6 ms·

False. > We went into it thinking that [the risk] was going to be most pronounced and evident in people who smoked a lot or had diabetes, heart disease, kidney

False. > We went into it thinking that [the risk] was going to be most pronounced and evident in people who smoked a lot or had diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease, or some [other] risk factors. What we found is that even in people who did not have any heart problems start with, were athletic, did not have a high BMI, were not obese, did not smoke, did not have kidney disease or diabetes—even in people who were previously healthy and had no risk factors or problems with the heart—COVID-19 affected them in such a way that manifested the higher risk of heart problems than people who did not get COVID-19. They found that even mild COVID damaged otherwise healthy people's hearts so badly that their risk for heart problems are now comparable to those of obese people. In other words, it does damage your heart. That damage might result in a heart attack, reflected in the increased hazard ratio.

bigfudge 5y ago
No, there's not enough data to be sure either way, but given that some/most people experience absolutely no lingering symptoms the simplest explanation is that even mild disease cases damage in some people. EDIT: to be clear. We have no idea if the outcome-generating process is continuous or discontinuous. You seem to think it's continuous, analogous to risks from smoking or obesity, but others would assume not.
- Retric 5y ago
  Lingering symptoms isn’t a useful diagnostic tool in this case. Hart damage is generally invisible up until people have a significant problem. This is why young marathon runners occasionally die of undiagnosed heart problems and the elderly get in depth testing before voluntary medical procedures. Hypothetically, if 3/4 of population has the baseline risk and 1/4 the population has 8x the risk then you could say most people are at identical risks. But unless you can determine which population someone was in that’s irrelevant.
margalabargala 5y ago
> They found that even mild COVID damaged otherwise healthy people's hearts so badly that their risk for heart problems are now comparable to those of obese people. > In other words, it does damage your heart. That damage might result in a heart attack, reflected in the increased hazard ratio. This seems an inaccurate reading of what's in the study. They did not find that all people who had COVID had heart damage, which would be the case if "it does damage your heart" were true. Instead it found that some previously healthy people now had some heart damage.
- DiggyJohnson 5y ago
  Well put, I think this should be considered the prevailing consensus for this discussion, frankly. There’s a lot of noise here…
- hedora 5y ago
  How did they know they were previously healthy? Did they have pre-infection health screens?
  - cde-v 5y ago
    Yes, they were all vets in the VA system so their pre-infection health had been documented.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- dwaltrip 5y ago
  Thanks for clarifying. What percentage of previously healthy people had heart damage from covid? Did they break this down by age and vaccination status?
  - borkt 5y ago
    Just one person but i was an early case (family member went to Wuhan 1-2 times each month. During the firsr year of COVID, as early as march of 2020, i had serious issues with gut and hearth inflamation - repeated bouts that started as back pain, became chest pain, elevated heart-rate to 150 for ~3 days at a time, 24 hours a day. Gradyally the episodes became less frequent leading up to a stroke type event co current with a presumed second bout of covid. Was forced back to work about a week after the issue, and the only other coworker who was near me contracted covid about 10 days later. Following the Stroke type event I lost virtually all of my talent at writing, And ultimately my job, which was very humbling. Ive spent the past year working gig jobs when i can, and fortunately all long covid symptoms have gone away. I feel like my brain is close to 100% but i lack the confidence in myself, my memory, and my writing and am constantly second guessing myself and assume im wrong if in a contested discussion. It really sucks, yet im probably one of the lucky ones
