Ep 136 Long Covid: A long time coming

We’re back with our season 7 premiere, and we’re kicking things off with a topic that we’ve wanted to cover for a long time, even if the topic itself hasn’t been around all that long. That’s right, we’re taking on Long Covid. When SARS-CoV-2 began making its way around the world in 2020, it was thought to cause a mild illness in most people, with complete recovery a couple of weeks after first getting infected. But just a short time into the pandemic, people began to report debilitating symptoms lingering for months after recovery was “supposed” to happen. What started out as a trickle of reports soon turned into a tsunami, and this condition, which came to be known as Long Covid, transformed our understanding of this viral infection. In this episode, we explore how the concept of Long Covid was defined by those who experience it, who also continue to advocate for better treatment, more research, and real compassion from medical professionals. We examine what we currently know about the biology of this condition, and delve into some of the most promising research avenues that may give us a greater understanding of or ability to treat Long Covid. This story is still being written, but already it can tell us so much about our concepts of infectious disease and how the medical system treats those with “invisible” illness. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Om Podcasten

This podcast might not actually kill you, but Erin Welsh and Erin Allmann Updyke cover so many things that can. In each episode, they tackle a different topic, teaching listeners about the biology, history, and epidemiology of a different disease or medical mystery. They do the scientific research, so you don’t have to.   Since 2017, Erin and Erin have explored chronic and infectious diseases, medications, poisons, viruses, bacteria and scientific discoveries. They’ve researched public health subjects including plague, Zika, COVID-19, lupus, asbestos, endometriosis and more. Each episode is accompanied by a creative quarantini cocktail recipe and a non-alcoholic placeborita. Erin Welsh, Ph.D. is a co-host of the This Podcast Will Kill You. She is a disease ecologist and epidemiologist and works full-time as a science communicator through her work on the podcast. Erin Allmann Updyke, MD, Ph.D. is a co-host of This Podcast Will Kill You. She’s an epidemiologist and disease ecologist currently in the final stretch of her family medicine residency program. This Podcast Will Kill You is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including science, true crime, comedic interviews, news, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark, Buried Bones, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast and more.