Uh oh. We don't even understand "long COVID" yet.

There's clearly a long-term aftermath, but it's not well understood. There are other diseases where that occurs, despite the initial infection seeming to be over. Chickenpox as a child can turn into shingles as an adult.[1] The virus is never completely cleared.

[1] https://health.clevelandclinic.org/can-you-get-shingles-if-y...

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ChrisMarshallNY 15 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Measles, too: https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/09/child-dies-of-horrify...

Several variants of Malaria can be The Gift That Keeps On Giving: https://www.mmv.org/malaria/symptoms-and-treatments/relapsin...

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nomel 14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Measles can cause immune amnesia [1], which I find fascinating, and maybe somewhat obvious: our immune system has limited/fragile "memory".

[1] https://asm.org/articles/2019/may/measles-and-immune-amnesia

	▲	manwe150 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Apparently there is no known limit, so we could vaccinate for everything, repeatedly, without risking forgetting. Unlike getting the illness or antibiotic use, where there is limits and fragility as a possible result

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timr 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Malaria is not a virus. It's caused by a eukaryotic microorganism.

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ChrisMarshallNY 15 hours ago | parent [-]

I know. I guess that I should have mentioned that.

However, from the article, it seems that they believe that COVID just whacks the immune system, in general, so everyone gets to belly up to the bar.

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Animats 14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

No, they're not saying that. Measles whacks the immune system.[1] COVID, fortunately, does not do that. What it does long-term is still badly understood.

[1] https://asm.org/articles/2019/may/measles-and-immune-amnesia

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timr 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Just to be clear: "they", in this case, is a cherry-picked sample of scientists by a journalist.

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ChrisMarshallNY 15 hours ago | parent [-]

I think that's pretty much always the case, these days. Shouldn't be a problem, finding a cherry-picked sample to refute it.

	▲	timr 15 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Rebutting this kind of stuff turns into a link-sharing competition. For any debated theory I can show you a thousand links saying the opposite of whatever claim is being advanced, but you'll just assume my links are self-selected. Look at the content of the article. Literally every quote in this piece is some scientist speculating. That's completely fine, and what scientists do, but the "journalist" is spinning it into a narrative of "scientists believe X", which is both true (some scientists can be found to support literally any claim), and misleadingly over-confident.

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PaulKeeble 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

HIV 10 years later turns into AIDs. Immune disruptions are especially scary because without an immune system the constant bombardment the human body is under from viruses, bacteria and fungi overwhelms us quickly.

Finding Covid viral fragments in people long after the infection is very concerning, we don't know how its staying in the body or where but it seems likely its persisting.

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timr 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Please stop making this comparison. There's a clear reason why chickenpox can re-emerge as shingles later in life - herpesvirus maintains a circular chromosome within the nerve cells. It's a known feature of the virus family, and it's detectable [1].

There's absolutely no reason to believe that SARS-CoV2 has similar capability, and those who cling to this hypothesis are engaging in pseudoscience. Viruses are not so complex that we would trivially overlook a feature that would literally change the phylogenetic classification in a dramatic way.

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5584196/

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privatelypublic 15 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Viruses are not so complex that we would trivially overlook a feature that would literally change the phylogenetic classification in a dramatic way.

You might think that, but in the past two decades theres been so many "how did we miss that?" in so many fields. I'll let field experts bring specifics up- I only know popularized examples like Roman Concrete. And the ever-easy Mars unit-conversion error.

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timr 15 hours ago | parent [-]

You can speculate if you like, but the claim you're advancing is fantastical to anyone who has studied virology, and requires an accordingly fantastic level of supporting evidence.

	▲	privatelypublic 14 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The only claim I'm making is "never underestimate humanity's ability to hold to an initial assessment/viewpoint/assumption." Which has so many examples it's almost a truism.

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Animats 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Right, chickenpox has a very different aftereffect mechanism. I'm just arguing against the popular "when it's over, it's over" position.

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pessimizer 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I assume, with this level of confidence, that we understand everything about Parkinson's now. It is a nerve disease so closely associated with influenza that there was speculation in the 60s that when the last child born during the Spanish Flu epidemic died, it would be completely eliminated as a common disease.

Shouldn't we just look for the ring that we learned how to detect herpes in nerves? Because every virus has to be constructed exactly like herpes in order to infect nerve cells, apparently.