3 ms·

The short answer is that the supposed “long-term impacts” aren’t really real. I recommend reading the literature on SARS-CoV-1, the “original SARS”, which sprea

The short answer is that the supposed “long-term impacts” aren’t really real. I recommend reading the literature on SARS-CoV-1, the “original SARS”, which spreads less easily but is far more severe. A normal SARS-1 case is like a severe SARS-2 (“covid”) case. With SARS-1, there can be lingering fatigue and minor cognitive deficits for a few months post infection, but radiological abnormalities of the lungs, etc clear away within months and are certainly gone at the 1 year mark. The evidence in SARS-2 is incredibly weak and especially for those who are asymptomatic or paucisymptomatic the chance of lasting harm is essentially zero. Remember that the real damage occurs from the immune response, so if you have no symptoms you cannot have damage. The notion being promulgated of having totally asymptomatic COVID-19 and then randomly showing organ damage (heart, lungs etc) is absurd. Finally for mathematical purposes we need to consider long-term damage - which again just doesn’t really happen - as not as bad as a death. So we can still work it into the math just fine, whether you want to call it a tenth of a death or half or whatever. —- Oh finally, quick point that vaccines are not without risk either. Go read the data on the Moderna trials. Or the history of rushed-out vaccines that caused paralysis (it was either for swine flu or avian flu, I forget which)

maxerickson 6y ago
There's a difference (a significant one) between vaccines carrying some risk and a vaccine being as harmful as infection. We don't have that information about a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine yet, but you are just hand-waving here, it's likely enough that one of the many vaccine candidates will be less harmful than a course of infection (In general, vaccines are safe enough that we use lots of them…). You also aren't working long term damage "into the math", you are doing just what I was getting at, dismissing it.
- __blockcipher__ 6y ago
  You haven't really given me any math to dismiss. But simply put, I believe the risks of locking down until a vaccine outpace the risks of allowing SARS-CoV-2 to spread normally in the general population (not in high-risk categories). Your position also implicitly relies on the notion that SARS-2 isn't spreading right now, but it is, so by the time we get a vaccine we will have a lot of exposure. Data from NY and Sweden implies somewhere around 20% seroprevalence is when we hit herd immunity. Since you haven't given me much to work on, and I don't feel like digging into the vaccine side, let me give you some research on long-term damage: ["Follow-up Chest CT findings from discharged patients with severe COVID-19: an 83-day observational study"](https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-27359/v1 https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-27359/v1) - First Submitted May 4, Published online May 12 > Radiological abnormalities in patients of severe COVID-19 could be completely absorbed with no residual lung injury in more than two months’ follow-up. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1046/j.1440-1843.2003.00522.x https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1046/j.1440-1843... (SARS-1 pathology) > Preliminary evidence suggests that these lung function abnormalities will improve over time and here's just one effect of lockdown: loneliness. https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/110/15/5797.full.pdf https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/110/15/5797.full.pdf > mortality was higher among more socially isolated and more lonely participants. However, after adjusting statistically for demographic factors and baseline health, social isolation remained significantly associated with mortality (hazard ratio 1.26, 95% confidence interval, 1.08–1.48 for the top quintile of isolation), but loneliness did not (haz-ard ratio 0.92, 95% confidence interval, 0.78–1.09). The association of social isolation with mortality was unchanged when loneliness was included in the model.
  - maxerickson 6y ago
    You haven't done enough work to tie the second 2 links to the 2020 pandemic. You are just asserting that they apply. You are the one dismissing government epidemiologists, you owe the math, not me. For the first link, only 40% of the patients had (in the sense of the Chest CT study) recovered after 2 months. But that's a single measure, it would be good to have additional assessments of the health of those folks, rather than just the single factor.

maxerickson 6y ago

There's a difference (a significant one) between vaccines carrying some risk and a vaccine being as harmful as infection. We don't have that information about a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine yet, but you are just hand-waving here, it's likely enough that one of the many vaccine candidates will be less harmful than a course of infection (In general, vaccines are safe enough that we use lots of them…). You also aren't working long term damage "into the math", you are doing just what I was getting at, dismissing it.

__blockcipher__ 6y ago
You haven't really given me any math to dismiss. But simply put, I believe the risks of locking down until a vaccine outpace the risks of allowing SARS-CoV-2 to spread normally in the general population (not in high-risk categories). Your position also implicitly relies on the notion that SARS-2 isn't spreading right now, but it is, so by the time we get a vaccine we will have a lot of exposure. Data from NY and Sweden implies somewhere around 20% seroprevalence is when we hit herd immunity. Since you haven't given me much to work on, and I don't feel like digging into the vaccine side, let me give you some research on long-term damage: ["Follow-up Chest CT findings from discharged patients with severe COVID-19: an 83-day observational study"](https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-27359/v1 https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-27359/v1) - First Submitted May 4, Published online May 12 > Radiological abnormalities in patients of severe COVID-19 could be completely absorbed with no residual lung injury in more than two months’ follow-up. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1046/j.1440-1843.2003.00522.x https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1046/j.1440-1843... (SARS-1 pathology) > Preliminary evidence suggests that these lung function abnormalities will improve over time and here's just one effect of lockdown: loneliness. https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/110/15/5797.full.pdf https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/110/15/5797.full.pdf > mortality was higher among more socially isolated and more lonely participants. However, after adjusting statistically for demographic factors and baseline health, social isolation remained significantly associated with mortality (hazard ratio 1.26, 95% confidence interval, 1.08–1.48 for the top quintile of isolation), but loneliness did not (haz-ard ratio 0.92, 95% confidence interval, 0.78–1.09). The association of social isolation with mortality was unchanged when loneliness was included in the model.
- maxerickson 6y ago
  You haven't done enough work to tie the second 2 links to the 2020 pandemic. You are just asserting that they apply. You are the one dismissing government epidemiologists, you owe the math, not me. For the first link, only 40% of the patients had (in the sense of the Chest CT study) recovered after 2 months. But that's a single measure, it would be good to have additional assessments of the health of those folks, rather than just the single factor.