4 ms·

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 exis

by 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.
  - bsder 5y ago
    Let's assume "minority" means 5%. Total "confirmed" cases of Covid are now north of 70 million in the US and at 20 million just before the vaccine. At 1 million people before the vaccine (5% of 20 million), that would make "Long Covid" one of the most common medical conditions. That 5% number is probably close for Covid prior to vaccines. Look at the sheer number of people who had anosmia and how long it is taking them to recover. How many people would even have mentioned anosmia after having a cold or flu? That sure goes into the "Long Covid" bucket in my book and we're not even discussing the panoply of other damage that Covid does. Post-vaccine, the "Long Covid" percentage certainly drops by quite a bit. > post-viral syndrome is a known thing, affecting a small fraction of people The number of people who got cervical cancer from HPV is small, and yet, before the vaccine, it was one of the more common and fatal of cancers. "Small fraction" != "unimportant" In addition, things pile up. Carcinogenesis takes a long time with key mutations as far back as the womb and early childhood. Viruses are part of the landscape that causes those mutations. You have provided no evidence to counteract my statement so I still stand by it: Viruses period, Covid or not, apparently do a lot more damage and require a lot longer to recover from than we expected.
    - timr 5y ago
      > At 1 million people before the vaccine (5% of 20 million), that would make "Long Covid" one of the most common medical conditions. ...and yet, we're not seeing these waves and waves of disabled people. This should give you pause, and make you doubt the claims of prevalence, the claims of severity, or both. By the way: "reported" infections vastly underestimate the true prevalence of disease. Up until the Omicron wave (which has tremendously increased the number) the CDC estimated that almost 150 million US citizens have had it: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burden.html#est-infections https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd... Again, this should make you doubt the claims of prevalence. If even 5% of cases have this "long Covid", we're talking about 8 million cases. If claims of 20% prevalence are true, boost that number to 30 million people. The burden on the medical system would be immense; you would not be able to get appointments for even basic care. Chronically disabled people should be swamping medical clinics everywhere. It's simply obvious nonsense. Only by conflating minor symptoms with pathology do you get to an estimate anywhere near these kinds of numbers. > Look at the sheer number of people who had anosmia and how long it is taking them to recover. I'm one of them. Took about a week. > That sure goes into the "Long Covid" bucket in my book and we're not even discussing the panoply of other damage that Covid does. We're discussing it right now. What we're not discussing is the evidence for this "panoply of other damage"...because for the vast majority of "long Covid" symptoms, the evidence simply doesn't exist. We leap from self-reports of "symptoms" directly to "panoply of damage", based on little more than speculation and quotes from doctors.

by wisty 5y ago

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.
- bsder 5y ago
  Let's assume "minority" means 5%. Total "confirmed" cases of Covid are now north of 70 million in the US and at 20 million just before the vaccine. At 1 million people before the vaccine (5% of 20 million), that would make "Long Covid" one of the most common medical conditions. That 5% number is probably close for Covid prior to vaccines. Look at the sheer number of people who had anosmia and how long it is taking them to recover. How many people would even have mentioned anosmia after having a cold or flu? That sure goes into the "Long Covid" bucket in my book and we're not even discussing the panoply of other damage that Covid does. Post-vaccine, the "Long Covid" percentage certainly drops by quite a bit. > post-viral syndrome is a known thing, affecting a small fraction of people The number of people who got cervical cancer from HPV is small, and yet, before the vaccine, it was one of the more common and fatal of cancers. "Small fraction" != "unimportant" In addition, things pile up. Carcinogenesis takes a long time with key mutations as far back as the womb and early childhood. Viruses are part of the landscape that causes those mutations. You have provided no evidence to counteract my statement so I still stand by it: Viruses period, Covid or not, apparently do a lot more damage and require a lot longer to recover from than we expected.
  - timr 5y ago
    > At 1 million people before the vaccine (5% of 20 million), that would make "Long Covid" one of the most common medical conditions. ...and yet, we're not seeing these waves and waves of disabled people. This should give you pause, and make you doubt the claims of prevalence, the claims of severity, or both. By the way: "reported" infections vastly underestimate the true prevalence of disease. Up until the Omicron wave (which has tremendously increased the number) the CDC estimated that almost 150 million US citizens have had it: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burden.html#est-infections https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd... Again, this should make you doubt the claims of prevalence. If even 5% of cases have this "long Covid", we're talking about 8 million cases. If claims of 20% prevalence are true, boost that number to 30 million people. The burden on the medical system would be immense; you would not be able to get appointments for even basic care. Chronically disabled people should be swamping medical clinics everywhere. It's simply obvious nonsense. Only by conflating minor symptoms with pathology do you get to an estimate anywhere near these kinds of numbers. > Look at the sheer number of people who had anosmia and how long it is taking them to recover. I'm one of them. Took about a week. > That sure goes into the "Long Covid" bucket in my book and we're not even discussing the panoply of other damage that Covid does. We're discussing it right now. What we're not discussing is the evidence for this "panoply of other damage"...because for the vast majority of "long Covid" symptoms, the evidence simply doesn't exist. We leap from self-reports of "symptoms" directly to "panoply of damage", based on little more than speculation and quotes from doctors.