Michelle Chason, a Reiki master in Tallahassee, Florida, was diagnosed with COVID-19 on June 15, 2020. First, she got a dry mouth. Then came the nasty dizzy spells that led to spinning rooms and blackouts.
Chason tested negative a month later, but she still wasn’t feeling well. The left side of her face tingled. She felt chest pain, had debilitating brain fog, and had short-term memory problems. Four months after her initial diagnosis, in October, Chason’s doctor told her she was suffering from long-term COVID.
When the vaccines started rolling out, Chason planned to wait and see how other long-haul jets would react before rolling up her sleeve. But on February 10, her doctor offered her the Pfizer vaccine, and she got the shot.
Four days after the first dose, Chason said, the symptoms – dizziness, nausea, loss of appetite, chills – hit like lightning. “I’ve been through everything I’ve been dealing with since taking COVID,” Chason said.
A few days later, the vast majority of her long-lasting COVID symptoms – the brain fog, chest pain, and facial tingling – disappeared. “I am better, I feel better. I’m not 100% into pre-COVID days, but I’m close, ”Chason told HuffPost.
Around the world, many other people with long-lasting symptoms – a condition now clinically defined as post-acute consequences of SARS-CoV-2, or to feed – have reported similar experiences after receiving a vaccine.
A recent informal poll of Survivor Corps, a Facebook community of COVID-19 survivors, found that 36% of people with long-range symptoms noticed improvements in their condition after vaccination. About 50% stayed the same. Others unofficial surveys have also estimated that about a third of patients with long-term COVID feel better after a vaccination.
At the same time, there are many others with PASC hesitant to get vaccinated, concerned that the shot could worsen symptoms in the long term. They worry about being hit with side effects on top of the devastating long COVID pain.
Overall, the vaccines do not appear to worsen long-lasting COVID symptoms. The Johnson & Johnson studies enrolled several people who had previously had COVID-19, and those people had no re-inflammatory response or a particularly worse effect, according to F. Perry Wilson, a Yale Medicine physician and researcher at the Yale School of Medicine.
But doctors know very little about PASC and how people with the condition can respond to a vaccine. So while it seems like the shot could improve long-lasting COVID symptoms in a small group of people, so much of what we currently know is based on anecdotes.
How long COVID works and how the vaccines can affect it
“We don’t know who gets PASC, who is avoiding it, what exactly causes it or how we can even diagnose it effectively,” said William Li, a vascular biologist and medical director of the Angiogenesis FoundationWithout those answers, it is difficult to see clearly how the vaccines will affect long-haul flights, for better or for worse.
Li said researchers have found a few theories about what’s going on with PASC. First, the virus can damage tissues.
“You may have been beaten up by the virus and it will linger for a while,” added Wilson. Some researchers think there may be ongoing inflammation, and a third theory is that people with PASC have nerve defects.
The last theory in the running is that long-haul travelers may have bits and pieces of virus hidden in their bodies. These viral pieces probably wouldn’t be detectable on a diagnostic PCR test commonly used to diagnose COVID-19 – which makes sense since most PASC patients test negative – but those viral residues could cause symptoms.
If it turns out to be the case, a vaccine can activate the immune system enough to clear up the dormant virus and reset things. “We can’t explain this yet, but it suggests that boosting the immune system may make a difference for some long-haul travelers,” said Li.
Wilson said it is also perfectly plausible that PASC symptoms will just get better over time, and since these patients have had symptoms for a while, improvements may happen by chance around the time of vaccination.
There is still a lot to learn about long COVID and the vaccines
We need a lot more evidence to find out why some people never make a full recovery and if and how the vaccines can help.
“More research needs to be done on this phenomenon, but the observation may be an important indication for the treatment of PASC,” said Li.
The National Institutes of Health launched an investigation in February to study long COVID. And as more long-haul aircraft get the vaccines, doctors will have a better idea of whether the injections can be used as a potential treatment for PASC.
As for now, most doctors recommend that long-haul planes go ahead and take the pictures. There is some evidence that the vaccines are safe in a wide variety of circumstances.
“There may be a chance it will even benefit them, but the chances are it will go well,” said Wilson.