People with Covid-like symptoms took almost a year before feeling like themselves again, researchers say

Did you have Covid-like symptoms? It may take nine months or even longer to start feeling like yourself again.
Researchers at UCLA found that 20 percent of patients with those symptoms continued experiencing suboptimal quality of life for nearly a year after infection. Whereas, physical well-being returned after only three months.
"We have newly recognized the difference in recovery with respect to mental vs. physical well-being after a COVID infection," Lauren Wisk, an assistant professor of medicine at UCLA, said in a statement.
"The findings showed that health care professionals need to pay more attention to their patients' mental well-being after a Covid infection and provide more resources that will help improve their mental health, in addition to their physical health,' she added.
Wisk was one of the lead authors of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-funded study that was published Tuesday in the journal Open Forum Infectious Diseases. The study compared people who sought treatment for Covid-like symptoms. Of those, 75 percent tested positive for the virus. The rest were negative.
Of the 4,700 participants who experienced the symptoms between mid-December 2020 and late August 2022, the people who were positive for Covid were statistically likelier to return to optimal health-related quality-of-life than their Covid-negative counterparts in the year following the infection.
The authors said the findings suggest that health authorities may have previously underestimated the long-term effects of non-Covid infections on a patient's well-being.
To reach these conclusions, researchers analyzed responses from nearly 1,100 Covid-positive patients and 317 Covid-negative negative patients, assessing aspects including physical function, anxiety, depression, fatigue, social participation, sleep disturbance, pain interference and cognitive function.
They found that approximately one in five of those who were part of the study remained in poor overall quality of life, with a high likelihood of self-reporting long Covid for up to a year after initial infection.
'In this large, geographically diverse study of individuals with 12 months of follow-up after Covid-19-like illness, a substantial proportion of participants continued to report poor [overall quality of life], whether or not the inciting acute symptoms were due to SARS-CoV-2 or another illness,' they said.
Mental well-being recovered gradually, with significant improvements manifesting between six and nine months after infection, researchers found.
The authors said further research was needed, noting that it remains unclear which conditions the symptomatic Covid-negative patients were suffering from and that Covid tests can yield both false-positive and false-negative results. The common cold, allergies, flu and Covid share many similar symptoms.
"Future research should focus on how to improve the treatment models of care for patients who continue to experience Covid-19 symptoms and their impact on patients' quality of life, especially as one in five patients may continue to suffer over a year after their initial infection, which likely reflects long Covid," Wisk said.

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5 hours ago

• Yahoo

Who are the eight new vaccine advisers appointed by Robert F Kennedy?

Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary, named eight new vaccine advisers this week to a critical Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) panel after firing all 17 experts who had held the roles. New members of the panel include experts who complained about being sidelined, a high-profile figure who has spread misinformation and medical professionals who appear to have little vaccine expertise. Kennedy made the announcement on social media. 'All of these individuals are committed to evidence-based medicine, gold-standard science, and common sense,' Kennedy said in his announcement. 'They have each committed to demanding definitive safety and efficacy data before making any new vaccine recommendations.' Formally called the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), the panel advises the CDC on how vaccines should be distributed. Those recommendations in effect determine the vaccines Americans can access. This week, Kennedy also removed the career officials typically tasked with vetting ACIP members and overseeing the advisory group, according to CBS News. Related: RFK Jr announces new panel of vaccine advisers after firing entire previous team Kennedy is a widely known vaccine skeptic who profited from suing vaccine manufacturers, has taken increasingly dramatic steps to upend US vaccine policy. 'ACIP is widely regarded as the international gold standard for vaccine decision-making,' said Helen Chu, one of the fired advisers, at a press conference with Patty Murray, a Democratic US senator. 'We cannot replace it with a process driven by one person's beliefs. In the absence of an independent, unbiased ACIP, we can no longer trust that safe and effective vaccines will be available to us and the people around us.' Arguably the most high-profile new member, Robert W Malone catapulted to stardom during the Covid-19 pandemic, appearing across rightwing media to criticize the Biden administration while describing himself as the inventor of mRNA technology. Messenger RNA technology powers the most widely used Covid-19 vaccines. While Malone was involved in very early experiments on the technology, researchers have said his role was limited. Malone's star rose quickly after appearing on the Joe Rogan podcast in 2022, where he and Rogan were criticized for spreading misinformation. On the show, Malone promoted the idea that both ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine could be possible treatments for Covid-19, but said research on the drugs was being suppressed. Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine have not been shown to improve outcomes from Covid-19. 'Malone has a well-documented history of promoting conspiracy theories,' said Dr Jeffrey D Klausner, an epidemiologist and infectious disease expert at the University of Southern California, who recently told the New York Times he was in touch with Kennedy about his appointments. Kulldorff is a former Harvard professor of biostatistics and an infectious disease epidemiologist originally from Sweden. He said in an essay for the rightwing publication City Journal that he was fired because he refused to be vaccinated in line with the school policy. Like Malone, he rose to prominence during the pandemic as a 'Covid contrarian' who criticized the scientific consensus – views he said alienated him from his peers in the scientific community. He voiced his opposition to Covid-19 vaccine mandates and, in his essay, complained of being ignored by media and shadow-banned from Twitter. Kulldorff co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, which called for limited closures instead of pandemic lockdowns before vaccines were available. The document became a touchstone for the American political right. Before the pandemic, Kulldorff studied vaccine safety and infectious disease, including co-authoring papers with members of CDC staff, such as on the Vaccine Safety Datalink. He was a member of the CDC's Covid Vaccine Safety Working Group in 2020, but said later he was fired because he disagreed with the agency's decision to pause Johnson & Johnson's Covid-19 vaccine and with Covid-19 vaccine mandates. He served on the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) drug safety and risk management advisory committee around the same time. He has since enjoyed support from people already within the administration, including the Great Barrington Declaration co-author Dr Jay Bhattacharya, current head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and Dr Vinay Prasad, head of the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, which handles vaccines. Meissner is a professor of pediatrics at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. He previously held advisory roles at the FDA and CDC, including ACIP from 2008-2012. In 2021, Meissner co-wrote an editorial with Dr Marty Makary, now the head of the FDA, which criticized mask mandates for children. In April, he was listed as an external adviser to ACIP on the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) committee. Notably, Meissner is listed in a new conflicts of interest tool launched by the health department in March. Kennedy had criticized the fired ACIP members as 'plagued with persistent conflicts of interest'. 'He's a card-carrying infectious disease person who knows the burden of these diseases, and he knows the risk and the benefit,' Dr Kathryn Edwards told CBS News. Edwards previously served as chair of the FDA's vaccine advisory panel. Pebsworth is a nurse and the former consumer representative on the FDA's vaccine advisory committee. She is also the Pacific regional director for the National Association of Catholic Nurses, according to Kennedy's announcement. In 2020, Pebsworth spoke at the public comment portion of an FDA advisory panel meeting on Covid-19 vaccines. There, she identified herself as the volunteer research director for the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), 'and the mother of a child injured by his 15-month well-baby shots in 1998'. The NVIC is widely viewed as an anti-vaccine advocacy organization 'whose founder Barbara Lou Fisher must be considered a key figure of the anti-vaccine movement', according to an article from 2023 on how to counter anti-vaccine misinformation. Levi is a professor of operations management at the MIT Sloan School of Management who Kennedy described as an 'expert in healthcare analytics, risk management and vaccine safety'. In 2021, he opposed Covid-19 booster shot approval during the public comment portion of an FDA advisory committee hearing. In 2022, he wrote an article calling for EMS calls to be incorporated into vaccine safety data, arguing that cardiovascular side-effects could be undercounted – an article that later required correction. The potential effects of Covid-19 vaccines on heart health have been a focal point of right-leaning criticism. Last month, Levi was criticized for publishing a pre-print paper – a paper without peer review – that he co-authored with Dr Joseph Ladapo, the Florida surgeon general, a vaccine skeptic. The paper alleged that people who took the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine were more likely to die than those who received the Moderna vaccine. Kennedy described Ross as 'a Clinical Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at George Washington University and Virginia Commonwealth University, with a career spanning clinical medicine, research, and public health policy'. However, as first reported by CBS News, Ross's name does not appear in faculty directories for either school. A spokesperson for George Washington University told the outlet that Ross did work as a clinical professor, but 'has not held a faculty appointment … since 2017'. A spokesperson for Virginia Commonwealth University described Ross as 'an affiliate faculty member' at a regional hospital system in the Capitol region. He is also listed as a partner at Havencrest Capital Management, as a board member of 'multiple private healthcare companies'. Hibbeln is a California-based psychiatrist who previously served as acting chief for the section of nutritional neurosciences at the NIH. He describes himself as an expert on omega-3, a fatty acid found in seafood. He also serves on the advisory council of a non-profit that advocates for Americans to eat more seafood. He practices at Barton Health, a hospital system in Lake Tahoe, California. His work influenced US public health guidelines on fish consumption during pregnancy. Pagano is an emergency medicine physician from Los Angeles 'with over 40 years of clinical experience', and a 'strong advocate for evidence-based medicine', according to Kennedy.

