11 ms·

Thank you for providing an excellent example of the fear-based reasoning surrounding "cases". I understand that you are scared, but is incorrect to imply that m

by timr 5y ago

Thank you for providing an excellent example of the fear-based reasoning surrounding "cases". I understand that you are scared, but is incorrect to imply that my opinion comes from a lack of understanding of what you're talking about. > Why is this so hard for people to understand? I understand your argument, but I disagree with you, based on a long education in this area, a deep understanding of the data, and personal experience. > A virus doesn't just enter your body, and quietly go away. Some do not. This one does. > In MANY cases, it can have a lasting effect on your underlying health and wellness. In some, rare cases, we see examples of post-viral syndromes. We have seen these for many different viruses. > I am vaccinated. I have friends who are vaccinated, and have still gotten COVID. One of them still doesn't have their sense of taste and smell back, after nearly 3 weeks post symptoms. Again, lingering symptoms following an illness are not unknown. Every time I get a head cold, I typically develop a cough that lasts > 3 weeks. By ~all current evidentiary standards for "long covid", I have had "long cold". Similarly, my grandmother lost her sense of smell to a head cold when I was a child. She never got it back, entirely. Sad, but not something that we took extraordinary societal interventions to prevent. > They describe being brain fog, and tiredness that they didn't have before, as well as an "itch" in their lungs when exercising that they didn't have before. Neither of these are objectively defined. I have an "itch" in my lungs, right now (probably allergies). I have never had Covid. When I don't sleep well (which is often, thanks to the state of our society), I have trouble focusing. Is that "brain fog"? Point being: some people are going to have after-effects from infection. That's unfortunate, but it's not unknown, and the virus isn't going away. If the choice is to completely up-end our society to prevent people from ever getting sick again, then I'm strongly opposed.

