4 ms·

> (1) A COVID-19 infection can have long-term effects even in young people. What is the rate of this?

by dnautics 6y ago

ceejayoz 6y ago
We don’t know yet, which is a reason to be cautious.
- anoncake 6y ago
  Feel free to be cautious for any reason you want. But don't expect it of others if you can't provide evidence there is reason to be cautious.
  - ceejayoz 6y ago
    We've got plenty of concrete evidence COVID infections can result in long-lasting chronic symptoms. That's sufficient reason to be cautious until we know the rate.
    - aga98mtl 6y ago
      Considering that there has been tens of millions of people with a covid infection, where are these people with chronic symptoms?
      - ceejayoz 6y ago
        https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02598-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02598-6 > Symptoms might take a long time to fade; a study posted on the preprint server medRxiv in August followed up on people who had been hospitalized, and found that even a month after being discharged, more than 70% were reporting shortness of breath and 13.5% were still using oxygen at home. > One study of 143 people with COVID-19 discharged from a hospital in Rome found that 53% had reported fatigue and 43% had shortness of breath an average of 2 months after their symptoms started. A study of patients in China showed that 25% had abnormal lung function after 3 months, and that 16% were still fatigued.
        anoncake 6y ago
        After 1 month, 70% report shortness of breath. After 2 months, 43% and after 3 months, we're down to 25%. People are clearly recovering.
    - __blockcipher__ 6y ago
      We actually don’t have this evidence. If anything we have strong evidence of the opposite. SARS-2 radiological abnormalities resolve in months and this is for hospitalized cases which are by definition more severe than your usual cases. There is really no evidence of what you claim. We’re now 7 months into the major part of this pandemic and people are still stuck citing the fears we all had in April.
      - anoncake 6y ago
        Thank you for this post and all the others. Where can I find the evidence you mention?
        __blockcipher__ 6y ago
        I have a dump of research papers I can send to you. Currently traveling so might take till tomorrow morning
        __blockcipher__ 6y ago
        Sorry for the delay. https://pastebin.com/GeCpFhih https://pastebin.com/GeCpFhih very haphazard but at least will give you pointers to most of the studies
      - ceejayoz 6y ago
        https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02598-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02598-6 > Evidence from people infected with other coronaviruses suggests that the damage will linger for some. A study published in February recorded long-term lung harm from SARS, which is caused by SARS-CoV-1. Between 2003 and 2018, Peixun Zhang at Peking University People’s Hospital in Beijing and his colleagues tracked the health of 71 people who had been hospitalized with SARS. Even after 15 years, 4.6% still had visible lesions on their lungs, and 38% had reduced diffusion capacity, meaning that their lungs were poor at transferring oxygen into the blood and removing carbon dioxide from it.
    - anoncake 6y ago
      People have died of the common cold. Edge cases happen.
arto 6y ago
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.14.20212555v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.14.20212555v...
- timr 6y ago
  That's interesting, thanks. First study I've seen with more than a handful of participants, doing something other than self-reporting of symptoms. That said, it's notable that: * They don't have a control group (makes it impossible to know what the baseline rate of these symptoms is in the population). * They don't measure the various criteria for "organ impairment" before the participants caught covid (makes it impossible to know if the people who were found to be abnormal were abnormal before catching the virus -- there are a fair number of smokers and obese people in this sample, so this isn't an idle concern). * They find a fairly strong association with hospitalization (i.e. the people who are sickest, end up having the most lingering symptoms). * The people who were sickest tended to have the most pre-existing risk factors for the same outcomes being measured by the study (i.e. there's a hidden correlate). Because of these limitations, you can't really draw any broad conclusions from this study. In general, I'd say that it shows that older / obese / unhealthy people are more likely to have both severe Covid, as well as concomitant symptoms of severe Covid.
  - Terretta 6y ago
    There are beginning to be data on this available around well defined, young, and ultra healthy groups such as athletic leagues. Look within a given league at these long term effects / organ damage / health problems among those who recovered to rule out a lot of the self-selection or other variables. To some of your other points, the high end leagues are quite well medically documented, and the individuals are quite healthy. That said, it also appears for some individuals, initial “long term” damage (ongoing heart or liver problems three months after recovery) may be less or gone some six months in. Seems answers are as yet by and large unresolved. In situations where one does not yet know the actual risk, one may prefer an abundance of caution over unknown “calculated” risk given the long tail of possible effects.

