unfortunately, they often have huge sample biases and don’t ask the right questions to track ME/CFS incidence. Overall, I agree with Scott’s range of “a few tenths of a percent to a few percent” as the risk of really bad long COVID symptoms.
So sorry to hear you’re suffering through this, and thank you for sharing your experience!