3 ms·
This comment lacks a knowledge of epidemiologic methods and is relying on knocking forum posting, while ignoring the real scientific procedure being cited in th
by WhompingWindows 6y ago
This comment lacks a knowledge of epidemiologic methods and is relying on knocking forum posting, while ignoring the real scientific procedure being cited in the article.
Have you read the studies linked? How would you even suggest control groups are used for the studies mentioned -- they are case-series, which is a legitimate form of scientific research that doesn't use controls. These are COVID-19 patients who were hospitalized who continue to have symptoms for months. There is not a treatment we are testing here, which would be an RCT and would include a control-arm.
If you're thinking of case-control study, that'd be nice here, however it requires a retrospective lookback where you find cases like the above case-series reports have just done, but you then have to find a bunch of other COVID-19 patients from the same hospital/demographic group to then compare over time with the cases. This sort of study takes time and there's no way it could've been completed yet, as we are just uncovering the phenomenon now with case series. So, if these scientists are doing their job, they will follow-up and do the case-control lookback studies, though they won't be out for 6-12 months.
The science here is working as intended. Case series are always going to be the first out of the gate, it was that way with HIV/AIDS in SF, and it appears that it's that way with COVID-19 long term complications. It's not just "forums" as you stated it, there are real case-series articles published on this phenomenon.
- saltcured 6y agoOne form of control would be a representative part of the population who are NOT post-covid. The null hypothesis argument would be: how many of these cases would be present independent of covid infection status? For example, the circumstances of this pandemic have notably increased anxiety and depression rates as well as increasing stress. How many people might have symptoms like fatigue, brain fog, aches, and other inflammation explainable just by this stressful environment even without viral exposure?