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Some of these people will end up bitten by a brown recluse, have a heart attack and then die in a car crash on the way to the hospital. For a really large popul

Some of these people will end up bitten by a brown recluse, have a heart attack and then die in a car crash on the way to the hospital. For a really large population, a tiny but not zero number of people will undergo all sorts of crazy scenarios. That's why we should be placing numbers in context. How many people get objective 'long covid', by which I mean objectivly measurable decreased lung capacity or blood oxygenation levels, compared to how many people get long flu, flu + pneumonia or all sorts of other shitty but rare afflictions? I'm not dismissing the possibility that 'long covid' is a thing, I'm decrying the lack of actual data and the reliance on media propagated rumors. Just within last month Delta was supposed to be a calamity, 'the hospitals are overflowing (with Ivermectin overdoses no less)', 'children are dropping like flies', etc. I'm not hearing that lately, nor have I seen any numbers to support that level of damage.

brundolf 5y ago
That's just it, we don't know yet. The reality (in terms of frequency, duration, and average severity) could be an order of magnitude off in either direction relative to the anecdata. Covid has been totally alien in multiple ways already. The long-term effects could also be totally outside the norms for other viruses.
- angelzen 5y ago
  That we don't know doesn't necessarily imply that we need to assume the worst case scenario.
  - brundolf 5y ago
    That's up to each individual's risk profile. I'd rather play it safe for another several months than risk lifetime debilitation. You can pick your own risk level.
    - angelzen 5y ago
      True. Everybody has a right to decide their own risk profile according to their own life circumstances and risk tolerance. Not to scold, but please notice that some people have quite a bit larger choice space than others. For example, white collar WFH vs. blue collar in-person service.
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  >That's just it, we don't know yet. So why is it your biggest worry?
  - brundolf 5y ago
    Because of how wide the margin of error still is, and the fact that lifelong debilitation is on the table. Long covid right now is in the stage of analysis that regular covid was over a year ago. People had no idea back then how bad the mortality rates actually were, what to do about them, etc. We have a pretty good handle on that side now, which is why I'm no longer really worried about being killed or even hospitalized, as a healthy young vaccinated person. But we're just beginning to study the long-term effects. Their severity in the grand scheme of things could be tiny, or it could be massive, because - again - we don't know yet. I don't want to roll those dice.
paulddraper 5y ago
But. We. Just. Don't. Know. Literally anything could happen. After years of studying it, we just don't understand it. Five years later, boom, you wake up with nasal demons. If only there were existing respiratory coronaviruses we could compare it to, instead of this completely alien pathogen. /s
- bradknowles 5y ago
  While COVID is closely related to other coronaviruses, it doesn’t act the same way. So, studying them doesn’t help us that much with COVID. And we’ve been studying some of them for over a hundred years. There is new and novel activity going on here, and we don’t really understand how it works.
  - paulddraper 5y ago
    Not really. SARS is closely related. (The virus is literally SARS-CoV-2.) COVID-19 might be unique taking every possible characteristic together, but nothing it's done so far is unique among coronaviruses.
bradknowles 5y ago
This was one day ago: > An exhausted Iowa ER doctor pleaded with people to get vaccinated against COVID-19 in a Facebook Live video: 'We are drowning in people who are dying with this illness' https://www.businessinsider.com/iowa-er-doctor-pleads-get-vaccinated-not-enough-icu-beds-2021-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/iowa-er-doctor-pleads-get-va... And: > Austin region has zero available staffed adult ICU beds, state data shows https://spectrumlocalnews.com/tx/austin/news/2021/09/06/austin-region-has-zero-available-staffed-adult-icu-beds--state-data-shows- https://spectrumlocalnews.com/tx/austin/news/2021/09/06/aust... I don’t think the problem has gone away. Maybe you’ve just stopped listening?
- angelzen 5y ago
  Perhaps I am indeed exhausted by the continuous barrage of rumors of doom. The last CDC snapshot (as old as 07/13!) estimates that nationally 8% of the hospital beds were occupied with covid patients. Perhaps I'm unfazed by the ICU beds stats because I have been born and raised in a country where there were no ICU beds. I file them in the 'amazing bonus' rubric, not feeling entitled to have an ICU waiting for me worst case scenario. In my neck of the woods, the local pedriatic hospitals are at 70-80% utilization and have admitted a grand total of 8 covid cases in the past week. Some of the local adult hospitals are indeed going over 90% capacity, but others are cruising at 50%. The sum of covid cases admitted in the past week is in the low hundreds. This for an urban metro with 4M people. On the bright side, Florida, which has been the focus of national media covid reporting appears to have turned the corner on covid hospitalizations, currently running at 87% capacity, of which about 25% covid, and trending down. Iowa runs at 62% hospital capacity, with only 10% covid. Texas is worse with 80%/30%, but still functioning. While the situation is serious and tragic, there are no signs of the Apocalipse. By Apocalipse I mean healtcare system overwhelmed 10-100x, bodies piling in the streets, etc. The kind of catastrophe the likes of Thomas Puyol were predicting in early 2020, and at which the media has been alluding ever since, continuously rotating the focus on the worst affected areas. https://www.cdc.gov/nhsn/covid19/report-patient-impact.html https://www.cdc.gov/nhsn/covid19/report-patient-impact.html https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/region/us/florida https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/region/us/florida https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/region/us/iowa https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/region/us/iowa https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/region/us/texas https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/region/us/texas
dTal 5y ago
>How many people get objective 'long covid', by which I mean objectivly measurable decreased lung capacity or blood oxygenation levels One of the scariest aspects of long covid is the neurological effects. It's hard to "objectively" measure things like "food tastes weird now" and "I'm exhausted all the time" or even "I can't focus like I used to" in a clinical setting without having done baseline tests pre-infection - yet these things will be obvious to the sufferer. Sometimes, in the absence of better data, you have to take people's word for it. You are right that we need more data on long covid - it's inherently hard to study, and early data is frightening. Until we know more, caution is advisable.

