Let's hope that research into long-term COVID-19 symptoms will accelerate research into tinnitus treatments. We as a community of tinnitus sufferers might not be billionaires, but the biotech companies addressing the issue certainly will be if they get their products out there soon enough to capture the wave of new people with tinnitus. This may be a COVID-19-blessing-in-disguise, i.e. hearing issues appear to be a potential outcome of covid infection, so it seems very likely that there will be a faster pace of research and development of treatments relevant to our community than there was before the pandemic:
"...7.6% of COVID patients experienced hearing loss, while 14.8% of them experienced tinnitus. A further 7.2% experienced vertigo, a loss of balance which occurs in people with ear damage...
...Though caution needs to be taken, we hope this study will add to the weight of scientific evidence that there is a strong association between Covid-19 and hearing problems."
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Scientists reveal that tinnitus is possible COVID-19 symptom
An estimated 141 million people have been infected with COVID-19 to-date. The 14.8% of them who may have tinnitus as a long-term symptom = 20,868,000 new tinnitus patients since the beginning of the pandemic. And the pandemic is of course far from over. Any Frequency Therapeutics-type company looking at these numbers should be scrambling faster than ever to get their products right.