sergiomattei 5y ago
> I understand your argument, but I disagree with you, based on a long edudcation, and a deep understanding of the data. Where's the data? I didn't see a single source listed, just anecdotes from you and your family.
- timr 5y ago
  Where's the data in the OP's comment? Remarkable how fear and speculation has a lower evidentiary standard, isn't it?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - skystarman 5y ago
    So you bring up the "I have the DATA!" Trump card and then when asked to provide it your response is, "well, no, where is YOUR DATA?" That long Covid is a pernicious result for many people with debilitating effects is well established in the literature, it's not controversial. That refusing to get the virus under control will lead to further variants potentially worse than Delta that perhaps the vaccines are less able to guard against. Not some crazy conspiracy! What this is ultimately about is many of our fellow citizens believe "my choice" and "freedom" means the "freedom" to infect other people with a potentially debilitating virus rather than they be mildly inconvenienced.
  - ethanbond 5y ago
    We obviously don't know much about PASC/long COVID, but the initial data is worth paying attention to. This Swedish study says ~10% of healthcare workers who got COVID had lingering symptoms. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33825846/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33825846/
    - ipaddr 5y ago
      What about the lingering effects of the vaccine? Many seem to have this tiredness or general unwellness.
      - nindalf 5y ago
        > “Many seem” Citation needed for such an extraordinary claim. If you don’t mind, could you share data on the UK, a place where nearly all adults aged 30+ have received two doses of the vaccine? It simplifies the discussion because there’s no question about self selection bias. If there’s any negative effects, it should surely have manifested in a large subset of this group of tens of millions of people, across ages and ethnicities. Not just a handful of cases here or there. I’m talking about 0.01% or more of this population suffering some persistent harm. Not something that disappeared after a day or two.
kaybe 5y ago
> Every time I get a head cold, I typically develop a cough that lasts > 3 weeks. Just a heads-up, that can turn into asthma if you are susceptible. Take care to properly heal every time. (That'd be 'long cold' I guess. We don't need more of that stuff.)
- timr 5y ago
  Thanks! I'm already allergic to a lot of stuff, so it probably is related.
  - kaybe 5y ago
    Yes, that sounds plausible, it's the same for me. (It's not hard to guess how I know about the asthma potential. -.-)
- borski 5y ago
  Came here to say this. Had this enough times that it turns out I do have asthma (now medicated).
rubicon33 5y ago
> Some do not. This one does. I am sure you believe what you are saying, and I am also not doubting that you have some education on the topic, but I have to disagree. Take for example, this study [1] demonstrating significant loss of grey matter in the brain for COVID patients, both hospitalized and non-hospitalized. As our understanding of virology evolves it is becoming more and more clear that the notion of ephemeral infections is just flat out incorrect. You likely maintain SOME impact from that infection, its just a question of how severe, or in some cases WHEN (see: chicken pox -> shingles). Viruses wreak havoc, and that is a point which is well documented, and slowly but surely people are starting to pay attention. My gripe with your comment is that it completely disregards this point and treats the risk of viruses and either death, or no risk at all. The truth is far more nuanced than that, and there's legitimate reasons to want overall CASE COUNT to come down. It's about saving quality of life, including, actual life. Vaccination is the path to do that. I also don't agree with your comment that "If the choice is to completely up-end our society to prevent people from ever getting sick again, then I'm strongly opposed." Asking for proof of vaccination is not "completely up-ending" our society. It's quite reasonable to ask for certain personal hygiene requirements (shirts, shoes, etc.) but we can't ask that someone be reasonably protected from a getting and spreading a very dangerous virus? You're somehow OK with being required to wear clothes, which provide almost no protection from anything, but not OK with being asked to show that you're an unlikely COVID carrier/spreader? [1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.11.21258690v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.11.21258690v...
- timr 5y ago
  > I am sure you believe what you are saying, and I am also not doubting that you have some education on the topic, but I have to disagree. Reasonable people can disagree on questions like this. But you came out of the gate insisting that I "didn't understand", which isn't true. I understand, I just disagree that this is a disproportionate threat to our society that requires disproportionate response. > Take for example, this study [1] demonstrating significant loss of grey matter in the brain for COVID patients, both hospitalized and non-hospitalized. FWIW, that study is terrible. It is a statistical fishing expedition, is improperly controlled (i.e. are the changes due to Covid, or something else? You can't tell!), and the whole field of "looking at MRI for reductions in gray matter" is littered with spurious findings. Here's a comment where I go into this in much greater detail: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27927568 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27927568 > As our understanding of virology evolves it is becoming more and more clear that the notion of ephemeral infections is just flat out incorrect. It's not "flat out incorrect"...as I said before, we know that post-viral syndromes are real. This is not new information. Having a cough or shortness of breath (by FAR the most common "long covid" symptoms) after a infection are no more an indication that the virus is lingering in your body, than leg pain after a cast is removed is an indication that you continue to have a broken leg. It takes time to heal.
atomashpolskiy 5y ago
One more example: itch in one's throat and nasty suffocating cough that does not stop for an hour. Surprisingly, this might be caused by reflux (without the accompanying stomachache). I imagine it would be pretty easy for someone not used to dealing with gastritis on a regular basis to attribute such a symptom to "COVID".
- timr 5y ago
  Yeah, all of these "long covid" symptoms overlap substantially with other, common things, or have otherwise been defined so liberally by these terrible, self-reported "studies" that anyone with a normal human immune system and a head cold would qualify. Just consider the three most common complaints (by far): Cough & Shortness of breath: allergies, asthma, typical recovery process from any cold or flu Fatigue: depression, anxiety, insomnia, recovery from most illness Brain fog (whatever that is): depression, anxiety, insomnia, recovery from illness... It's not that "long covid" isn't real...it's just that the scientific data for it at present are so vague that you can "have" it by being a normal person.
aplummer 5y ago
> A virus doesn't just enter your body, and quietly go away. > >Some do not. This one does. It's sad but we really need a way to flag covid misinformation like this on HN. There is absolutely no proof that covid disappears after a certain amount of time, this is obvious because only 2 years has passed since 2019. The evidence we have so far is that some people remain with long-term symptoms at least as far as until now.
- BjoernKW 5y ago
  The author of that comment obviously has quite some expertise in the matter (see their profile and some of their other comments linked to in this thread). They didn't say that "Long COVID" symptoms aren't real. They just stated that this particular virus disappears after some time, that is once your immune system manages to cope with it and the infection clears out. This statement is emphatically true. Otherwise, antigen and PCR tests would still yield positive results months after someone became infected. An example of a virus not simply disappearing from your body anymore once you're infected with it would be HIV.
  - aplummer 5y ago
    I take “quietly” to mean “without causing havoc and long term symptoms” which appears to be the undefined term here. This is why I refer explicitly to long term symptoms as being what remains. I stand by my comment, it does not “quietly” go away.
    - Talanes 5y ago
      >I stand by my comment, it does not “quietly” go away. By the standards you yourself set two posts above, we cannot know that yet.
      - aplummer 5y ago
        I should have confirmed I was denying the claim and not making one, “we have not proved it goes away quietly eventually”.
lr4444lr 5y ago
Does it bother you that schools ask for proof of measles vaccination? Most people recover from that too if infected during the school age years.
- XorNot 5y ago
  Most being the operative word too: 1 in 1000 get encephalitis and brain damage, 1-3 in 1000 die! Measles R0 is also something absurd like 15, with spread characteristics of "a person with measles goes in an elevator - the next day a person gets in the same elevator and catches it".
  - lr4444lr 5y ago
    Fine, but if it's just a matter of degree, why would anyone want to keep spinning the evolution roulette wheel that might lead to a variant with significant vaccine breakthrough? This is a global pandemic that we have effective tools to fight not being fully utilized.