brundolf 5y ago

That's just it, we don't know yet. The reality (in terms of frequency, duration, and average severity) could be an order of magnitude off in either direction relative to the anecdata. Covid has been totally alien in multiple ways already. The long-term effects could also be totally outside the norms for other viruses.

angelzen 5y ago
That we don't know doesn't necessarily imply that we need to assume the worst case scenario.
- brundolf 5y ago
  That's up to each individual's risk profile. I'd rather play it safe for another several months than risk lifetime debilitation. You can pick your own risk level.
  - angelzen 5y ago
    True. Everybody has a right to decide their own risk profile according to their own life circumstances and risk tolerance. Not to scold, but please notice that some people have quite a bit larger choice space than others. For example, white collar WFH vs. blue collar in-person service.
tonyedgecombe 5y ago
>That's just it, we don't know yet. So why is it your biggest worry?
- brundolf 5y ago
  Because of how wide the margin of error still is, and the fact that lifelong debilitation is on the table. Long covid right now is in the stage of analysis that regular covid was over a year ago. People had no idea back then how bad the mortality rates actually were, what to do about them, etc. We have a pretty good handle on that side now, which is why I'm no longer really worried about being killed or even hospitalized, as a healthy young vaccinated person. But we're just beginning to study the long-term effects. Their severity in the grand scheme of things could be tiny, or it could be massive, because - again - we don't know yet. I don't want to roll those dice.

paulddraper 5y ago

But. We. Just. Don't. Know. Literally anything could happen. After years of studying it, we just don't understand it. Five years later, boom, you wake up with nasal demons. If only there were existing respiratory coronaviruses we could compare it to, instead of this completely alien pathogen. /s

bradknowles 5y ago
While COVID is closely related to other coronaviruses, it doesn’t act the same way. So, studying them doesn’t help us that much with COVID. And we’ve been studying some of them for over a hundred years. There is new and novel activity going on here, and we don’t really understand how it works.
- paulddraper 5y ago
  Not really. SARS is closely related. (The virus is literally SARS-CoV-2.) COVID-19 might be unique taking every possible characteristic together, but nothing it's done so far is unique among coronaviruses.

bradknowles 5y ago

This was one day ago: > An exhausted Iowa ER doctor pleaded with people to get vaccinated against COVID-19 in a Facebook Live video: 'We are drowning in people who are dying with this illness' https://www.businessinsider.com/iowa-er-doctor-pleads-get-vaccinated-not-enough-icu-beds-2021-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/iowa-er-doctor-pleads-get-va... And: > Austin region has zero available staffed adult ICU beds, state data shows https://spectrumlocalnews.com/tx/austin/news/2021/09/06/austin-region-has-zero-available-staffed-adult-icu-beds--state-data-shows- https://spectrumlocalnews.com/tx/austin/news/2021/09/06/aust... I don’t think the problem has gone away. Maybe you’ve just stopped listening?

angelzen 5y ago
Perhaps I am indeed exhausted by the continuous barrage of rumors of doom. The last CDC snapshot (as old as 07/13!) estimates that nationally 8% of the hospital beds were occupied with covid patients. Perhaps I'm unfazed by the ICU beds stats because I have been born and raised in a country where there were no ICU beds. I file them in the 'amazing bonus' rubric, not feeling entitled to have an ICU waiting for me worst case scenario. In my neck of the woods, the local pedriatic hospitals are at 70-80% utilization and have admitted a grand total of 8 covid cases in the past week. Some of the local adult hospitals are indeed going over 90% capacity, but others are cruising at 50%. The sum of covid cases admitted in the past week is in the low hundreds. This for an urban metro with 4M people. On the bright side, Florida, which has been the focus of national media covid reporting appears to have turned the corner on covid hospitalizations, currently running at 87% capacity, of which about 25% covid, and trending down. Iowa runs at 62% hospital capacity, with only 10% covid. Texas is worse with 80%/30%, but still functioning. While the situation is serious and tragic, there are no signs of the Apocalipse. By Apocalipse I mean healtcare system overwhelmed 10-100x, bodies piling in the streets, etc. The kind of catastrophe the likes of Thomas Puyol were predicting in early 2020, and at which the media has been alluding ever since, continuously rotating the focus on the worst affected areas. https://www.cdc.gov/nhsn/covid19/report-patient-impact.html https://www.cdc.gov/nhsn/covid19/report-patient-impact.html https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/region/us/florida https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/region/us/florida https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/region/us/iowa https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/region/us/iowa https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/region/us/texas https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/region/us/texas

dTal 5y ago

>How many people get objective 'long covid', by which I mean objectivly measurable decreased lung capacity or blood oxygenation levels One of the scariest aspects of long covid is the neurological effects. It's hard to "objectively" measure things like "food tastes weird now" and "I'm exhausted all the time" or even "I can't focus like I used to" in a clinical setting without having done baseline tests pre-infection - yet these things will be obvious to the sufferer. Sometimes, in the absence of better data, you have to take people's word for it. You are right that we need more data on long covid - it's inherently hard to study, and early data is frightening. Until we know more, caution is advisable.