Brandon Gilles Dies from Long-Covid, Electrical Engineer and Spatial AI Pioneer

https://www.mcphagwara.com/articles/brandon-gilles-obituary/

by ck2 • 3 years ago

30 30 3 years ago

mcphagwara.com

ck25• 3 years ago

Found this old interview with him, it's sad to see someone with so much energy taken down.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DG2LOj8Upw

His long-covid google doc survives him, which I guess is what happens these days

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1X3dNPgEuQ2j8x7w8OqLEDP7l...

(PDF) https://docs.google.com/document/export?format=pdf&id=1X3dNP...

DrFlipper2• 3 years ago

That vaccination timeline is... interesting. But it would be a wild conspiracy to say more.

gyzmau2• 3 years ago

if you come with facts, without generalisation on one case, we might listen and discuss. But with this kind of speech of 5 words, yup! That won't go far.

pfannkuchen• 3 years ago

That document is incredibly long and I didn’t find any mention of vaccination in the sections I skimmed. What is the timeline you’re referring to?

RagnarD• 3 years ago

Curious where you're seeing that?

jerlam• 3 years ago

The PDF document starting on page 102 has the timeline including vaccination and symptoms. It also contains:

- A family history of ME/CFS and schizophrenia

- The author's own experience with ME/CFS

- Successful self-treatment of ME/CFS and pre-schizophrenia

It puts the rest of the document in context.

RandomWorker• 3 years ago

So sad, we were born in the same year. Interview was great

zingababba• 3 years ago

I wonder how much of what he was taking added to his distressed state. There's a ton of supplements listed there. I understand wanting to get better as I'm also dealing with long covid symptoms (histamine issues, inflammation, etc.) and understand the extreme internal discordance it can cause - I just want to get back to normal! But it's necessary to be cautious with what you throw at yourself, I've personally experienced several negative reactions (sometimes catching them quite late) from supplements I have experimented with in efforts to get well.

ck25• 3 years ago

I started wondering about the source website I linked and despite the lack of another site with all the information in one place I am not so sure I should have linked it based on the other "articles" on that website.

It's unprovable but feels like it was written by ChatGPT or assisted?

If a better source is found, feel free to either replace the link or delist this thread?

bcatanzaro• 3 years ago

I didn't know Long COVID could cause multiple organ failure and death.

ck25• 3 years ago

There's isn't just one kind of long-covid but it can via several mechanisms.

There's no scientific term for it but some call it premature aging or radical aging.

It takes awhile to happen, but he caught covid in 2020 so it's been over three years.

What spooks me is he was really intelligent and researched everything about it extensively but it was useless in the end.

There are likely to be more and more people from 2020 and then later with this happening on a time-delay.

NoZebra120vClip• 3 years ago

Interesting how a crowd of people who rest their faith on "settled science" and "solid consensus" and "proven clinical trials" and "peer-reviewed research" start to pass rumors, exaggerations, and fake news about something that isn't even an ICD-10.

haldujai7• 3 years ago

With all respect to Brandon Gilles, I have never heard of "dying from long covid" before and am trying to understand what this means.

There is a huge discrepancy and a lot of detail missing between "developed Long-COVID symptoms such as brain fog, fatigue, muscle pain and shortness of breath" and "he suffered from multiple organ failures".

I tried searching but have not found anything (yes I know some death certificates list long-covid as a contributory cause in CDC data, but one can list anything on a death certificate). Does anyone have a source/case report explaining this or detailing a case?

(Please note I am not trying to start a political debate regarding COVID out of a man's obituary, I am genuinely curious if anyone has information about this as I've never heard a causative claim before)

latchkey2• 3 years ago

It was an easy google search ("covid multiple organ failure") with a bunch of responses, including:

https://medicine.wustl.edu/news/repeat-covid-19-infections-i...

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jmv.27627

https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s128...

haldujai7• 3 years ago

All of your sources are about acute or active covid infection. As a physician who worked in an ECMO center during the pandemic I am well aware of severe Covid-19 infections and as I stated in my post I tried searching, specifically looking on: UpToDate, Medscape and Google Scholar.

I am asking about "long-covid", also called "post covid condition". From Brandon's own description he had what would be classified as "mild COVID-19 illness" and was never hospitalized. He had some persistent symptoms that may be attributable to "long-covid", this is very different from your sources.

I have never heard of a death from long-term sequelae in someone who has never been hospitalized.

slowmovintarget2• 3 years ago

That site is bizarre. The text was made unselectable for some reason. It also appears to be a rehash of some other random site.

This is a bit better: https://twitter.com/BrandonGilles/status/1686937347819233280

haldujai7• 3 years ago

Interesting, it affirms his timeline in the Google doc that he was improving up to April 2023.

I can't rationalize how any of the symptoms he described, and having undergone many medical tests which were not described as indicating any end-organ dysfunction, would result in to organ failure which I've never heard of happening "out of the blue".

I fully respect his family's right to privacy and of course don't expect a full disclosure. The physician in me is very interested in learning more about what happened in either his or another case. From a medical perspective this is a very shocking turn of events that has not yet been described to my knowledge.

ck25• 3 years ago

I am hoping either HN mods replace my link or someone writes a proper post by human hand.

I kinda regret not taking a deeper look at that website first but at least the news is out and people are talking about it and remembering him.

I wish there was a way to archive all his posts but of course now that's even more impossible given twitter's degradation

https://twitter.com/BrandonGilles/with_replies

quenched2• 3 years ago

While long Covid is an encompassing term, there is symptom overlap between long COVID and ME/CFS. Around 50% of people with long COVID meet the criteria for a diagnosis of ME/CFS.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41577-023-00904-7

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-022-00846-2

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fneur.2023.1090...

Mild ME/CFS is usually associated with around 50% reduction in daily functioning. Moderate will usually lead to people being housebound and intermittently bed-bound. Severe and very severe are associated with a level of suffering that is hard to imagine possible.

An example of someone becoming severe is PhysicsGirl - Dianna Cowern.

https://youtu.be/vydgkCCXbTA

The associated severe dysautonomia means that people are unable to sit or stand and often they can not eat or digest. They may require intravenous nutrition. Regrettably there are cases where the disease has not been treated appropriately and young people have died as a result. A recent example is Maeve Boothby-O'Neill and her father Sean O'Neill wrote in The Times with an interview with Maeve's Mother by Dr David Tuller.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/my-daughter-couldnt-be-sa...

https://www.codastory.com/waronscience/chronic-fatigue-syndr...

haldujai7• 3 years ago

Brandon describes slowly improving over ~1.5 years up to April 2023 when he was walking ~0.9 miles/day which so far is concordant with ME/CFS but where it gets discordant is that he progressed to multi-organ failure and death within 3 months.

I'm not questioning whether he suffered from ME/CFS but mortality is not reported in the Stanford data or what I've heard described of the syndrome.

It's hard to wrap my head around ME/CFS as he has described it being causative of organ failure. Did something happen? Is this a consequence of the therapeutic he tried?

Organ failure in a 37 year old without a history of end-organ dysfunction or acutely inciting event like a toxicity is incredibly unusual.

Brandon Gilles Dies from Long-Covid, Electrical Engineer and Spatial AI Pioneer

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