It's very subjective. You can read more about it by searching around, but the prevailing definition means people who had more severe reactions to the infection than the average patient, which almost unanimously means a severe and prolonged inflammatory response.

What they are finding more and more is that this specific virus triggers undiagnosed or dormant autoimmune responses in patients. If you're familiar with Rheumatism at all, imagine a massive reaction to, say, twisting your ankle, but it goes out of control and causes swelling all over your body including your brain, lungs, heart, and renal system. This is actually what killed the most patients pre-vaccination.

The full body assault of an inflammatory response just makes the body unable to cope, and things start shutting down. It can kill children and older people very easily if you can't get it under control. Many succumbed to Pneumonia, but those that lived had damage to their major internal organs from the inflammatory response. You can also see some had been using the term "Walking COVID", meaning people who had cleared the infection, but had long term sustained symptoms similar to Emphysema. They've since just moved on to calling everything "Long COVID". Some people recover, some people don't.

This study finally identified the specific damage and detection to brain activity.

[–] JustZ@lemmy.world 24 points 1 month ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (1 children)

People don't get it. The inflammatory process can do these sort of thing to any organ or system, or parts of them.

People got a thing called COVID Toe. This is where you and every person already has some fungus that live on their feet and which gets into the skin and toenails. Maybe you have a little yellowing of the toenails or you're just "prone to athletes foot."

Then you get COVID and suddenly your immune system is working overtime. The fungus starts to multiply faster and spreads more aggressively. Your toes start to get itchy and red, more than usual. They swell. They yellow. Then they start to crack and ooze, possibly requiring surgical debridement or in the most severe cases, such as where the patient already had diabetes affecting their peripheral nerves, amputation of the foot to prevent necrosis and sepsis. Imagine dying from athletes foot because your immune system was overwhelmed fighting a coronavirus.

[–] XeroxCool@lemmy.world 4 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Interesting. I had an increase in fungal presence, but I figured it was excessive boot usage due to starting motorcycle riding 5 months after my first covid infection. It clear near winter for the most part but I wonder if I just hadn't noticed the initial spread.

[–] JustZ@lemmy.world 8 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Very possible. There was a group of podiatrists who wanted to add athletes foot as a primary symptom of COVID. I can't seem to find their letter right now. Google really sucks these days.

It's a serious virus. People don't realize. Just because most people fight it off like a flu doesn't mean is was as easy on your body for it to do so. Imagine if we had a president that didn't treat it as a joke. Might be a few million people still alive.

[–] Smoogs@lemmy.world 1 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Is it this one? https://jfootankleres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13047-020-00425-9

I’ve been using duck duck go these days

[–] JustZ@lemmy.world 1 points 4 weeks ago

Nah, it was a letter signed by a bunch of doctors to some medical society or another.