12 ms·

FWIW here’s a study showing 98% of people were symptom free after 12 weeks: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.19.20214494v1.full#F6 https://www.m

FWIW here’s a study showing 98% of people were symptom free after 12 weeks: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.19.20214494v1.full#F6 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.19.20214494v... Here’s another recent study showing 95% of former COVID (hospitalized) patients suffered no irreversible damage: https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-study-95-of-former-covid-patients-suffer-no-irreversible-damage/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-study-95-of-former-cov...

JonathanFly 6y ago
It's good that the vast majority of people make full recoveries but 2% of the US is still over 6 million people. I personally know two people who have long 'recovered' from Covid but still have no smell, or a reduced sense of smell. Not life threatening or really holding them back from anything, but they say it effects their quality of life more than they expected.
- mdorazio 6y ago
  Note that's 2% of people who become infected, not 2% of the entire population (unless you're assuming everyone will get infected?). We're trending toward 10-12% of the US population getting infected before vaccines roll out more widely, so that would be somewhere in the realm of 0.25% of the total population potentially suffering long-term effects.
  - runako 6y ago
    CDC is estimating that ~25% of Americans were infected by the end of 2020: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burden.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd... And obviously a number of people have been infected since. But just using the 83 million number from the CDC, 2% of that would be 1.6 million people.
    - jjcon 6y ago
      Based on seroprevalence which the 98% was not based on so using it now would be misleading
      - runako 6y ago
        They updated that page in late January (2021). I'm not knowledgeable enough to be in a position to argue with their estimates or methodology.
  - jMyles 6y ago
    > We're trending toward 10-12% of the US population getting infected How can you possibly believe this, given the seroprevelance data? Every indication is that more than twice this number (some surveys suggesting substantially more even than that) were already infected a few months ago.
    - jjcon 6y ago
      The 98% is not based on seroprevelance data so using it now would be misleading - their stated number should still hold regardless of seroprevelance
      - jMyles 6y ago
        Yeah, fair. 2% seems like a (very generous) upper-bound in this sense.
    - vkou 6y ago
      The seroprevelance data claimed that ~10-20% of the population was already infected, back in March of 2020. Given that effectively nobody was dying from COVID prior to March, and the three giant waves of exponential growth that followed, I have severe doubts about the accuracy of these tests. I have a feeling that if those same tests were ran back in 2018, they would have said the same thing.
      - jMyles 6y ago
        > The seroprevelance data claimed that ~10-20% of the population was already infected, back in March of 2020. That's not quite true. The surveys in that time frame were mostly < 10%. The > 10% surveys came months later. However, it's certainly possible that these are false positives (particularly the wastewater studies). However I'm not sure that this particular observation is a good basis for that conclusion. It takes a substantial mass of cases to produce excess population-level mortality, which is what gets our attention. Since we weren't testing for cases prior to March 2020, we really don't know how many people died while infected with the virus. Now of course we count nearly every such case meticulously.
- pbreit 6y ago
  I think the point is that the long covid situation has been vastly over-stated.
  - jb1991 6y ago
    2% or %5 -- these are hardly small numbers. Anything with stats like that, when applied to a whole group of people, is definitely not an overstatement.
  - galangalalgol 6y ago
    Maybe. Maybe not. Post covid usually takes 6 months to develop and peak covid was less than a month ago in most parts of the US. Incidentally 6 months is a pretty standard time from trigger to autoimmune disease for things like givimg birth -> hashimotos or ???virus -> type 1 diabetes.
  - mikeyouse 6y ago
    We're at 30 million confirmed cases in the US! Over 115M worldwide! If "only" 2% of them develop something like long Covid, that's 600,000 Americans and over 2.3M people with long-term illness from this -- and those are only the confirmed cases which probably understate the prevalence by 2x-3x. How are people still so blasé about this pandemic?
    - readflaggedcomm 6y ago
      And by "case" you mean detected matter with PCR cycle counts undocumented at aggregate levels. But don't let science get in the way of emotional appeals.
      - mikeyouse 6y ago
