Novelist Alisa Lynn Valdés connected the dots between her personal observation that athletes are getting Long Covid (LC) more often than sedentary people and capillarization. The number of small blood vessels a person has in their muscles (capillaries) can triple in elite athletes. I think she's on to something:
Long Covid is a disease of the capillaries. Most people I know with LC were athletes, like me. I was a fitness trainer, runner, dance teacher for decades. Turns out athletes have 200% more capillarization than sedentary folks. Maybe the truth is, LC is more common in fit people. People at higher altitudes also have greater capillary density. And...whaddaya know? People at higher altitudes are far more likely to develop Long Covid.
It's the capillaries.
Long Covid is vasculitis. Infectious, inhaled, airborne vasculitis. In horses, coronavirus is literally called Equine Infectious Vasculitis.
How many of us have hands that look like this now?
That's vasculitis.
Long Covid also seems to be linked to an overly enthusiastic immune response rather than a weak one. People in medicine and science need to take a moment to recalibrate their minds to be open to new possibilities, with humility.
After the truth began leaking out in 2021, the media quickly stopped covering it. This is a major problem in pro sports.
The take home message here is not to sit on the couch more! It's to do all you can to prevent getting Covid and inadvertently giving it to someone elderly, immunocompromised, or in great shape! This virus is taking out our peak performers and destroying the brains of some of our brightest minds.
Please wear a mask whenever you're inside a public building until we can clean the air and have CO2 monitors attached to the walls that consistently show under 700ppm.
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