Boston Globe

20 hours ago

• Boston Globe

Mass. considers scrapping religious exemptions for vaccinations

Advertisement In Massachusetts, parents can write a letter stating that a vaccine conflicts with their 'sincerely held religious belief' in order to exempt their children from vaccination requirements needed to enroll in public schools. State Rep. Andy Vargas and State Sen. Edward Kennedy both Advocates who oppose the exemptions say that religious exceptions are being misused by parents who are hesitant about vaccinating their children. Advertisement 'It's definitely a general pattern of people abusing the exemption, especially since But parents across the state came to Beacon Hill to testify in support of religious exemptions at a hearing of the Legislature's Joint Committee on Public Health. They said exemptions were essential to their first amendment right to practice their religion and to honor the concept of informed consent. 'I'm curious why diversity, equity and inclusion is not being applied to those with sincerely held religious beliefs,' Lisa Ottaviano said while testifying at the hearing. Some speakers at the hearing said they were uncomfortable with the components of certain vaccines. 'We should not be forced into violating our moral conscience by injecting products developed from aborted fetuses such as the MMR, the varicella vaccines,' said Nicholas Kottenstette, a Catholic father of four from Sterling, Massachusetts. Vaccines don't contain fetal cells, Others testifying against the bill said they wanted to protect religious exemptions because they felt that accountability measures for vaccine manufacturers were insufficient. 'I started meeting more people whose children had reactions to vaccines that were adverse, so I started doing my own research and learnt a lot of concerning things like how pharmaceutical companies have legal protection against being sued,' Maureen Trettel, a grandmother from Milford said. Advertisement Similar bills have been filed in previous sessions, so the debate over religious exemptions for vaccines in Massachusetts has been going on since at least 2019, well before the COVID-19 pandemic that made vaccines a polarizing issue. The elevation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic, to U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services has drawn even more interest to the issue. Last week, Kennedy Logan Beyer, an aspiring pediatrician pursuing an MD/PhD degree in public health at Harvard, spoke in favor of eliminating religious exemptions. While volunteering at a Special Olympics event, Beyer spoke to a parent who told her that she was worried that vaccines caused autism. The mother told Beyer that she was planning to apply for a religious exemption because she was unsure about vaccinating her children. 'She told me that her family 'didn't really go to church' but you don't have to prove anything to get the exemption,' Beyer said. Beyer said that this incident made her concerned about growing vaccine hesitancy and inspired her to testify. 'At the hearing, so many parents said they just want to do what's best for their children … I love that instinct,' Beyer said, 'But I know that passing policies that help facilitate more kids getting vaccinated is really what can keep children safe.' Advertisement Harrison, mother of cancer-survivor Miranda, also understands the instinct of parents on the other side of the issue, even if she disagrees with them. In addition to Miranda, Harrison has twin six-year old boys who both have autism. 'I can know the grief and shock that parents experience when they find out their kid has autism. I get it,' Harrison said. 'But vaccines are not to blame ... autism is a result of Around 16,000 children in Massachusetts are unvaccinated without claiming an exemption — a group that the state describes as 'noncompliant students' in its documents. Many parents in opposition to the bills questioned why the bills were trained just on the 2,000 students who did have religious exemptions. 'I'm curious why the Legislature is targeting the small percentage of children with religious exemptions and ignoring the huge gap population,' said Ottaviano testifying at the hearing. Advocates for the bills said the new provisions that mandate that all schools must report vaccination numbers to the state's department of public health would address these noncompliant students as well. 'That's what the data reporting is about, we want to make sure that schools have accurate records,' Blair of Massachusetts Families for Vaccines said. 'If there is a gap … they should reach out to those students to find out why the records are not on file.' Speakers in favor of the bills were focused on eliminating religious exemptions in order to protect children who cannot be vaccinated due to medical reasons like allergies or problems with their immune systems. 'It's actually those people … that we're really doing this for, because they're the ones who depend on herd immunity,' Blair said. Advertisement Angela Mathew can be reached at

