5 ms·

The comparison between covid and polio fatality rates was made upthread by another user. I responded by pointing out a deficiency in that comparison, namely th

The comparison between covid and polio fatality rates was made upthread by another user. I responded by pointing out a deficiency in that comparison, namely that polio had serious lasting adverse health effects on 1/4th to 8/10ths of survivors. In response to that, I received a comment suggesting that covid may yet prove to have similar lasting effects. That fear mongering is what I am now responding to. There is no evidence to suggest that scenario is more likely to unfold with covid than any other illness.

fzeroracer 6y ago
> There is no evidence to suggest that scenario is more likely to unfold with covid than any other illness. And this is precisely the problem which you seem to have missed. There's no evidence to support that with the novel coronavirus because we don't know how it functions nor have there been people recovered long enough to determine what the long term effects actually are. Post-polio syndrome took 15-30 years after infection for the effects to actually be observed, so obviously there can't be any evidence because it's not even been a year since the coronavirus pandemic started. What we have noticed is that there is evidence of damage to the lungs and nervous system even in people that have recovered from the coronavirus with more we simply don't know. The problem is that you're looking at things which we were only able to determine long after infection and then comparing it to a new virus which we simply cannot have that data yet. It's naive to assume that because there's no data that means it's obviously safe from any long term effects because I imagine people likely made that same assumption about Polio as well because these things tend to have a very long tail.
- catalogia 6y ago
  > There's no evidence to support that with the novel coronavirus because we don't know how it functions nor have there been people recovered long enough to determine what the long term effects actually are. And my point is that the same can be said of the new flavors of influenza. The variations of influenza which are circulating this year haven't been studied for years because they, like covid-19, are new. They make new vaccines for influenza twice a year because influenza is constantly mutating. We don't know what the long-term effects for any new mutation of influenza are. I don't think that should be taken as a license to fearmonger.

fzeroracer 6y ago

> There is no evidence to suggest that scenario is more likely to unfold with covid than any other illness. And this is precisely the problem which you seem to have missed. There's no evidence to support that with the novel coronavirus because we don't know how it functions nor have there been people recovered long enough to determine what the long term effects actually are. Post-polio syndrome took 15-30 years after infection for the effects to actually be observed, so obviously there can't be any evidence because it's not even been a year since the coronavirus pandemic started. What we have noticed is that there is evidence of damage to the lungs and nervous system even in people that have recovered from the coronavirus with more we simply don't know. The problem is that you're looking at things which we were only able to determine long after infection and then comparing it to a new virus which we simply cannot have that data yet. It's naive to assume that because there's no data that means it's obviously safe from any long term effects because I imagine people likely made that same assumption about Polio as well because these things tend to have a very long tail.

catalogia 6y ago
> There's no evidence to support that with the novel coronavirus because we don't know how it functions nor have there been people recovered long enough to determine what the long term effects actually are. And my point is that the same can be said of the new flavors of influenza. The variations of influenza which are circulating this year haven't been studied for years because they, like covid-19, are new. They make new vaccines for influenza twice a year because influenza is constantly mutating. We don't know what the long-term effects for any new mutation of influenza are. I don't think that should be taken as a license to fearmonger.