by timr 5y ago

sergiomattei 5y ago

> I understand your argument, but I disagree with you, based on a long edudcation, and a deep understanding of the data. Where's the data? I didn't see a single source listed, just anecdotes from you and your family.

timr 5y ago
Where's the data in the OP's comment? Remarkable how fear and speculation has a lower evidentiary standard, isn't it?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- skystarman 5y ago
  So you bring up the "I have the DATA!" Trump card and then when asked to provide it your response is, "well, no, where is YOUR DATA?" That long Covid is a pernicious result for many people with debilitating effects is well established in the literature, it's not controversial. That refusing to get the virus under control will lead to further variants potentially worse than Delta that perhaps the vaccines are less able to guard against. Not some crazy conspiracy! What this is ultimately about is many of our fellow citizens believe "my choice" and "freedom" means the "freedom" to infect other people with a potentially debilitating virus rather than they be mildly inconvenienced.
- ethanbond 5y ago
  We obviously don't know much about PASC/long COVID, but the initial data is worth paying attention to. This Swedish study says ~10% of healthcare workers who got COVID had lingering symptoms. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33825846/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33825846/
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    What about the lingering effects of the vaccine? Many seem to have this tiredness or general unwellness.
    - nindalf 5y ago
      > “Many seem” Citation needed for such an extraordinary claim. If you don’t mind, could you share data on the UK, a place where nearly all adults aged 30+ have received two doses of the vaccine? It simplifies the discussion because there’s no question about self selection bias. If there’s any negative effects, it should surely have manifested in a large subset of this group of tens of millions of people, across ages and ethnicities. Not just a handful of cases here or there. I’m talking about 0.01% or more of this population suffering some persistent harm. Not something that disappeared after a day or two.

kaybe 5y ago

> Every time I get a head cold, I typically develop a cough that lasts > 3 weeks. Just a heads-up, that can turn into asthma if you are susceptible. Take care to properly heal every time. (That'd be 'long cold' I guess. We don't need more of that stuff.)

timr 5y ago
Thanks! I'm already allergic to a lot of stuff, so it probably is related.
- kaybe 5y ago
  Yes, that sounds plausible, it's the same for me. (It's not hard to guess how I know about the asthma potential. -.-)
borski 5y ago
Came here to say this. Had this enough times that it turns out I do have asthma (now medicated).

rubicon33 5y ago

> Some do not. This one does. I am sure you believe what you are saying, and I am also not doubting that you have some education on the topic, but I have to disagree. Take for example, this study [1] demonstrating significant loss of grey matter in the brain for COVID patients, both hospitalized and non-hospitalized. As our understanding of virology evolves it is becoming more and more clear that the notion of ephemeral infections is just flat out incorrect. You likely maintain SOME impact from that infection, its just a question of how severe, or in some cases WHEN (see: chicken pox -> shingles). Viruses wreak havoc, and that is a point which is well documented, and slowly but surely people are starting to pay attention. My gripe with your comment is that it completely disregards this point and treats the risk of viruses and either death, or no risk at all. The truth is far more nuanced than that, and there's legitimate reasons to want overall CASE COUNT to come down. It's about saving quality of life, including, actual life. Vaccination is the path to do that. I also don't agree with your comment that "If the choice is to completely up-end our society to prevent people from ever getting sick again, then I'm strongly opposed." Asking for proof of vaccination is not "completely up-ending" our society. It's quite reasonable to ask for certain personal hygiene requirements (shirts, shoes, etc.) but we can't ask that someone be reasonably protected from a getting and spreading a very dangerous virus? You're somehow OK with being required to wear clothes, which provide almost no protection from anything, but not OK with being asked to show that you're an unlikely COVID carrier/spreader? [1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.11.21258690v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.11.21258690v...

