Many people cope COVID-19 symptoms long after their infection say they are terrified of receiving the COVID-19 vaccine, worried that the shot intended to protect them will aggravate the debilitating symptoms. But some patients actually report the opposite after strokes.
A Facebook group called “Survivor Corps” polled 962 COVID-19 long conveyors and found that 39% said they saw an easy to complete resolution of persistent symptoms after vaccination.
46% of people said they stayed the same after their shooting, 14% said they feel worse.
“For me, this is a miracle,” CBV News senior medical correspondent Kimberly Willis-Rinaldi told Tara Narula. “The specific viral conjunctivitis in my right eye is gone. The rash on my back, arms and neck is gone.”
Prior to the vaccine, Willis-Rinaldi said she felt “extremely tired” from her COVID-19 diagnosis last March.
“I had this excruciating pain in my back and near my lungs,” she described.
After the vaccine, she said “the extreme episodes of extreme fatigue have improved.”
The survey drew the attention of Dr. Akiko Iwasaki, a professor of immunobiology at Yale School of Medicine. She said it was not something she “expected to see.”
Iwasaki launches study on people with long COVID-19, collecting blood and saliva samples to compare immune responses before and after long-term carriers receive vaccine to understand if it really helps.
A long theory of COVID is that pieces of the virus can “hide” in the body.
The vaccine induces strong antibody and T cell responses that can remove the viral reservoir or debris that cause inflammation and would be a permanent solution to long-term COVID, Iwasaki said.
Another theory is that long COVID is driven by an overactive autoimmune response, and the vaccine may reduce these responses.
“There is no good therapy for long-term COVID and people have really debilitating symptoms,” Iwasaki said. “So there’s a lot of excitement about this study.”
Judy Dodd, a longtime carrier of COVID, said she was horrified to receive the vaccine.
“It simply came to our notice then not to get the vaccine, “she said.
Dodd suffered from dizziness, headaches and exhaustion more than a year after receiving COVID-19.
After the vaccine, he noticed a happy improvement.
“A few weeks after I got the second vaccine, I was like in my living room, like dancing or something,” Dodd said. “And my partner was like, I don’t think I saw you dancing in a year.”
Dodd compared the change in her body to someone pressing a switch.
“I forgot what it was like to wake up in the morning and feel good and excited about that day and not feel defeated before getting out of bed,” she said.
Yale hopes to enroll 100 people with long-term COVID in its study to understand these phenomena and see if the relief will last. Researchers also say the findings could help in other diseases that can be triggered by a virus, such as chronic fatigue syndrome.