Tackling the mystery of long Covid
Lesson summary
Hi there everyone, I’m Jeff, and this is Plain English, the best place for you to build your English listening skills with current events. On today’s lesson, we’re going to explore the phenomenon known as “long Covid.” Most people recover from Covid-19 after a few weeks. But around ten to fifteen percent of Covid patients have lingering symptoms that can make it hard, or even impossible, to work for months afterward.
We’ll talk about a very popular English expression, “for a living.” And JR has a song of the week. Speaking of JR, he has posted the full transcript and the rest of today’s lesson online at PlainEnglish.com/373.
Long covid: the mystery after the disease
Covid news has been dominated by positivity rates, hospitalization rates, vaccination rates, lockdowns, curfews, reopening, travel restrictions, social distancing, masks, and much more. But lost among the headlines is another aspect of this new disease: something known as “long Covid.”
The term “long Covid” is used to describe the approximately ten percent of Covid sufferers whose symptoms do not go away within a few weeks. A person with long Covid has mostly recovered physically; it’s not difficult to breathe and the fever is gone. But fatigue and “brain fog” can persist for months after the physical symptoms recede.
Part of the difficulty of diagnosing and treating “long Covid” is defining it. One survey asked thousands of patients what symptoms they were experiencing. The survey respondents identified over 200 distinct symptoms, so it’s hard to catalog them all. But symptoms tend to fall in three categories. First, some patients report difficulty breathing after performing small tasks. Other patients say they suffer heart palpitations, dizziness, or difficulty with digestion. Finally, some patients experience “brain fog.”
The last one is perhaps the most puzzling. When a person suffers from brain fog, that person has difficulty concentrating and thinking clearly. Over time , the physical symptoms like body aches tend to fade. But even 22 weeks after diagnosis, long Covid sufferers said the mental health symptoms were getting worse, not better. Survey respondents said they had trouble focusing, were absent-minded, had trouble forming and remembering words, suffered from sensitivity to alcohol, and experienced hair loss.
Patients with brain fog can have trouble solving problems. Some get in the car to go somewhere, only to forget where they were supposed to go. They have a difficult time holding down a job, especially in industries that require them to concentrate. One radio journalist said she often gets stuck in the middle of a sentence, unable to find the right word—and that’s someone who talks for a living . A survey in Britain showed that a third of long Covid patients suffered financially and over 80 percent said they were having a hard time working.
For a long time, the scientific community was focused on treating the most urgent symptoms. But scientists are now beginning to study long-Covid sufferers, hoping to find ways to alleviate the mental health symptoms. Specialized clinics are looking at existing treatments for brain trauma and strokes to see if they can help.
There are a few theories about what causes these chronic symptoms. One theory posits that some patients’ immune systems over-compensate when fighting Covid symptoms; as a result, the theory says, inflammation continues even after Covid has been solved. That inflammation can prevent the brain from getting the oxygen it needs to operate properly. Another theory suggests the virus lingers in some patients, causing continual damage. Another possibility is that the initial coronavirus infection caused lasting nerve damage. None of the theories has yet been proven, and there is no cure.
However, scientific clinics are at least helping people manage their symptoms better. For example, some scientists are adapting existing tools that help stroke victims recover their mental abilities. Tools include mindfulness training and video games that seek to help patients rebuild their concentration skills. Just as a patient with a physical disability needs to go through physical therapy, long Covid sufferers have to go through some mental exercises. Cognitive rehab can help patients identify their shortcomings and work around them. Some researchers are developing video games that can be played at home, but the effectiveness of these techniques is not clear.
For the moment, the existing therapies are all about managing the symptoms and making daily life easier. There is no cure for long Covid. Patients in rehab report some improvement in their lives, but only a small percentage say they recover completely. Even awareness is limited among doctors. Many patients with these symptoms are not properly diagnosed, so they bounce from clinic to clinic in search of answers.
Career impacts
A really tough thing about this is that so many people with long Covid are in the working prime. That would make it extremely hard to get back to work. Imagine having to miss months at a time just because you can’t concentrate. And I have a feeling, too, that the vast majority of cases are undiagnosed.
Hey, a quick plug for Plain English Plus+, our membership program. We designed it as the perfect companion to Plain English. Almost everything in Plain English Plus+ begins with the content in our lesson, the one you’re listening to now. And we use the content of the lesson help you build other skills in English.
We have listening exercises—they’re from the lesson contents. Pronunciation exercises—again, from the lesson contents. There’s a quiz, too, based on the text of the lesson. And we have a how-to video that expands on something you hear in the lesson. Today’s how-to video is about how to describe something that happens over a longer period of time.
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