Vaccination Dramatically Lowers Long Covid Risk

[Richard D]

At least 200 million people worldwide have struggled with long COVID: a slew of symptoms that can persist for months or even years after an infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID. But research suggests that that number would likely be much higher if not for vaccines.

A growing consensus is emerging that receiving multiple doses of the COVID vaccine before an initial infection can dramatically reduce the risk of long-term symptoms. Although the studies disagree on the exact amount of protection, they show a clear trend: the more shots in your arm before your first bout with COVID, the less likely you are to get long COVID. One meta-analysis of 24 studies published in October, for example, found that people who’d had three doses of the COVID vaccine were 68.7 percent less likely to develop long COVID compared with those who were unvaccinated. “This is really impressive,” says Alexandre Marra, a medical researcher at the Albert Einstein Israelite Hospital in Brazil and the lead author of the study. “Booster doses make a difference in long COVID.”

It is also a welcome departure from earlier studies, which suggested that vaccines provided only a modest defense against long COVID. In 2022 Marra’s team published a meta-analysis of six studies that found that a single dose of the COVID vaccine reduced the likelihood of long COVID by 30 percent. Now, that protection appears to be much greater.

A study published in November in the BMJ found that a single COVID vaccine dose reduced the risk of long COVID by 21 percent, two doses reduced it by 59 percent and three or more doses reduced it by 73 percent. Vaccine effectiveness clearly climbed with each successive dose. “I was surprised that we saw such a clear dose response,” says Fredrik Nyberg, an epidemiologist at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and one of the co-authors of the study. “The more doses you had in your body before your first infection, the better.” That lines up with the findings of several new studies, which similarly show this ladderlike benefit. Marra’s October 2023 meta-analysis found that two doses reduced long COVID likelihood by 36.9 percent and three doses reduced it by 68.7 percent. And in a study published last year in the Journal of the American Medical Association, other researchers found that the prevalence of long COVID in health care workers dropped from 41.8 percent in unvaccinated participants to 30 percent in those with a single dose, 17.4 percent with two doses and 16 percent with three doses.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/vaccination-dramatically-lowers-long-covid-risk/

[Botany]

1. Science and medicine works

Who knew?

[Ray Bruns]

2. This is what the vaccine wants you to believe so the lizard people at Area 51 can continue to infiltrate our society and

Our precious bodily fluids.

[JoseBalow]

6. That's the way your hard-core Commie works.

[Botany]

8. Shh! I am working for Bill Gates putting in micro tracking chips in the vaccine.

Mr. Gates is following an auto body repair man in Brazil, IN. and a church secretary of the
Good Church of Jesus in Red Soil, Mississippi.

********
Btw the surgeon general for DeSantis in Florida has put RNA and or mRNA as the
“real problem” with the vaccine even though it works. Funny on how we have used
bits of the genetic material of viruses to make vaccines sense George Washington
and the American Revolution. Funny science works.

[moreland01]

3. Unfortunately, Long Covid isn't all we have to worry about with Covid.

Considering that it is a vascular disease, we need to be concerned about the implications for all organs over the remainder of someone's life. While their case of Covid is gone, they're testing negative, and they no longer have any symptoms, they may still experience issues with immune deficiencies well into the future. It could be a decade before we fully understand the long-term consequences of humans acquiring multiple cases of covid per year.

[Orrex]

4. I'm seeing a lot of "Meh. I've had it three times, it's no big deal."

That seems dangerously naive and optimistic.

[Skittles]

10. anyone who talks like that

is fucking stupid beyond belief

[Orrex]

11. That's them, exactly.

[wryter2000]

5. Then I'm really safe

I think I’ve had 7 shots by now.

I was on a zoom call with my sister and her husband on Sunday, both over 70, and my sister has serious health issues. Both had had COVID recently. She was still testing positive. They both appeared perfectly healthy. If Trump were still in office, they’d both likely be on ventilators or dead.

[LisaM]

7. I have had six shots and no COVID yet.

I have twice been exposed to people who had it and didn't know it, and I (luckily) still didn't get it. Of course like everyone else, I have made a few basic changes, most notably, I give a little more space in public, places like grocery lines, and I still mask up once in a while if circumstances call for it, usually on transit.

Vaccines work.

[Botany]

9. You might have had a case that was not symptomatic.

Odds are good that you have had one but the vaccines kept the disease symptoms
away. Science works.

[mucifer]

12. I don't understand the theory of "those who never had covid" Unless you were testing constantly

since before there were even tests, how would you know? People can be asymptomatic and have covid.