        Bizarre PCR truther claims aside, assign an IFR to the disease and work backwards from the 500k deaths we have.. then multiply that by 2% to understand how many people will have "Long Covid" and why it's crazy to play it down as overblown.
- mancerayder 6y ago
  I know someone who recovered his sense of smell after 11 months. He said it (the covid-induced loss) was useful for changing diapers. Luckily a long haul isn't always a forever haul, we can hope.
  - nullserver 6y ago
    Was nice not smelling the litter box for a month.
    - dmix 6y ago
      Also nice we all have heavy duty masks for cleaning them too!
    - smichel17 6y ago
      The biggest improvement you can make is to stop feeling your cat dry food. They're often a large % fibrous plant matter, which ferments, causing much of the smell. If you're up for making homemade cat food, rather than canned, that makes their poop smell even less. The other thing you can do is make a litterbox like this: - 30 gallon plastic bin (look for one with flat sides, not a "heavy duty" model with ridges along the side -- if your cat is a side-pee-er, this will be difficult to clean). - Cut a hole in the side with a utility (aka x-acto) knife, 9 inches from the bottom. - Fill with 3.5-4 inches of unscented, clumping litter. I've tried Dr Elsey's and World's Best, and prefer the former, which I found clumps better; I believe other clay-based litters are equivalent to it. - Buy a litter-lifter, it's the best scoop, hands down. After I tried it the first time, I actually placed a bulk order (25 scoops) so that I have a guaranteed lifetime supply (and for gifts), because I never want to use another scoop. - Clean the litter box at least once per day. I know this sounds like a lot, but it's actually not -- with the scoop above, it takes me ~10 seconds per "item" (pee ball or poop cluster) you scoop out (unless your cat is a side-pee-er), plus maybe 30s moving the litter around to find the items and even out the litter at the end. (I've timed this; in total it's around 1 minute if I scoop once per day). Info is sourced from https://catinfo.org https://catinfo.org (specifically https://catinfo.org/the-litter-box-from-your-cats-point-of-view/#Types_of_Litter_Boxes,_Size,_Number_and_Location https://catinfo.org/the-litter-box-from-your-cats-point-of-v... and https://catinfo.org/making-cat-food/#Constipation https://catinfo.org/making-cat-food/#Constipation ) and verified by personal experience.
- TheButlerian 6y ago
  Dumbo, that is 95% of the hospitalized patients...do you think that every single American will be hospitalized because of Covid?
PragmaticPulp 6y ago
Great news for most people But the total number of global cases is over 100,000,000 and rising. If something impacts 1-2% of people, that's still millions of people. This research could also benefit millions more people suffering from generic post-viral fatigue disorders, which were a problem even before COVID.
- tootahe45 6y ago
  Almost every pharmaceutical drug has a small % of users claiming to be victimized long term, wonder if it's the same with covid. Struggling to breathe while running? must be long term covid effects, it for sure can't be the 40 pounds i put on and zero exercise from months of lockdown.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
maxerickson 6y ago
Could you explain what linking a couple of smaller, shorter studies is worth?
nibsfive 6y ago
It's pretty much "were you on a ventilator or diagnosed with ARDS" and "are you over 80". There's long covid cases outside those criteria, but with superdosing Nicotinic Acid and 3-6 months almost all seem to resolve.
throwaway888abc 6y ago
On similar note, there been some articles recently saying that long covid disappeared after taking vaccine. LONG COVID PATIENTS SAY THEY FEEL BETTER AFTER GETTING VACCINATED https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/2/22308965/covid-vaccine-shots-symptoms-improve-chronic-long-haulers https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/2/22308965/covid-vaccine-sho...
- nibsfive 6y ago
  Yeah it seems like it may reset the hyperinflammatory state.
- nradov 6y ago
  The most plausible reason is that many of those reported symptoms were psychosomatic.
  - bitwize 6y ago
    Maybe, but you can't actually say that. "Psychosomatic" reduces to "Big Pharma is telling you your very real disease is in your head" from an optics standpoint. Public interest in the putatively psychosomatic Morgellons disease spiked after Joni Mitchell said she had it. There was an outpouring of support for Mitchell, and criticism of Big Pharma, the government, and the media for not treating Morgellons with more gravity.
    - Blackthorn 6y ago
      My dad "had" Morgellons. The disease itself isn't real, but the symptoms were very much a part of other issues he had. The problem with labeling things as psychosomatic is that it can cover up very real suffering brought about by other, related issues.
  - bsder 6y ago
