Hi,
First of all -- hope you're doing well! Genuinely.
Asking you this bc I've followed your blogs for a while and I really appreciate how you frame medical info in your posts (including your willingness to tell ppl they aren't really thinking of their questions the correct or most productive way).
So, I used to be a "Covid is the scariest most deadliest most baddest disease in the whole world!!!" person until I found your blog actually (embarrassing for me, but willing to admit my fault in being sucked into the online exaggeration games when it came to Covid). Now, I've been steadily learning about how Covid is similar/different to other illnesses in a more measured way. One thing that always terrified me about Covid was the research about how it damaged the heart and the brain. I used to be fairly blasé about Influenza but now that my knowledge base on illness is becoming more well-rounded, I'm realizing Influenza also carries many of the same post-acute-infection risks that terrified me so much about Covid.
It's hard for me to find studies that directly compare the average scope of heart & brain damage between Covid and the Flu. Most things I can get my hands on simply confirm that, yes both can damage your heart and brain in a not-insignificant amount of cases. I haven't been able to find a study that reliably compares the incident rates of heart and brain damage between the two diseases directly (if one even exists).
Do you have any informed research you've found or observations you've formed on how Covid and Influenza compare in terms of their impact on the heart & brain? Not only incidence rate but also if there's been any observable difference in how long this damage takes to recover from depending on if it's caused by a Covid or Flu infection?
I know this is a big question and you probably have a lot going on so this is kind of a "if you have time and absolutely nothing else to do here's an ask" kind of thing. Obviously still occasionally looking for studies like this myself but just was wondering if you had any thoughts on the matter.
Anyway hope you're seeing some good cat pictures wherever you are 👍
i believe these are what yr looking for:
https://doi.org/10.3390/covid6010021
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(23)00684-9/fulltext
these look at predefined adverse outcomes across a range of bodily systems, including cardiovascular and neuropsychiatric. both are chart reviews, so outcomes are only visible if patients were seen for them, and they are represented in the record by diagnosis code, lab values, and prescriptions filled, rather than by patient symptom report, so anything misdiagnosed or undiagnosed remains hidden. also, these studies can necessarily only find the outcomes they're looking for: this mitigates the long covid literature problem where it's defined so broadly it's impossible to tell what's associated with the disease vs what's incidental, but it also means we can't know if post-acute flu or covid have some wholly other and unexpected complications besides what's here. they also use populations with far more access to healthcare than the global average (US veterans, and Finnish citizens) so it is not entirely clear how these results generalise, except that more prior major existing health conditions = worse post-acute flu and covid outcomes.
that said, they find generally that both covid and flu carry higher overall disease burden in the post-acute phases than in the acute ones, and covid has worse outcomes than flu across all body systems except pulmonary.
