4 ms·

There's more to worry about than only Mortality. The Morbidity of COVID-19 is something we'll be dealing with for decades: https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/

There's more to worry about than only Mortality. The Morbidity of COVID-19 is something we'll be dealing with for decades: https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1484239554517340164 https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1484239554517340164

iamstupidsimple 5y ago
While I agree this isn't over, I disagree with your conclusion. We have little idea how early COVID exposure will affect us decades from now, but there's already signs of psychological strain in kids which could prove to be worse. Nobody knows.
wisty 5y ago
Long Covid is quite a worry, especially as it seems to even happen quite a lot to people who appear to have never even caught it - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40121-021-00484-w https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40121-021-00484-w
- timr 5y ago
  Another, equally valid, way of looking at that is that half of the people in that study reporting "long Covid" have no evidence of ever having Covid. > Using SARS-CoV-2 serology and IFN-γ ELISPOT, we found evidence of a previous SARS-CoV-2 infection in 50% (15/30) of patients See also this large (N=26k) study from France, where the only "long Covid" symptom correlated with confirmed infection was loss of smell. Nearly every other symptom was associated with belief of prior infection, but not infection itself: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2785832 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...
  - wisty 5y ago
    Psychosomatic illness is a real problem. I understand that they don't want to mock people with it (as it's not really helpful), and post viral syndromes do exist, but the mass hysteria people are raising is even less helpful.
    - taeric 5y ago
      A fear is that the mass hysteria is the cause, here.
    - timr 5y ago
      Completely agreed. Post-viral syndromes are real, as is psychosomatic illness. But we're now locked in cycle of speculation about speculation -- these papers on long Covid are usually stunningly bad, and dispense with basic things like controls, or even separating the subjects by age and severity of primary illness. So you get review articles postulating complex theories of biological mechanisms for "illnesses" where the primary evidence base consists of a web survey. It's madness, and it's almost impossible to properly debunk it all, given how quickly its being churned out.
    - bsder 5y ago
      > Psychosomatic illness is a real problem. I wouldn't even take the step to psychosomatic. Viruses period, Covid or not, apparently do a lot more damage and require a lot longer to recover from than we expected. People dismissing "Long Covid" in non-Covid patients are being blind to the fact that we had a LOT of people who had "weird" symptoms even before Covid that we allocated to "hysteria", "psychosomatic", "chronic", "Lyme disease", etc. that are going to turn out to be "Long General Virus Recovery". Epstein-Barr has some huge correlation to multiple sclerosis. HPV vaccines have almost eliminated certain cervical cancers. Chicken pox necessitates a shingles vaccine because its so horrible. Viruses are a lot worse than we realized, and the medical system is going to be coming to grips with this for decades.
      - timr 5y ago
        > Viruses period, Covid or not, apparently do a lot more damage and require a lot longer to recover from thane we expected. No, this is not supported by the evidence. So far, even the worst of the long Covid papers suggests that a minority of people suffer from lingering illness. And most of those papers are bad, defining "long Covid" arbitrarily, and mixing together "cough after three weeks" with far more serious symptoms experienced by a tiny set of people. When people say "we need more research on long Covid", this is what is meant. We literally have no idea what "it" is, other than an arbitrary container into which people are dumping their worst fears and speculations. Going from this to "viruses are much worse than we ever knew!" is both wrong (post-viral syndrome is a known thing, affecting a small fraction of people) and overgeneralization.
timr 5y ago
This is simply blatant fear-mongering. Note the second word in the figure: "putative". If you click the associated link, you'll see that the figure is taken from a review that covers a bunch of papers that present all of these things as hypotheses. None have been shown to be true. I'm sorry to say it, but Eric Topol is no longer a reliable source of information. He routinely mis-represents "science" in the scariest way possible, and as exemplified here, nuance and and measured communication are essential to prevent panic.
- beebmam 5y ago
  Can you please post multiple examples of how he routinely misrepresents science in the scariest way possible? I've yet to see it, but I'm certainly willing to change my mind if you present it here
disambiguation 5y ago
You mean among hospitalized individuals? i.e not children > Initial reports of neurologic syndromes accompanying COVID-19 described changes in level of consciousness or cognitive dysfunction, weakness, and headache in hospitalized patients... > A UK-wide study of hospitalized patients identified the most common neurologic conditions... > Direct examination of autopsy brain tissue has caveats—those who died with acute COVID-19 had severe disease that may not be representative of the majority of those infected with SARS-CoV-2.