    Why? If someone is harboring a low grade infection because their immune system didn't rev up enough to clear the virus, getting a jab with something engineered to provoke your immune system could very well fix the issue. Also, "placebo effect" is real. "Reversion to the mean" is also real. None of those explanations are "psychosomatic".
nickthemagicman 6y ago
That "long Covid" percentage could just be the result of general poor health in a percentage of the population and any disease would have caused long-term symptoms to that particular group. It's actually surprising that percentage is so small in America. Would be interesting to cross-reference "long Covid" stats in America with other countries. Maybe the real pandemic is how unhealthy Americans are.
- spaetzleesser 6y ago
  There are a few UFC fighters who have had problem for months and are still not in fighting shape. It's not only unhealthy people. I have also read about relatively young people in Germany that have had problems since early last year.
  - vekker 6y ago
    The exceptions that prove the rule? I find it strange that whenever it is pointed out that maybe 40% of Americans being obese is a problem and that maybe we should focus more on prevention through health promotion, it is quickly swept under the rug and countered with "yeah but these athletes had bad cases of covid19" (as if being an athlete is the definition of health...).
    - aksss 6y ago
      We hear about the bad anecdotes most. My own personal anecdata - two people out of about 14 I knew with confirmed COVID died, one other was laid up in hospital for weeks, the rest were all fine, quarantined at home without bad symptoms beyond sensory impact, and recovered quickly. Most were fit/mildly overweight, some were obese, the hardest hit examples were both quite old with existing heart problems.
      - nickthemagicman 6y ago
        I'm sorry you had to suffer during this time. 80% of the population is below the age of 55. A person in the below age 55 group has more of a chance of dying of a car accident than they do of Covid. That's not anecdotal. Meanwhile when the eviction moratorium ends this month tens of thousands of people are about to be homeless. 40% of all money in the money supply has been printed in the past year, building supplies are already up by two to four times and are starting to show signs of inflation. America just went 1.9 trillion dollars more into debt. Tens of thousands of small businesses have closed and thier business has been absorbed by large companies so inequality increased. The price we're about to pay for this is going to be significant. It's probably going to be poor people and future generations that pay though. #yolo
birken 6y ago
The second link doesn't say the sample was hospitalized patients, it seems like it was patients in all conditions: > The study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, included patients from ages 18 to 86 in light, moderate and serious condition. (I tried to find the actual study to see if they had a breakdown but couldn't find it) And frankly I'd say a study which shows that 94% of COVID patients still had symptoms after 3 months and 5% had symptoms after 6 months is actually not super positive news.
rcpt 6y ago
Here's a larger study (230k vs 4k people), based on medical records rather than the "covid study symptoms app" that shows 10x higher prevalence https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.16.21249950v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.16.21249950v...
- leereeves 6y ago
  That figure includes patients with a pre-COVID history of mood/anxiety/psychotic disorders, substance misuse, and insomnia which recurred after COVID, and such patients appear to account for the majority of that figure. And the authors do not claim that any of the sequelae were caused by COVID.
  - rcpt 6y ago
    Not sure how you got that recurring pre-existing conditions is the major component of the figures in the paper. > the authors do not claim that any of the sequelae were caused by COVID Because a strong causality claim like you're asking for is impossible without perfect randomized controls which would be unethical.
    - leereeves 6y ago
      From the abstract: > The estimated incidence of neurological or psychiatric sequelae at 6 months was 33.6%, with 12.8% receiving their first such diagnosis [thus 20.8% pre-existing] From table 1: 33.6% of patients had any sequelae 24% had psychiatric disorders (only 8.6% for the first time) 6.6% had substance misuse (only 1.9% for the first time) 5.4% had insomnia (only 2.5% for the first time). No other condition was over 3%. (Numbers add up to more than 33.6% (12.8%) because some patients had multiple conditions.) So it looks like almost 2/3rds of the figure was preexisting conditions. > Because a strong causality claim like you're asking for is impossible without perfect randomized controls which would be unethical. I'm not asking for a strong causality claim, merely some effort to restrict the numbers to conditions that might plausibly have been caused by COVID.
      - 6y ago

