The figures I have seen for Long Covid start at about 10 percent. You can have Long Covid without knowing it; there can be organ damage, including brain damage, without you having symptoms, but that damage will effect your future health and lifespan. Ironically, it may create a co-morbidity if you get Covid again and you’ll be considered part of a vulnerable population.
For some, it is very severe. One acquaintance had enough brain damage to cause aphasia, and needs speech therapy. Others go from fit to out-of-breath walking down the street.
As the policy in most Western nations is “Everyone will get it, let’s just make sure it doesn’t swamp the hospitals,” let’s run some numbers. Assume everyone is 80 percent. The US population is 329 million, so 263 million people will get Covid. Of those, assume 10 percent (and I’ve seen double that number, but we’re going with conservative estimates), about 33 million people, will get Long Covid.
In the EU, numbers run to about 36 million. Worldwide, excluding China and Japan (who seem to be handling Omicron), there are about 5.9 billion people (with some generous rounding against Long Covid). 80 percent of that is 3.9, so you’re talking 390 million people with Long Covid.
These are VERY conservative numbers. Long Covid estimates go as high as 20 percent that I’ve seen, and there is the issue of re-infection. If you get Covid multiple times, do you have multiple chances to get Long Covid? Bear in mind that there will be new variants as well, so immunity will not carry forward that well.
So it wouldn’t be hard for those headline numbers to double: 780 million worldwide, 72 million in the EU, and 66 million in the US.
These are—staggering numbers, and their affect on our societies cannot be underestimated. The deaths are terrible, but the bad health and disabling of many (and remember, that organ damage will lead to disabling later in people who seem fine now) will require us to restructure large chunks of our society to support those who are injured. Many people will not be able to work, or their working lives will be reduced in length and intensity.
What’s worse about this is that, while people die only once, they can remain sick and disabled for decades. So unlike the Spanish Flu, say, Covid will be with us in ways we can’t ignore — every time someone looks at a friend or loved one who is sick because of it. No matter what people “feel” now, years to decades of watching the consequences will sour them.
Letting Covid run wild through the world was a choice. We made it. A few societies didn’t.
Ironically (or not?), the Chinese Communist Party decided to not let their population die in droves and acquire long-term health problems (the number for China would be 112 million at the conservative end). Most Western “democracies” chose to have mass deaths and Long Covid.
This isn’t just about the horrid consequences of our choice to let Covid rage and mutate, this is also a mass legitimacy loss event for the West and for democracy, though a very few democracies have proved non-psychopathic.
If “freedumb” means governments that let you die or get Long Covid, is it “freedumb” worth having? If being ruled by “commies” means that you live and stay healthy and so do your parents, grandparents, and kids, is “Communism with Chinese characteristics” so bad?
That’s a question a lot of people are going to be asking themselves.