TrevorJ 5y ago
>They found that even mild COVID damaged otherwise healthy people's hearts so badly that their risk for heart problems are now comparable to those of obese people. False. The study did NOT look for heart damage in the study population as a proximal cause for other cardiac events, it simply looked at incidence of cardiac events. Your interpretation is one possible explanation as to why this might be, but the study neither supports nor disproves this explanation.
- Retric 5y ago
  False… Increased incidents is in support of that conclusion, but does not provide direct evidence of it. An important but subtle difference.
  - TrevorJ 5y ago
    Lack of evidence supports precisely nothing.
    - Retric 5y ago
      Increased incidence is evidence as is the known link between viral infections and heart problems. Suppose your car doesn’t start. That supports the possibility of a dead battery, it also supports broken wire or anything else that’s a possible cause. What it doesn’t support is your car being in proper working order. If your car doesn’t start and you haven’t used it in 2 months, well it could be something else but …
      - TrevorJ 5y ago
        >Suppose your car doesn’t start. That supports the possibility of a dead battery, it also supports broken wire or anything else that’s a possible cause. What it doesn’t support is your car being in proper working order. Yes, these are hypotheses. But they are not meaningful in a scientific sense until you design a study and set about to try to disprove them. OP's claim was in relation to precisely what a scientific paper did or did not prove. Therefore, the appropriate level of rigour we need to apply here is a scientific one.
fallingknife 5y ago
> In other words, it does damage your heart. That damage might result in a heart attack, reflected in the increased hazard ratio. Or it only damages the heart in a small number of patients, and that damage always results in heart conditions. It is not possible to tell the difference between these two possibilities without actually taking a sample and looking for asymptomatic heart damage in the affected patients, which this study did not do. These are the stats for heart conditions on mild covid patients from the paper. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01689-3/figures/5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01689-3/figures/5 They don't look bad at all. Where is it stated that this effect is as bad as obesity?
bhk 5y ago
First, the study does not even use the term "mild". They did look at three levels of severity: non-hospitalized, hospitalized, and admitted to ICU. The "non-hospitalized" group surely includes people who would describe their case as "worse than any flu", as well as those would describe theirs as "mild" (e.g. a few sniffles for a few days, like a number of my friends recently.) Second, the hazard ratios differ widely between the three levels of severity. For example, for MACE (major adverse cardiac events) versus the contemporary control group, hazard ratios are: Non-hospitalized 1.26 Hospitalized 2.41 ICU 4.36 One would expect a similar gradation of risk by severity among the "non-hospitalized" group.
- froh 5y ago
  In the context of this and similar studies non-hospitalized means 'mild', even if it subjectively was 'real bad' Hospitalized is severe ICU is very severe / life threatening
postalrat 5y ago
Is "False." the new "Wrong."?
- JimTheMan 5y ago
  False.Incorrect.Wrong. Are all easy ways to tell if someone is about to speak like Dwight Schrute from the Office.