JonathanFly 6y ago

It's good that the vast majority of people make full recoveries but 2% of the US is still over 6 million people. I personally know two people who have long 'recovered' from Covid but still have no smell, or a reduced sense of smell. Not life threatening or really holding them back from anything, but they say it effects their quality of life more than they expected.

mdorazio 6y ago
Note that's 2% of people who become infected, not 2% of the entire population (unless you're assuming everyone will get infected?). We're trending toward 10-12% of the US population getting infected before vaccines roll out more widely, so that would be somewhere in the realm of 0.25% of the total population potentially suffering long-term effects.
- runako 6y ago
  CDC is estimating that ~25% of Americans were infected by the end of 2020: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burden.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd... And obviously a number of people have been infected since. But just using the 83 million number from the CDC, 2% of that would be 1.6 million people.
  - jjcon 6y ago
    Based on seroprevalence which the 98% was not based on so using it now would be misleading
    - runako 6y ago
      They updated that page in late January (2021). I'm not knowledgeable enough to be in a position to argue with their estimates or methodology.
- jMyles 6y ago
  > We're trending toward 10-12% of the US population getting infected How can you possibly believe this, given the seroprevelance data? Every indication is that more than twice this number (some surveys suggesting substantially more even than that) were already infected a few months ago.
  - jjcon 6y ago
    The 98% is not based on seroprevelance data so using it now would be misleading - their stated number should still hold regardless of seroprevelance
    - jMyles 6y ago
      Yeah, fair. 2% seems like a (very generous) upper-bound in this sense.
  - vkou 6y ago
    The seroprevelance data claimed that ~10-20% of the population was already infected, back in March of 2020. Given that effectively nobody was dying from COVID prior to March, and the three giant waves of exponential growth that followed, I have severe doubts about the accuracy of these tests. I have a feeling that if those same tests were ran back in 2018, they would have said the same thing.
    - jMyles 6y ago
      > The seroprevelance data claimed that ~10-20% of the population was already infected, back in March of 2020. That's not quite true. The surveys in that time frame were mostly < 10%. The > 10% surveys came months later. However, it's certainly possible that these are false positives (particularly the wastewater studies). However I'm not sure that this particular observation is a good basis for that conclusion. It takes a substantial mass of cases to produce excess population-level mortality, which is what gets our attention. Since we weren't testing for cases prior to March 2020, we really don't know how many people died while infected with the virus. Now of course we count nearly every such case meticulously.
pbreit 6y ago
I think the point is that the long covid situation has been vastly over-stated.
- jb1991 6y ago
  2% or %5 -- these are hardly small numbers. Anything with stats like that, when applied to a whole group of people, is definitely not an overstatement.
- galangalalgol 6y ago
  Maybe. Maybe not. Post covid usually takes 6 months to develop and peak covid was less than a month ago in most parts of the US. Incidentally 6 months is a pretty standard time from trigger to autoimmune disease for things like givimg birth -> hashimotos or ???virus -> type 1 diabetes.
- mikeyouse 6y ago
  We're at 30 million confirmed cases in the US! Over 115M worldwide! If "only" 2% of them develop something like long Covid, that's 600,000 Americans and over 2.3M people with long-term illness from this -- and those are only the confirmed cases which probably understate the prevalence by 2x-3x. How are people still so blasé about this pandemic?
  - readflaggedcomm 6y ago
    And by "case" you mean detected matter with PCR cycle counts undocumented at aggregate levels. But don't let science get in the way of emotional appeals.
    - mikeyouse 6y ago
      Bizarre PCR truther claims aside, assign an IFR to the disease and work backwards from the 500k deaths we have.. then multiply that by 2% to understand how many people will have "Long Covid" and why it's crazy to play it down as overblown.
mancerayder 6y ago
I know someone who recovered his sense of smell after 11 months. He said it (the covid-induced loss) was useful for changing diapers. Luckily a long haul isn't always a forever haul, we can hope.
- nullserver 6y ago
  Was nice not smelling the litter box for a month.
  - dmix 6y ago
    Also nice we all have heavy duty masks for cleaning them too!
  - smichel17 6y ago
    The biggest improvement you can make is to stop feeling your cat dry food. They're often a large % fibrous plant matter, which ferments, causing much of the smell. If you're up for making homemade cat food, rather than canned, that makes their poop smell even less. The other thing you can do is make a litterbox like this: - 30 gallon plastic bin (look for one with flat sides, not a "heavy duty" model with ridges along the side -- if your cat is a side-pee-er, this will be difficult to clean). - Cut a hole in the side with a utility (aka x-acto) knife, 9 inches from the bottom. - Fill with 3.5-4 inches of unscented, clumping litter. I've tried Dr Elsey's and World's Best, and prefer the former, which I found clumps better; I believe other clay-based litters are equivalent to it. - Buy a litter-lifter, it's the best scoop, hands down. After I tried it the first time, I actually placed a bulk order (25 scoops) so that I have a guaranteed lifetime supply (and for gifts), because I never want to use another scoop. - Clean the litter box at least once per day. I know this sounds like a lot, but it's actually not -- with the scoop above, it takes me ~10 seconds per "item" (pee ball or poop cluster) you scoop out (unless your cat is a side-pee-er), plus maybe 30s moving the litter around to find the items and even out the litter at the end. (I've timed this; in total it's around 1 minute if I scoop once per day). Info is sourced from https://catinfo.org https://catinfo.org (specifically https://catinfo.org/the-litter-box-from-your-cats-point-of-view/#Types_of_Litter_Boxes,_Size,_Number_and_Location https://catinfo.org/the-litter-box-from-your-cats-point-of-v... and https://catinfo.org/making-cat-food/#Constipation https://catinfo.org/making-cat-food/#Constipation ) and verified by personal experience.
TheButlerian 6y ago
Dumbo, that is 95% of the hospitalized patients...do you think that every single American will be hospitalized because of Covid?