timr 5y ago
> I am sure you believe what you are saying, and I am also not doubting that you have some education on the topic, but I have to disagree. Reasonable people can disagree on questions like this. But you came out of the gate insisting that I "didn't understand", which isn't true. I understand, I just disagree that this is a disproportionate threat to our society that requires disproportionate response. > Take for example, this study [1] demonstrating significant loss of grey matter in the brain for COVID patients, both hospitalized and non-hospitalized. FWIW, that study is terrible. It is a statistical fishing expedition, is improperly controlled (i.e. are the changes due to Covid, or something else? You can't tell!), and the whole field of "looking at MRI for reductions in gray matter" is littered with spurious findings. Here's a comment where I go into this in much greater detail: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27927568 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27927568 > As our understanding of virology evolves it is becoming more and more clear that the notion of ephemeral infections is just flat out incorrect. It's not "flat out incorrect"...as I said before, we know that post-viral syndromes are real. This is not new information. Having a cough or shortness of breath (by FAR the most common "long covid" symptoms) after a infection are no more an indication that the virus is lingering in your body, than leg pain after a cast is removed is an indication that you continue to have a broken leg. It takes time to heal.

atomashpolskiy 5y ago

One more example: itch in one's throat and nasty suffocating cough that does not stop for an hour. Surprisingly, this might be caused by reflux (without the accompanying stomachache). I imagine it would be pretty easy for someone not used to dealing with gastritis on a regular basis to attribute such a symptom to "COVID".

timr 5y ago
Yeah, all of these "long covid" symptoms overlap substantially with other, common things, or have otherwise been defined so liberally by these terrible, self-reported "studies" that anyone with a normal human immune system and a head cold would qualify. Just consider the three most common complaints (by far): Cough & Shortness of breath: allergies, asthma, typical recovery process from any cold or flu Fatigue: depression, anxiety, insomnia, recovery from most illness Brain fog (whatever that is): depression, anxiety, insomnia, recovery from illness... It's not that "long covid" isn't real...it's just that the scientific data for it at present are so vague that you can "have" it by being a normal person.

aplummer 5y ago

> A virus doesn't just enter your body, and quietly go away. > >Some do not. This one does. It's sad but we really need a way to flag covid misinformation like this on HN. There is absolutely no proof that covid disappears after a certain amount of time, this is obvious because only 2 years has passed since 2019. The evidence we have so far is that some people remain with long-term symptoms at least as far as until now.

BjoernKW 5y ago
The author of that comment obviously has quite some expertise in the matter (see their profile and some of their other comments linked to in this thread). They didn't say that "Long COVID" symptoms aren't real. They just stated that this particular virus disappears after some time, that is once your immune system manages to cope with it and the infection clears out. This statement is emphatically true. Otherwise, antigen and PCR tests would still yield positive results months after someone became infected. An example of a virus not simply disappearing from your body anymore once you're infected with it would be HIV.
- aplummer 5y ago
  I take “quietly” to mean “without causing havoc and long term symptoms” which appears to be the undefined term here. This is why I refer explicitly to long term symptoms as being what remains. I stand by my comment, it does not “quietly” go away.
  - Talanes 5y ago
    >I stand by my comment, it does not “quietly” go away. By the standards you yourself set two posts above, we cannot know that yet.
    - aplummer 5y ago
      I should have confirmed I was denying the claim and not making one, “we have not proved it goes away quietly eventually”.

lr4444lr 5y ago

Does it bother you that schools ask for proof of measles vaccination? Most people recover from that too if infected during the school age years.

XorNot 5y ago
Most being the operative word too: 1 in 1000 get encephalitis and brain damage, 1-3 in 1000 die! Measles R0 is also something absurd like 15, with spread characteristics of "a person with measles goes in an elevator - the next day a person gets in the same elevator and catches it".
- lr4444lr 5y ago
  Fine, but if it's just a matter of degree, why would anyone want to keep spinning the evolution roulette wheel that might lead to a variant with significant vaccine breakthrough? This is a global pandemic that we have effective tools to fight not being fully utilized.