USA Today

a day ago

• USA Today

'Killer bees' keep spreading (and killing) across the US

Scientists say the bees' temperament is to ward off predators. But unsuspecting humans will find them to be aggressive, spiteful and terrifying. Africanized honey bees, often called "killer bees," are now found in 13 states and are slowly spreading northward, attacking people, livestock and pets along the way. In the last three months alone, a man mowing his property died after a bee attack, three people were taken to the hospital after tree trimmers disturbed a colony, hikers ran a mile to get away from an agitated hive and a woman and three horses were swarmed by bees spooked by a lawn mower. The horses later died from "thousands" of stings, their owner said. Scientists say the bees' temperament is a defense mechanism to ward off predators – and note that because honey bees die after stinging, they are sacrificing themselves to protect their colony. But to unsuspecting humans, killer bees sure seem aggressive, spiteful and terrifying. They've been known to follow their victims for up to a mile – even following cars and trucks – and can sting through regular beekeeping gear. In the attack on the Texas horses, owner Baillie Hillman said, "they didn't give up." As parts of the west become warmer and drier, it's only going to get worse as the bees' preferred climate moves northward. There's no national database of deaths related to bee stings, but a 2023 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that on average 72 people died a year from hornet, wasp and bee stings. "In Texas, every year there's at least four big (Africanized bee) attacks that make the news," said Juliana Rangel, a professor of apiculture (beekeeping) at Texas A&M University, where they're widespread in the wild. "Killer bees" first made headlines in the 1990s when they began to appear in the United States, spawning alarming news stories and a surge of horror movies such as Deadly Invasion, The Swarm, The Savage Bees. Today, people in the South and the Southwest are learning to live with them, but the danger remains, especially when the highly defensive bees first appear in an area or when people accidentally run into a colony. Africanized honey bees don't survive in areas with cold winters and don't like high levels of rain, making for natural cutoffs in areas where temperatures fall, Rangel said. However in the coming decades, climate change means the bees could potentially move into southeastern Oregon, the western Great Plains and the southern Appalachian mountains, according to research published in 2014. "By 2050 or so, with increasing temperatures, we're going to see northward movement, mostly in the Western half of the country," said Rangel. How dangerous are Africanized honey bees? Africanized honey bees don't have more, or more potent, venom than Western honey bees. "The stings feel the same," said Rangel. What differentiates them is the numbers a colony sends out to attack. While each bee can only sting once before it dies, a colony of Africanized honey bees will send out proportionally more bees in a defensive response, leading to more stings. "If I'm working around one of my European honey bee colonies and I knock on it with a hammer, it might send out five to ten individuals to see what's going on. They would follow me perhaps as far as my house and I might get stung once," said Ellis. "If I did the same thing with an Africanized colony, I might get 50 to 100 individuals who would follow me much farther and I'd get more stings. It's really an issue of scale," he said. Africanized honey bees are also much more sensitive to potential threats. "You could be mowing a lawn a few houses away and just the vibrations will set them off," Rangel said. There are multiple reports of people cutting into colonies when trimming trees, clearing brush or doing landscaping. In some cases tree trimmers set off an attack merely by throwing a rope over a branch. In toxicology, researchers speak of the LD50, the lethal dose required to kill 50% of those exposed to it, said Rangel. For honeybee stings, it's calculated at about 9 stings per pound of weight. So half of people who weigh 150 pounds might die if they got 1,350 stings. That's unlikely with Western honey bees, but can happen with Africanized bees. In 2022, an Ohio man suffered 20,000 bee stings when cutting tree branches. He survived but only after being put in a medically-induced coma. What states have Africanized honeybees? At least 13 state have reported Africanized honeybees. In the south, southern Florida has the highest numbers. "From Tampa to Orlando to Daytona, south of that a large percentage of the feral bee population are of African decent. North of that we don't have much," said Ellis. Africanized bees have also been reported in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi, though they don't seem to thrive in those wetter environments as much. The bees have found a natural home in the Southwest, in part because the landscape is much like the arid and semi-arid parts of Africa they're originally from. Feral colonies are common in southern California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and