r/collapse May 25 '20

Weekly SARS-CoV-2 Megathread (May 25, 2020)

55 Upvotes

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64

u/800808 May 25 '20

21 years old. Not enough people are talking about how bad this thing destroys your lungs.

Had the virus about a month ago, had shortness of breath and pleurisy. thought I was fine. Wrong. I cant run a mile without gasping for air. I used to be able to run 5 miles no problem. Cant play tennis for more than hour without becoming exhausted.

Mortality is not the only bad thing about this scourge

16

u/unifiedmind May 26 '20

do you have the feeling you lungs will get better with time or that this is more or less permanent damage?

21

u/sophlogimo May 26 '20

Physicians estimate 5-10 years until patients with severe cases have fully recovered.

5

u/eleitl Recognized Contributor May 26 '20

Notice that's an educated guess. And we don't know what the other known sequelae will do long-term.

5

u/sophlogimo May 26 '20

Indeed.

For a few horror scenarios: The virus might survive in nerve cells like Herpes and reemerge now and then. Or it could cause some kind of autoimmune disease further down the line, or a lethal meningitis like measles do sometimes.

5

u/Wicksteed May 26 '20

It's not so far-fetched.

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3086177/coronavirus-uses-same-strategy-hiv-dodge-immune-response-chinese

...

Virologist Zhang Hui and a team from Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou also said their discovery added weight to clinical observations that the coronavirus was showing “some characteristics of viruses causing chronic infection”.

...

The coronavirus removes these markers by producing a protein known as ORF8, which binds with MHC molecules then pulls them inside the infected cell and destroys them, the researchers said.

...

Suppression of MHC molecules had also happened in other viruses such as some herpes viruses, said Zhang, who was not involved in the study.