bigfudge 5y ago

No, there's not enough data to be sure either way, but given that some/most people experience absolutely no lingering symptoms the simplest explanation is that even mild disease cases damage in some people. EDIT: to be clear. We have no idea if the outcome-generating process is continuous or discontinuous. You seem to think it's continuous, analogous to risks from smoking or obesity, but others would assume not.

Retric 5y ago
Lingering symptoms isn’t a useful diagnostic tool in this case. Hart damage is generally invisible up until people have a significant problem. This is why young marathon runners occasionally die of undiagnosed heart problems and the elderly get in depth testing before voluntary medical procedures. Hypothetically, if 3/4 of population has the baseline risk and 1/4 the population has 8x the risk then you could say most people are at identical risks. But unless you can determine which population someone was in that’s irrelevant.

margalabargala 5y ago

> They found that even mild COVID damaged otherwise healthy people's hearts so badly that their risk for heart problems are now comparable to those of obese people. > In other words, it does damage your heart. That damage might result in a heart attack, reflected in the increased hazard ratio. This seems an inaccurate reading of what's in the study. They did not find that all people who had COVID had heart damage, which would be the case if "it does damage your heart" were true. Instead it found that some previously healthy people now had some heart damage.

DiggyJohnson 5y ago
Well put, I think this should be considered the prevailing consensus for this discussion, frankly. There’s a lot of noise here…
hedora 5y ago
How did they know they were previously healthy? Did they have pre-infection health screens?
- cde-v 5y ago
  Yes, they were all vets in the VA system so their pre-infection health had been documented.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
dwaltrip 5y ago
Thanks for clarifying. What percentage of previously healthy people had heart damage from covid? Did they break this down by age and vaccination status?
- borkt 5y ago
  Just one person but i was an early case (family member went to Wuhan 1-2 times each month. During the firsr year of COVID, as early as march of 2020, i had serious issues with gut and hearth inflamation - repeated bouts that started as back pain, became chest pain, elevated heart-rate to 150 for ~3 days at a time, 24 hours a day. Gradyally the episodes became less frequent leading up to a stroke type event co current with a presumed second bout of covid. Was forced back to work about a week after the issue, and the only other coworker who was near me contracted covid about 10 days later. Following the Stroke type event I lost virtually all of my talent at writing, And ultimately my job, which was very humbling. Ive spent the past year working gig jobs when i can, and fortunately all long covid symptoms have gone away. I feel like my brain is close to 100% but i lack the confidence in myself, my memory, and my writing and am constantly second guessing myself and assume im wrong if in a contested discussion. It really sucks, yet im probably one of the lucky ones

TrevorJ 5y ago

>They found that even mild COVID damaged otherwise healthy people's hearts so badly that their risk for heart problems are now comparable to those of obese people. False. The study did NOT look for heart damage in the study population as a proximal cause for other cardiac events, it simply looked at incidence of cardiac events. Your interpretation is one possible explanation as to why this might be, but the study neither supports nor disproves this explanation.

Retric 5y ago
False… Increased incidents is in support of that conclusion, but does not provide direct evidence of it. An important but subtle difference.
- TrevorJ 5y ago
  Lack of evidence supports precisely nothing.
  - Retric 5y ago
    Increased incidence is evidence as is the known link between viral infections and heart problems. Suppose your car doesn’t start. That supports the possibility of a dead battery, it also supports broken wire or anything else that’s a possible cause. What it doesn’t support is your car being in proper working order. If your car doesn’t start and you haven’t used it in 2 months, well it could be something else but …
    - TrevorJ 5y ago
      >Suppose your car doesn’t start. That supports the possibility of a dead battery, it also supports broken wire or anything else that’s a possible cause. What it doesn’t support is your car being in proper working order. Yes, these are hypotheses. But they are not meaningful in a scientific sense until you design a study and set about to try to disprove them. OP's claim was in relation to precisely what a scientific paper did or did not prove. Therefore, the appropriate level of rigour we need to apply here is a scientific one.

fallingknife 5y ago

> In other words, it does damage your heart. That damage might result in a heart attack, reflected in the increased hazard ratio. Or it only damages the heart in a small number of patients, and that damage always results in heart conditions. It is not possible to tell the difference between these two possibilities without actually taking a sample and looking for asymptomatic heart damage in the affected patients, which this study did not do. These are the stats for heart conditions on mild covid patients from the paper. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01689-3/figures/5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01689-3/figures/5 They don't look bad at all. Where is it stated that this effect is as bad as obesity?

bhk 5y ago

First, the study does not even use the term "mild". They did look at three levels of severity: non-hospitalized, hospitalized, and admitted to ICU. The "non-hospitalized" group surely includes people who would describe their case as "worse than any flu", as well as those would describe theirs as "mild" (e.g. a few sniffles for a few days, like a number of my friends recently.) Second, the hazard ratios differ widely between the three levels of severity. For example, for MACE (major adverse cardiac events) versus the contemporary control group, hazard ratios are: Non-hospitalized 1.26 Hospitalized 2.41 ICU 4.36 One would expect a similar gradation of risk by severity among the "non-hospitalized" group.

froh 5y ago
In the context of this and similar studies non-hospitalized means 'mild', even if it subjectively was 'real bad' Hospitalized is severe ICU is very severe / life threatening

postalrat 5y ago

Is "False." the new "Wrong."?

JimTheMan 5y ago
False.Incorrect.Wrong. Are all easy ways to tell if someone is about to speak like Dwight Schrute from the Office.