As we’ve been covering, the President and I have each had recent bouts of Covid. Cases have been increasing across the board in a big summer wave, thanks to new variants scientists have christened LB.1 and FLiRT. (I guess we ran through the Greek alphabet.) Though it definitely knocked me on my patootie, it was never so severe that I needed to go to the hospital. I credit that entirely to taking Paxlovid, and staying up to date on the Covid vaccines. Now, unsurprisingly, the results of a new study show that the current best defense we have against developing Long Covid is vaccination. More precisely, the vaccine can lower your risk of Long Covid by 72%. I like those odds. Prevention broke down key points from the study for us:

Get vaccinated: That’s the main takeaway from a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine. For the study, researchers analyzed medical records of nearly 450,000 people from the Department of Veterans Affairs health system who had COVID-19 diagnosed between March 1, 2020, and Jan. 31, 2022. Those patients were compared with around 4.7 million people who weren’t diagnosed with COVID-19 during the same time. The researchers found that the lowest rates of long COVID (3.5%) were in people who were vaccinated against COVID-19. Of the people who were unvaccinated, 7.8% developed long COVID.

A 72% risk-reduction: The study covered the original COVID-19 strain, along with Delta and Omicron strains. (The variants circulating now — like LB.1 and FLiRT variants — are off-shoots of the Omicron strain.) The rates of long COVID dropped over time, regardless of whether people were vaccinated, but the researchers said that was likely due to a combination of changes in the virus and other factors. Overall, the researchers found that the vaccine was responsible for nearly 72% of the drop in cases.

How the vaccine helps: “Current findings indicate that it [long COVID] has to do with the creation of chronic inflammation,” says William Schaffner, M.D., an infectious disease specialist and professor at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. Having COVID-19 can cause a strong inflammatory response, especially if you have a severe case, he says. “If the vaccine tamps down on that inflammatory response, the risk of long COVID is also reduced,” Dr. Schaffner says. Infectious disease expert Amesh A. Adalja, M.D., senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, agrees. “Vaccination induces one’s immune system to mount a robust response against the virus,” he says.

Again, get vaccinated: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently recommended that all Americans six months and older get an updated COVID-19 vaccine in the fall when it becomes available, whether they’ve been vaccinated against the virus in the past or not. Doctors say that’s important, both to protect against severe disease and to lower your risk of developing long COVID, regardless of whether you’re considered high risk for severe disease or not. “We still don’t really understand which individuals are eventually going to develop long COVID,” Dr. Russo explains.

Treatment options: As of now, there are no specific treatments for long COVID. “It is important to realize that long COVID is an umbrella term and not a specific disease process,” Dr. Adalja says. “For treatment to be successful, it will be necessary to actually untangle all the different things that are grouped under this umbrella. There may be different treatments for different types.” If you suspect that you have long COVID or have been diagnosed with the condition, Dr. Schaffner recommends trying to be seen at a specialized long COVID clinic. There, doctors who regularly treat patients with the condition should be able to offer a tailored approach to your treatment based on the latest research and what they’ve seen be effective for patients.

[From Prevention]

Get vaccinated! There’s still so much unknown about Long Covid, as the doctors mention above. You don’t know how it may affect you, coupled with the fact that doctors are still figuring out the best treatments. When the new boosters came out last fall, a good friend of mine said, “I’ll be ok without it this time.” He got Covid less than a month later, and after months of many ailments, specialists, and diagnoses, he’s now in the Long Covid program at NYU Hospital. He’s a man in the prime of his life, yet completely withered under Long Covid. Thankfully he’s getting better and better, but I cannot stress enough how much advocating he had to do for himself to land on treatment that actually started to help his symptoms. That took a lot of effort when he was already in a compromised state.

And to reduce the risk by 72%, all we have to do is get a shot? That’s a no-brainer to me.

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