iamstupidsimple 5y ago

While I agree this isn't over, I disagree with your conclusion. We have little idea how early COVID exposure will affect us decades from now, but there's already signs of psychological strain in kids which could prove to be worse. Nobody knows.

wisty 5y ago

Long Covid is quite a worry, especially as it seems to even happen quite a lot to people who appear to have never even caught it - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40121-021-00484-w https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40121-021-00484-w

timr 5y ago
Another, equally valid, way of looking at that is that half of the people in that study reporting "long Covid" have no evidence of ever having Covid. > Using SARS-CoV-2 serology and IFN-γ ELISPOT, we found evidence of a previous SARS-CoV-2 infection in 50% (15/30) of patients See also this large (N=26k) study from France, where the only "long Covid" symptom correlated with confirmed infection was loss of smell. Nearly every other symptom was associated with belief of prior infection, but not infection itself: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2785832 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...
- wisty 5y ago
  Psychosomatic illness is a real problem. I understand that they don't want to mock people with it (as it's not really helpful), and post viral syndromes do exist, but the mass hysteria people are raising is even less helpful.
  - taeric 5y ago
    A fear is that the mass hysteria is the cause, here.
  - timr 5y ago
    Completely agreed. Post-viral syndromes are real, as is psychosomatic illness. But we're now locked in cycle of speculation about speculation -- these papers on long Covid are usually stunningly bad, and dispense with basic things like controls, or even separating the subjects by age and severity of primary illness. So you get review articles postulating complex theories of biological mechanisms for "illnesses" where the primary evidence base consists of a web survey. It's madness, and it's almost impossible to properly debunk it all, given how quickly its being churned out.
  - bsder 5y ago
    > Psychosomatic illness is a real problem. I wouldn't even take the step to psychosomatic. Viruses period, Covid or not, apparently do a lot more damage and require a lot longer to recover from than we expected. People dismissing "Long Covid" in non-Covid patients are being blind to the fact that we had a LOT of people who had "weird" symptoms even before Covid that we allocated to "hysteria", "psychosomatic", "chronic", "Lyme disease", etc. that are going to turn out to be "Long General Virus Recovery". Epstein-Barr has some huge correlation to multiple sclerosis. HPV vaccines have almost eliminated certain cervical cancers. Chicken pox necessitates a shingles vaccine because its so horrible. Viruses are a lot worse than we realized, and the medical system is going to be coming to grips with this for decades.
    - timr 5y ago
      > Viruses period, Covid or not, apparently do a lot more damage and require a lot longer to recover from thane we expected. No, this is not supported by the evidence. So far, even the worst of the long Covid papers suggests that a minority of people suffer from lingering illness. And most of those papers are bad, defining "long Covid" arbitrarily, and mixing together "cough after three weeks" with far more serious symptoms experienced by a tiny set of people. When people say "we need more research on long Covid", this is what is meant. We literally have no idea what "it" is, other than an arbitrary container into which people are dumping their worst fears and speculations. Going from this to "viruses are much worse than we ever knew!" is both wrong (post-viral syndrome is a known thing, affecting a small fraction of people) and overgeneralization.

timr 5y ago

This is simply blatant fear-mongering. Note the second word in the figure: "putative". If you click the associated link, you'll see that the figure is taken from a review that covers a bunch of papers that present all of these things as hypotheses. None have been shown to be true. I'm sorry to say it, but Eric Topol is no longer a reliable source of information. He routinely mis-represents "science" in the scariest way possible, and as exemplified here, nuance and and measured communication are essential to prevent panic.

beebmam 5y ago
Can you please post multiple examples of how he routinely misrepresents science in the scariest way possible? I've yet to see it, but I'm certainly willing to change my mind if you present it here

disambiguation 5y ago

You mean among hospitalized individuals? i.e not children > Initial reports of neurologic syndromes accompanying COVID-19 described changes in level of consciousness or cognitive dysfunction, weakness, and headache in hospitalized patients... > A UK-wide study of hospitalized patients identified the most common neurologic conditions... > Direct examination of autopsy brain tissue has caveats—those who died with acute COVID-19 had severe disease that may not be representative of the majority of those infected with SARS-CoV-2.