> (1) A COVID-19 infection can have long-term effects even in young people. What is the rate of this?

ceejayoz 6y ago

We don’t know yet, which is a reason to be cautious.

anoncake 6y ago
Feel free to be cautious for any reason you want. But don't expect it of others if you can't provide evidence there is reason to be cautious.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  We've got plenty of concrete evidence COVID infections can result in long-lasting chronic symptoms. That's sufficient reason to be cautious until we know the rate.
  - aga98mtl 6y ago
    Considering that there has been tens of millions of people with a covid infection, where are these people with chronic symptoms?
    - ceejayoz 6y ago
      https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02598-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02598-6 > Symptoms might take a long time to fade; a study posted on the preprint server medRxiv in August followed up on people who had been hospitalized, and found that even a month after being discharged, more than 70% were reporting shortness of breath and 13.5% were still using oxygen at home. > One study of 143 people with COVID-19 discharged from a hospital in Rome found that 53% had reported fatigue and 43% had shortness of breath an average of 2 months after their symptoms started. A study of patients in China showed that 25% had abnormal lung function after 3 months, and that 16% were still fatigued.
      - anoncake 6y ago
        After 1 month, 70% report shortness of breath. After 2 months, 43% and after 3 months, we're down to 25%. People are clearly recovering.
  - __blockcipher__ 6y ago
    We actually don’t have this evidence. If anything we have strong evidence of the opposite. SARS-2 radiological abnormalities resolve in months and this is for hospitalized cases which are by definition more severe than your usual cases. There is really no evidence of what you claim. We’re now 7 months into the major part of this pandemic and people are still stuck citing the fears we all had in April.
    - anoncake 6y ago
      Thank you for this post and all the others. Where can I find the evidence you mention?
      - __blockcipher__ 6y ago
        I have a dump of research papers I can send to you. Currently traveling so might take till tomorrow morning
      - __blockcipher__ 6y ago
        Sorry for the delay. https://pastebin.com/GeCpFhih https://pastebin.com/GeCpFhih very haphazard but at least will give you pointers to most of the studies
    - ceejayoz 6y ago
      https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02598-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02598-6 > Evidence from people infected with other coronaviruses suggests that the damage will linger for some. A study published in February recorded long-term lung harm from SARS, which is caused by SARS-CoV-1. Between 2003 and 2018, Peixun Zhang at Peking University People’s Hospital in Beijing and his colleagues tracked the health of 71 people who had been hospitalized with SARS. Even after 15 years, 4.6% still had visible lesions on their lungs, and 38% had reduced diffusion capacity, meaning that their lungs were poor at transferring oxygen into the blood and removing carbon dioxide from it.
  - anoncake 6y ago
    People have died of the common cold. Edge cases happen.

arto 6y ago

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.14.20212555v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.14.20212555v...

timr 6y ago
That's interesting, thanks. First study I've seen with more than a handful of participants, doing something other than self-reporting of symptoms. That said, it's notable that: * They don't have a control group (makes it impossible to know what the baseline rate of these symptoms is in the population). * They don't measure the various criteria for "organ impairment" before the participants caught covid (makes it impossible to know if the people who were found to be abnormal were abnormal before catching the virus -- there are a fair number of smokers and obese people in this sample, so this isn't an idle concern). * They find a fairly strong association with hospitalization (i.e. the people who are sickest, end up having the most lingering symptoms). * The people who were sickest tended to have the most pre-existing risk factors for the same outcomes being measured by the study (i.e. there's a hidden correlate). Because of these limitations, you can't really draw any broad conclusions from this study. In general, I'd say that it shows that older / obese / unhealthy people are more likely to have both severe Covid, as well as concomitant symptoms of severe Covid.
- Terretta 6y ago
  There are beginning to be data on this available around well defined, young, and ultra healthy groups such as athletic leagues. Look within a given league at these long term effects / organ damage / health problems among those who recovered to rule out a lot of the self-selection or other variables. To some of your other points, the high end leagues are quite well medically documented, and the individuals are quite healthy. That said, it also appears for some individuals, initial “long term” damage (ongoing heart or liver problems three months after recovery) may be less or gone some six months in. Seems answers are as yet by and large unresolved. In situations where one does not yet know the actual risk, one may prefer an abundance of caution over unknown “calculated” risk given the long tail of possible effects.