Up to one million people in Australia could end up with a debilitating illness after the pandemic, not that I know what “after the pandemic” even means as we go through endless cycles of new variants and waves.

Australia should have stayed #zerocovid like China. #vaccineshavefailed. Now we will also have the burden of longcovid.

A new study accessing over a million health data records in the UK has found that the about 10 % of people (paper puts it at between 7.8% and 17%) who had covid had symptoms for more than 12 weeks, and that 1.2% to 4.8% reporting debilitating symptoms.

For many people life will never be the same again.

If 20 million people in Australia get covid then the number with longcovid (>12 weeks) will be between 1.56 million and 3.4 million, and the number with a rehabilitating illness between 240,000 and 960,000.

Australia’s medical systems are going to be overwhelmed and many people and family incapacitated or with ill health.

China has 54.9 times the population of Australia. This is yet another reason why China has a policy to stay #zerocovid for the next 5 years.

This study is too early to estimate serious neurological illnesses, as these often follow some time after, as was the case with the 1918 flu, where Parkinson’s disease surfaced in the period 4-8 years after.

The greatest risks for longcovid are age, being female, being white ethnicity, having poor general and mental health before the pandemic, being overweight/obesity, and having asthma.

Here is the study: