Breaking my Twitter hiatus to share some important research.
Latest in @Nature find replicating (meaning active) Covid-19 in brain and body tissue in 44 autopsy patients up to seven months out from acute infection. See thread for details and link.
Morgan Stephens
3,811 posts
Morgan Stephens
@morganstephensa
fact check reporter & national correspondent @tnd, former @kob4, White House @business, @cnn, poet TILT, @usc alum, Long Covid advocate
Joined June 2009
- It's politically inconvenient to acknowledge the massive amount of Long Covid patients in need of treatment and financial assistance in the US because once you acknowledge its magnitude, public policies, institutions and workplaces have to do something about it. A thread.
- Is it just me or has the entire country dissociated completely?
- At-home rapid Covid-19 tests in Germany are €1. I took one nearly every morning while I was there for two weeks. In the US, it was celebrated when at-home rapids made it to convenience stores for $24 each. Want to mitigate spread? Make them cheap and accessible to all.
- I have some news. My 3D Voxel-Based Morphometry MRI confirmed I am among those with grey matter loss from Covid-19. In short, this means I have brain damage from Covid-19. This is starting to be seen in Long Covid patients, and I am one of them. 1/3
- Just a reminder that @CDCgov stated 1 in 5 Americans who have had Covid-19 now have #LongCovid. Now that we’re heading into winter, a PSA. It’s pure hell. It will change your life as you know it. 🧵
- Re: article suggesting Long Covid is exaggerated (not going to link it), let me ask, would someone at the beginning of a career they worked half a decade for, paid for her education, employed at her dream news org, just stop working, unless absolutely debilitated by it? No.
- There is economic interest in every facet of not recognizing the vastness and severity of Long Covid. Blood clots, strokes, myocarditis. All results from this virus. How do we know? There plenty of research at this point. Yet, crickets. 🧵 1/6
- NEW: After sharing he has #LongCovid, VA Senator @timkaine introduces the "Care for Long COVID Act" senate bill. It would fund research, investigate the US health care response, educate & disseminate information to the public, and support legal & social services for long-haulers.
- COVID is surging again. I’m here to speak from my own experience: mild infections can lead to Long Covid, REST. Rest longer than you want to. Rest when it gets boring (it will). Rest when you think you’re recovered. After you’re stable for some time, ease back into life. 🧵🧵
- I want to ask the @WhiteHouse their plan to deal with disability from millions of Long Covid patients. Most can barely function enough to make their own meals, much less wade through the Kafkaesque SSA system. I’ve worked there before. Can someone get me in that briefing room?
- NEW: Decrease in the brain’s cortical gray matter found in all 24 Long Covid participants via 3-dimensional voxel-based morphometry (3D VBM) MRI vs controls. “We need funding so we can expand this research,” lead researcher and GW neurologist Dr. Ted Rothstein told me. 1/5
- Replying to @morganstephensaThe takeaway? It’s another piece of research showing viral persistence of Covid-19. This time in the brain, which, until now, hasn’t been found *active* in tissue, but thought to be mediated from vascular/endothelial damage.
- NEW: @CDCgov reaffirms that Long COVID is contributing to a “labor shortage and is hurting the U.S. economy.” 🧵