PragmaticPulp 6y ago

Great news for most people But the total number of global cases is over 100,000,000 and rising. If something impacts 1-2% of people, that's still millions of people. This research could also benefit millions more people suffering from generic post-viral fatigue disorders, which were a problem even before COVID.

tootahe45 6y ago
Almost every pharmaceutical drug has a small % of users claiming to be victimized long term, wonder if it's the same with covid. Struggling to breathe while running? must be long term covid effects, it for sure can't be the 40 pounds i put on and zero exercise from months of lockdown.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

maxerickson 6y ago

Could you explain what linking a couple of smaller, shorter studies is worth?

nibsfive 6y ago

It's pretty much "were you on a ventilator or diagnosed with ARDS" and "are you over 80". There's long covid cases outside those criteria, but with superdosing Nicotinic Acid and 3-6 months almost all seem to resolve.

throwaway888abc 6y ago

On similar note, there been some articles recently saying that long covid disappeared after taking vaccine. LONG COVID PATIENTS SAY THEY FEEL BETTER AFTER GETTING VACCINATED https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/2/22308965/covid-vaccine-shots-symptoms-improve-chronic-long-haulers https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/2/22308965/covid-vaccine-sho...

nibsfive 6y ago
Yeah it seems like it may reset the hyperinflammatory state.
nradov 6y ago
The most plausible reason is that many of those reported symptoms were psychosomatic.
- bitwize 6y ago
  Maybe, but you can't actually say that. "Psychosomatic" reduces to "Big Pharma is telling you your very real disease is in your head" from an optics standpoint. Public interest in the putatively psychosomatic Morgellons disease spiked after Joni Mitchell said she had it. There was an outpouring of support for Mitchell, and criticism of Big Pharma, the government, and the media for not treating Morgellons with more gravity.
  - Blackthorn 6y ago
    My dad "had" Morgellons. The disease itself isn't real, but the symptoms were very much a part of other issues he had. The problem with labeling things as psychosomatic is that it can cover up very real suffering brought about by other, related issues.
- bsder 6y ago
  Why? If someone is harboring a low grade infection because their immune system didn't rev up enough to clear the virus, getting a jab with something engineered to provoke your immune system could very well fix the issue. Also, "placebo effect" is real. "Reversion to the mean" is also real. None of those explanations are "psychosomatic".

