Cumulative effects of COVID infections

During our talk the physicist summarized what the science now says about COVID infections, whether they appear mild or severe. Every infection increases the risk for heart attacks, strokes and heart disease; for new-onset diabetes; for cognitive decline and dementia; for deregulating the immune system; and for reactivating viruses like Epstein-Barr or shingles.

An epidemic of shingles, for example, is now afflicting young Chinese adults who have just recovered from a bout with COVID.

At the beginning of the pandemic researchers worried about the effects of an acute infection requiring hospitalization. Now the focus has shifted to the long-term impacts of repeated infections and long COVID, says Bar-Yam. Here again the science shows that risks are real and cumulative, particularly among those suffering from long COVID.

“The science is saying our health is progressively deteriorating,” says Bar-Yam.

Because COVID destabilizes the immune system, researchers are now beginning to see a link between repeat COVID infections and rising cancer rates in young people. One study recently found that a COVID infection can accelerate or increase cancer risk, while another study revealed that a COVID infection substantially heightened the risk of six cancers caused by the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus.

In this vein Bar-Yam has also co-authored a new peer-reviewed paper in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine Focus that draws some disturbing comparisons between repeated COVID infections and untreated HIV infections, noting each can cause chronic inflammation, immune exhaustion and accelerated biological aging.

Bar-Yam and fellow researchers are not saying that COVID is the same as HIV-acquired AIDS — the two are vastly different viruses spread in very different ways. But a comparison of the two immune destabilizers helps us see something that public health discourse has largely neglected: “We may be living through a slow-moving immune decline crisis.”