5 ms·

I have been following "long COVID" reports. Firstly, much of the mass media coverage is misleading, often intentionally so in pursuit of clicks and advertising

I have been following "long COVID" reports. Firstly, much of the mass media coverage is misleading, often intentionally so in pursuit of clicks and advertising revenue. A lot of the people claiming to have debilitating "long COVID" were never actually tested positive for COVID in the first place. They are the broadly the same demographic that, before COVID, were claiming to have "chronic Lyme" or whatever. Certainly mainly of them do have symptoms and distress, but it is questionable what relationship they have to COVID. Then, if one starts digging into more serious discussion – even your link above – one finds that "long term" in medical parlance may mean a series of months but not necessarily years, and similar months-long impacts are known from diseases that we have generally tolerated among society. It also isn’t clear that these lingering symptoms affect enough people to impact the economy if measures are lifted once hospitalizations fall.

NortySpock 6y ago
> A lot of the people claiming to have debilitating "long COVID" were never actually tested positive for COVID in the first place. Do you have a citation for this claim?
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  I was talking about the innumerable "long COVID" media coverage where some ordinary person is invited to tell the whole story of how they got ill, felt terrible, and still feel terrible, but nowhere did they actually go to the doctor and get a formal positive COVID test. They are just guessing that they had this disease that was going around. And now dedicated Facebook groups etc. are popping up whose membership has complaints and claims that are extremely similar to the "chronic Lyme" groups that flourished just before COVID. I was obviously not referring to actual scientific studies of long-term COVID effects, but as I said, those studies don’t say quite what the more sensationalistic mass-media coverage is saying.
  - wpietri 6y ago
    There is a big difference between "formal positive COVID test" and "just guessing". For the case I mentioned above, tests were effectively unavailable at time of illness. But later on, multiple doctors said that from the symptoms and the follow-on illness, it was probably COVID. Your insistence on denying distinctions like this makes you look like a person arguing a case, not somebody trying to jointly get at the truth. Which from my perspective, makes you much worse at arguing your case.
rcpt 6y ago
Here: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.16.21249950v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.16.21249950v... Hundreds of thousands of people. Average age mid 40s and sliced by hospitalized or not. Controlled against people who had the flu during lockdown. Double digit percentages have issues 6 months on. Unsurprisingly not very different from SARS 1 and those people are still sick since 2003.
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  Yes, indeed, the various studies (and yours is a typical example) show mainly an older demographic reporting symptoms stretching into months, and include the observation that it was mainly (even if not exclusively) a severe course of the disease that preceded lingering symptoms. But a lot of the attitudes that restrictions must be kept in place to prevent "long COVID" are held by younger people who are very afraid of coming down with the phenomenon, yet they are not significantly at risk of it according to these studies.
  - rcpt 6y ago
    I struggle to see how you reached that interpretation of the paper.
    - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
      Average age 40, as you said yourself. And then as the authors of this paper find, "Risks were greatest in, but not limited to, those who had severe COVID-19."
      - rcpt 6y ago
        the "but not limited to" is the important part
        Mediterraneo10 6y ago
        It doesn’t matter if these longer-term symptoms affect some number of people outside that older, frailer risk group. There are always statistical outliers. If the amount of younger, stronger people affected by these symptoms is small, then that weakens the case for maintaining restrictions after vaccination of the most at-risk groups. This issue seems to be important to you personally and to others whose concerns may or may not be reasonable, but I don’t believe it will be important to most of society as vaccinations roll out and the Northern Hemisphere spring and summer are upon us.
orra 6y ago
> A lot of the people claiming to have debilitating "long COVID" were never actually tested positive for COVID in the first place. Worth keeping in mind it was impossible to get a COVID test for a large fraction of the first wave.

NortySpock 6y ago

> A lot of the people claiming to have debilitating "long COVID" were never actually tested positive for COVID in the first place. Do you have a citation for this claim?

Mediterraneo10 6y ago
I was talking about the innumerable "long COVID" media coverage where some ordinary person is invited to tell the whole story of how they got ill, felt terrible, and still feel terrible, but nowhere did they actually go to the doctor and get a formal positive COVID test. They are just guessing that they had this disease that was going around. And now dedicated Facebook groups etc. are popping up whose membership has complaints and claims that are extremely similar to the "chronic Lyme" groups that flourished just before COVID. I was obviously not referring to actual scientific studies of long-term COVID effects, but as I said, those studies don’t say quite what the more sensationalistic mass-media coverage is saying.
- wpietri 6y ago
  There is a big difference between "formal positive COVID test" and "just guessing". For the case I mentioned above, tests were effectively unavailable at time of illness. But later on, multiple doctors said that from the symptoms and the follow-on illness, it was probably COVID. Your insistence on denying distinctions like this makes you look like a person arguing a case, not somebody trying to jointly get at the truth. Which from my perspective, makes you much worse at arguing your case.

rcpt 6y ago

Here: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.16.21249950v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.16.21249950v... Hundreds of thousands of people. Average age mid 40s and sliced by hospitalized or not. Controlled against people who had the flu during lockdown. Double digit percentages have issues 6 months on. Unsurprisingly not very different from SARS 1 and those people are still sick since 2003.

Mediterraneo10 6y ago
Yes, indeed, the various studies (and yours is a typical example) show mainly an older demographic reporting symptoms stretching into months, and include the observation that it was mainly (even if not exclusively) a severe course of the disease that preceded lingering symptoms. But a lot of the attitudes that restrictions must be kept in place to prevent "long COVID" are held by younger people who are very afraid of coming down with the phenomenon, yet they are not significantly at risk of it according to these studies.
- rcpt 6y ago
  I struggle to see how you reached that interpretation of the paper.
  - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
    Average age 40, as you said yourself. And then as the authors of this paper find, "Risks were greatest in, but not limited to, those who had severe COVID-19."
    - rcpt 6y ago
      the "but not limited to" is the important part
      - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
        It doesn’t matter if these longer-term symptoms affect some number of people outside that older, frailer risk group. There are always statistical outliers. If the amount of younger, stronger people affected by these symptoms is small, then that weakens the case for maintaining restrictions after vaccination of the most at-risk groups. This issue seems to be important to you personally and to others whose concerns may or may not be reasonable, but I don’t believe it will be important to most of society as vaccinations roll out and the Northern Hemisphere spring and summer are upon us.

orra 6y ago

> A lot of the people claiming to have debilitating "long COVID" were never actually tested positive for COVID in the first place. Worth keeping in mind it was impossible to get a COVID test for a large fraction of the first wave.