A growing contingent of Covid-19 patients whose symptoms were initially mild are now facing mysterious long-term neurological problems, including memory and sleep disturbances, dizziness, nerve pain and what survivors refer to as “brain fog.”
The phenomenon, involving thousands of patients with symptoms lasting months at a time, complicates the Trump administration’s argument that most illness is mild so the U.S. can quickly reopen the economy. These frightening long-term cases aren’t captured in official statistics that show that the vast majority of younger adults survive the virus.
While lingering lung issues might be expected given the nature of the virus, some of the most common and surprising problems involve the nervous system. For Americans with these symptoms, there are few answers available on why they surface, how long they’ll last and what permanent problems they may cause. Neurologists are only just starting to study the trend.
“A very large number of the symptoms fall within the brain and nervous system,” according to Natalie Lambert, an Indiana University School of Medicine researcher who surveyed more than 1,567 members of an online support group for people with longer-term symptoms in a push to map out their effects.
Adrian Owen, a neuroscientist at Western University in Canada, has been “completely inundated” with emails from people who have found themselves with cognitive problems months after their initial infection, he said in an interview.
“It is becoming completely obvious that many of them are suffering from neurological deficits,” Owen said. “Even if this only affects 10% of people, that can be a massive societal and economic burden a year from now.”
For Eli Musser, a 42-year-old copywriter in Astoria, Queens, the first weeks of Covid-19 were nowhere near as bad as what came later. In late March, Musser came down with a low fever and fatigue for a few days followed by a recurring cough that lasted several weeks.
“And then I got walloped,” he said in an interview.
For months, Musser was so debilitated doing more than sitting on the couch and resting was too much. He’s had tremors and shaking in his arms, dizziness, muscle weakness so severe he sometimes had trouble dressing, panic attacks and depression. One terrifying day in May, he couldn’t move his legs. In June, he experienced intermittent fits of seizure-like sweating and shaking.
Now, five months after his initial symptoms, he’s still on medical leave and only recently received a diagnosis for his neurological symptoms. Meanwhile, Musser’s fiancée, who also fell ill in March but recovered in about 10 days, spends hours each day caring for him.
“A good guess is it won’t last forever, it’ll get better with time,” Musser said. “But also, how much time? How much better? What can I reasonably expect?”