Study: The more times you catch COVID, the sicker you’re likely to get with each reinfection. By David Axe.

That’s the worrying conclusion of a new study drawing on data from the U.S. Veterans Administration. …

Three researchers — Ziyad Al-Aly from the Washington University School of Medicine plus Benjamin Bowe and Yan Xie, both from the V.A. St. Louis Health Care System — scrutinized the health records of 5.7 million American veterans. …

Al-Aly, Bowe and Xie tracked health outcomes over a six-month period and came to a startling conclusion. “We show that, compared to people with first infection, reinfection contributes additional risks,” they wrote in their study, which hasn’t been peer-reviewed yet but is under consideration for publication in Nature.

Every time you catch COVID, your chance of getting really sick with something — likely COVID-related — seems to go up, Al-Aly, Bowe and Xie found. The risk of cardiovascular disorders, problems with blood-clotting, diabetes, fatigue, gastrointestinal and kidney disorders, mental health problems, musculoskeletal disorders and neurologic damage all increase with reinfection — this despite the antibodies that should result from repeat infections. …

Broadly speaking, however, the likelihood of heart and clotting problems, fatigue and lung damage roughly doubles each time you catch COVID, Al-Aly, Bowe and Xie found. …

“In general, one would expect that COVID will do more damage with a longer infection,” he told The Daily Beast. A short-lasting COVID infection followed by another short case of COVID should be less damaging than, say, back-to-back long illnesses.

Maybe the Chinese know something we don’t. After all, it came out of their bioweapons lab.