especially Texas. They've also been seen in southwest Arkansas, southern Utah and about two-thirds of Oklahoma, said Szalanski. Where did killer bees get their killer instincts? There are around 20,000 species of bees on the planet and only 12 of them are honey bees. Of those, 11 are found in Asia and only one in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. It is called Apis mellifera, the Western honey bee, said Jamie Ellis, a professor of honey bee research at the University of Florida. There are multiple subspecies of Apis mellifera. It was one of these, the East African lowland honey bee (Apis mellifera scutellata), that was imported to Brazil in the 1950s. In the areas where East African lowland honey bees live, they have many predators so they've evolved to be more defensive, said Ellis. "They're not really aggressive, they're not just looking for a fight," he said. "They're just trying to communicate that, 'You are too close to us. We don't want you here – go away.'" That can feel pretty scary when they're coming after you, said Rangel. She's done research on bees in Belize, where people keep hives far from their homes and livestock and put on their protective beekeeping clothing in their trucks before getting out near a hive. "They can pursue you in your vehicle for a mile," she said "The only thing preventing them from killing you is the veil. It's like a cloud of bees that all want to sting you. It's scary." How did Africanized honey bees get to the United States? Africanized honeybees are a cross between Western honey bees, from Europe and the East African lowland honey bee. They first occurred in 1956, when a prominent Brazilian geneticist, Warwick Kerr, brought African bees to Brazil to hybridize them with Western honey bees from Europe, which didn't do well there. His plan was to breed bees that were better adapted to Brazil's climate while retaining the gentleness and high honey-producing traits of the Western honey bees. He didn't get the chance. A year later, 26 Africanized queen bees were accidentally released into a nearby forest, where they thrived, said Kirk Visscher, an emeritus professor of entomology at the University of California, Riverside. "The beekeeping industry in those areas is now far more vital than it was – they just have mean bees," he said. That hybrid between the two subspecies, called Africanized honey bees, began to make its way north, arriving in south Texas in 1990. "They spread a lot quicker than what people thought was possible. They never thought they could get from Brazil to Texas in a span of less than 40 years," said Allen Szalanski, a professor of entomology at the University of Arkansas. "But they did." The two bee subspecies are impossible to differentiate without either DNA analysis or careful observation of their wing vein patterns. It is their behavior that sets them apart. Most of the danger is from feral hives in the wild. Beekeepers carefully manage their hives to keep Africanized queens out. Because bees are so critical to agriculture, the movement of bees is regulated in many states. Most have a bee inspector to oversee the process. Currently a total of 38 states regulate the movement of honey bees within the United States and require a permit or health certificate to do so. Four states, Arizona, Kansas, North Dakota and Oregon, have no regulations on the movement of bees, according to research published in 2022. Another eight states have no regulations requiring permits or health certificates for the interstate movement of bees. Africanized honey bees aren't all bad Scientists who study bees emphasize that while Africanized honey bees are more defensive, they hold a lot of promise for overall honey bee health because they're more pest and disease resistant and are very genetically diverse. That's important because honey bees play a critical role in agriculture and the environment and have been subject to large die-offs in the past two decades. In 2017, one-third of the nation's hives perished. Breeding and even gene manipulation could result in better – and gentler – bees, said Ellis. "Although they have heightened defensive behaviors, science may be able to maximize their positive traits and minimize their negative traits," he said. What should you do if you encounter an Africanized honeybee hive? Because of their highly defensive nature, if you encounter aggressive bees, the best response is to leave – fast. "Get away as quickly as possible. Don't jump in water, don't swat with your arms. Just run away as as fast as you can," said Ellis. "You might want to pull your shirt up around your nose and mouth to protect against stings that could cause swelling of your airway." In general, the biggest threats are to tethered or penned livestock and pets that can't get away as well as humans using heavy equipment who accidentally get too close to a hive without being able to hear the angry buzzing of the bees. Once you've evacuated the area, call for professional help. "If you're in a rural area, it's very likely these bees have been Africanized," said Rangel. Nobody should try to deal with a colony on their own "just to save a few bucks," she said. "You don't want to mess with them."