My skeptical (but open-minded!) friend Tad Kaput was interested in data on people who survived COVID19 and how many of them seem likely to suffer medium- and long-term health impacts. This is just a brief commentary, not a data set, but anytime a NYC pulmonologist wants to tell me their experience with this disease, I’ll listen. (Somewhat annoyingly can’t link to the specific article; scroll down a bit or search on “recovery rates and the long-term health effects of Covid-19”) “What we’re seeing is that many of them, at least at one month of follow up, are still having significant pulmonary complaints, they’re short of breath. They’re still having chest pain. A lot of them still have abnormal X-rays. Many of them, up to 40 to 50 percent of them, still have abnormalities in their breathing that we can measure. A lot of them are having symptoms of post traumatic stress. Some of them have anxiety. Some of them are showing signs of depression. And the lung is not the only organ that was involved in this pandemic. Many of the patients have had neurologic abnormalities. A lot of them have kidney abnormalities. We’re going to see that there is a significant health care burden that’s going to be associated with the Covid pandemic for a very long time.” — Rany Condos, pulmonologist and director of the advanced lung disease program at NYU Langone Health “One of my colleagues is exactly my age, healthy. He got Covid. He came within a couple hours of being intubated. He was hospitalized for seven days, lost 15 pounds, had to go home on oxygen, and hasn’t been able to work for two months. He is so weak. This is a healthy 64-year-old man. We have seen issues with pulmonary compromise. We’ve seen issues with Myocarditis, with acute kidney injury. There’s beginning to be and this will likely be a longer term understanding of what effect has Covid infection on the brain. We know it can cause loss of taste. We know it can cause loss of smell. Does it do other things to the brain? And there’s been some initial suggestions that yes, there is. What about long term effects on the fetus? No one knows yet. Remember that everything we know about this virus is what, 22, 23 weeks old.” — Gregory Poland, professor of medicine and infectious diseases at The Mayo Clinic, director of the Mayo vaccine research group