CDC data shows nearly 18m people could be living with long Covid even as health agency relaxes isolation recommendations

Some 6.8% of American adults are currently experiencing long Covid symptoms, according to a new survey from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), revealing an “alarming” increase in recent months even as the health agency relaxes Covid isolation recommendations, experts say.

That means an estimated 17.6 million Americans could now be living with long Covid.

“This should be setting off alarms for many people,” said David Putrino, the Nash Family Director of the Cohen Center for Recovery From Complex Chronic Illness at Mount Sinai. “We’re really starting to see issues emerging faster than I expected.”

When the same survey was conducted in October, 5.3% of respondents were experiencing long Covid symptoms at the time.

The 1.5 percentage-point increase comes after the second-biggest surge of infections across the US this winter, as measured by available wastewater data.

1. There is no cure for long covid. Sometimes symptoms get better with time, sometimes they don’t. Reinfections can make everything worse, or destroy any progress you’ve made in getting better.
2. Covid can effect systems in the entire body, so persistant symptoms could be anything and everything going wrong.
3. Follow long covid communities and you will realize a lot of doctors are arrogant assholes and will likely imply you are fat and/or lazy and need to get more exercise and change dietary habits before they admit “a cold” could be causing new debilitating onset symptoms after an infection.

The rate of adults currently experiencing long Covid has not been this high since November 2022; the greatest height since CDC began tracking the illness was 7.6% in June and July 2022.

So the rate of long covid went from 7.6% in mid 2022, to 5.3% in october 2023. At which point minimizers took it as great news that the virus was “mild now” and the “immunity wall” was working. Now it’s gone up to 6.8%. Nevermind the problem of underdiagnosing covid because we stopped testing requirements in mid 2023 because the emergency was declared over. You can be certain this is missing a lot of people who just assume it’s just age, or lack of exercise, or “sometimes bodies just do that”.