nickthemagicman 6y ago

That "long Covid" percentage could just be the result of general poor health in a percentage of the population and any disease would have caused long-term symptoms to that particular group. It's actually surprising that percentage is so small in America. Would be interesting to cross-reference "long Covid" stats in America with other countries. Maybe the real pandemic is how unhealthy Americans are.

spaetzleesser 6y ago
There are a few UFC fighters who have had problem for months and are still not in fighting shape. It's not only unhealthy people. I have also read about relatively young people in Germany that have had problems since early last year.
- vekker 6y ago
  The exceptions that prove the rule? I find it strange that whenever it is pointed out that maybe 40% of Americans being obese is a problem and that maybe we should focus more on prevention through health promotion, it is quickly swept under the rug and countered with "yeah but these athletes had bad cases of covid19" (as if being an athlete is the definition of health...).
  - aksss 6y ago
    We hear about the bad anecdotes most. My own personal anecdata - two people out of about 14 I knew with confirmed COVID died, one other was laid up in hospital for weeks, the rest were all fine, quarantined at home without bad symptoms beyond sensory impact, and recovered quickly. Most were fit/mildly overweight, some were obese, the hardest hit examples were both quite old with existing heart problems.
    - nickthemagicman 6y ago
      I'm sorry you had to suffer during this time. 80% of the population is below the age of 55. A person in the below age 55 group has more of a chance of dying of a car accident than they do of Covid. That's not anecdotal. Meanwhile when the eviction moratorium ends this month tens of thousands of people are about to be homeless. 40% of all money in the money supply has been printed in the past year, building supplies are already up by two to four times and are starting to show signs of inflation. America just went 1.9 trillion dollars more into debt. Tens of thousands of small businesses have closed and thier business has been absorbed by large companies so inequality increased. The price we're about to pay for this is going to be significant. It's probably going to be poor people and future generations that pay though. #yolo

birken 6y ago

The second link doesn't say the sample was hospitalized patients, it seems like it was patients in all conditions: > The study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, included patients from ages 18 to 86 in light, moderate and serious condition. (I tried to find the actual study to see if they had a breakdown but couldn't find it) And frankly I'd say a study which shows that 94% of COVID patients still had symptoms after 3 months and 5% had symptoms after 6 months is actually not super positive news.

rcpt 6y ago

Here's a larger study (230k vs 4k people), based on medical records rather than the "covid study symptoms app" that shows 10x higher prevalence https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.16.21249950v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.16.21249950v...

leereeves 6y ago
That figure includes patients with a pre-COVID history of mood/anxiety/psychotic disorders, substance misuse, and insomnia which recurred after COVID, and such patients appear to account for the majority of that figure. And the authors do not claim that any of the sequelae were caused by COVID.
- rcpt 6y ago
  Not sure how you got that recurring pre-existing conditions is the major component of the figures in the paper. > the authors do not claim that any of the sequelae were caused by COVID Because a strong causality claim like you're asking for is impossible without perfect randomized controls which would be unethical.
  - leereeves 6y ago
    From the abstract: > The estimated incidence of neurological or psychiatric sequelae at 6 months was 33.6%, with 12.8% receiving their first such diagnosis [thus 20.8% pre-existing] From table 1: 33.6% of patients had any sequelae 24% had psychiatric disorders (only 8.6% for the first time) 6.6% had substance misuse (only 1.9% for the first time) 5.4% had insomnia (only 2.5% for the first time). No other condition was over 3%. (Numbers add up to more than 33.6% (12.8%) because some patients had multiple conditions.) So it looks like almost 2/3rds of the figure was preexisting conditions. > Because a strong causality claim like you're asking for is impossible without perfect randomized controls which would be unethical. I'm not asking for a strong causality claim, merely some effort to restrict the numbers to conditions that might plausibly have been caused by COVID.
    - 6y ago