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You are (mostly) wrong. The definitions of long Covid are indeed a bit inconsistent for now, but there’s evidence that both repeated infections do tend to be wo

You are (mostly) wrong. The definitions of long Covid are indeed a bit inconsistent for now, but there’s evidence that both repeated infections do tend to be worse with the omicron variants (possibly due to t-cell exhaustion but I’m not sure if that’s the only factor), and that repeat exposures are at least not protective against long Covid (this isn’t settled science yet, and there are a lot of confounding variables, but the recent studies I’ve seen seem to put the risk of long Covid at somewhere between 5% and 30% each time you are infected). To the extent that there are good consistent definitions of long Covid, they tend to agree that neurological symptoms- including brain fog and reduced cognition, are frequent (not a majority, but still common) symptoms associated with long Covid. Looking at cognitive effects in particular, some UK studies estimate that the impact is actually quite a lot higher than is reported, and is common even in people with asymptomatic or very mild initial symptoms. I’ve seen at least one estimate that puts the impact of an asymptomatic Covid infection on the brain as being equivalent to 10 years of normal aging. The cognitive effects don’t seem to be entirely evenly distributed- the impact is bigger on older (40+) people, and I’ve heard (but not read the study) that people with ADHD are also much more likely to experience cognitive issues after covid. Covid is also not yet endemic. We are still in the pandemic phase- there is not yet a regular and predictable load of infections or a reasonable model for the evolutionary trend of variants. In any case, endemic does not mean not dangerous, it just means predictable and well understood. Calling it a cold virus is also just a rhetorical trick to downplay the severity. Yes, some colds are caused by other coronaviruses, but covid19 remains far more severe on average than any of the other common coronavirus infections that we lump in with common colds. Finally, it’s probably true on our current trajectory that most people will be infected multiple times, even people that work from home. Given the evidence of compounding risks, it’s still better to prevent whatever vectors of infection that you can. It also gives people more flexibility in their own risk tolerance. I’m still avoiding bars and restaurants, but many of my coworkers aren’t. If we were in an office I’d be obliged to take on a much higher level of risk due to unavoidable exposure to higher risk people.

timr 4y ago
> You are (mostly) wrong. The definitions of long Covid are indeed a bit inconsistent for now, It's not a matter of "a bit inconsistent". There is no definition of "long covid". Literally anyone can claim they have it and not be wrong. > but there’s evidence that both repeated infections do tend to be worse with the omicron variants (possibly due to t-cell exhaustion but I’m not sure if that’s the only factor) No, there isn't, and "t-cell exhaustion" is not a thing. It's a phrase made up by pop scientists. > I’ve seen at least one estimate that puts the impact of an asymptomatic Covid infection on the brain as being equivalent to 10 years of normal aging. There are, sadly, a large number of irresponsible people making hysterical, pseudo-scientific claims with no data to back them up. This is a great example. Even if it were possible to quantify "10 years of normal aging" on "the brain" (it isn't), the specific claim advanced here -- asymptomatic infection leading to accelerated 'normal aging' -- is not backed by any evidence.
- rebeccaskinner 4y ago
  > It's not a matter of "a bit inconsistent". There is no definition of "long covid". Literally anyone can claim they have it and not be wrong. Individual studies tend to look at different things, but most of the relevant studies give a particular definition. It generally involves symptoms 3,6, or 8 months after an acute infection, and some studies further limit the definition to a particular set of symptoms. Most control for the occurrence of those symptoms in the general population too. > No, there isn't, and "t-cell exhaustion" is not a thing. It's a phrase made up by pop scientists. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41577-019-0221-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41577-019-0221-9 https://www.pennmedicine.org/news/news-releases/2021/july/penn-medicine-discovery-clarifies-the-problem-of-t-cell-exhaustion https://www.pennmedicine.org/news/news-releases/2021/july/pe... https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34288064/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34288064/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7389156/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7389156/ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41423-021-00750-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41423-021-00750-4
  - cheesewhizemacs 4y ago
    At least a few of those links are in fact pop science articles like the grandparent complained they would be, and when you leave a bunch of links like this with no consideration for the discussion or explanation for lay people, it's basically gish gallop[0], which is an informal fallacy / rhetorical technique that generally underlies a bad faith argument. Anecdotally it's anti-science / conspiratorial types that tend to do these obscenely large link dumps with references to dense studies, and then pretend that they've read them all. I consider you and other proponents of the Long COVID theory to be in the same category; deploying gish gallop as a rhetorical tactic hurts your case more than it helps it, when encountered by skeptical people like me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop
the_doctah 4y ago
You lost me at "T-Cell exhaustion". If that were a thing, repeated boosters wouldn't really make sense, now would it?
- rebeccaskinner 4y ago
  Basically, and this is my moderately self-educated layperson understanding: Immune escape is the process where viruses basically evolve to either evade antibodies that your body has created, or do things to prevent your body from creating effective antibodies in the first place. This is a really common thing with a lot of viruses, including some other coronaviruses. We were pretty lucky that, until omicron, Covid didn’t have the greatest immune escape- but now it does. For whatever reason, omicron infection alone doesn’t give you great immunity against omicron variants or other variants. Having been vaccinated before your first omicron infection helps some, but not as much as it did with earlier variants. Now, the thing about the immune system is that even when it can’t completely stop a virus, it can often help make it more mild over time. Unfortunately, for Covid, and especially for omicron, the opposite seems to be true. On average, reinfections are worse than earlier infections. Again, the vaccine seems to make this a little better, but not a lot. The fact that reinfections are worse isn’t unknown in other diseases either. Antibody dependent enhancement is a known thing, and we know a lot of the effects of Covid seem to come from the immune system- so maybe ADE is the cause? It seems like that’s unlikely because the vaccine worked so well- but also, it seems like there are a bunch of other diseases that get worse for someone after they’ve had Covid. That would make it seem like whatever is happening to the immune system after an infection might be bigger than just Covid itself. There are a bunch of ideas about why this might be- including reservoirs of virus lingering in the body, damage from Covid making it harder to fight off other infections, and the lockdown just generally making our immune systems a bit less effective for lack of use. One of the ideas for why this might be happening is this idea of “t-cell exhaustion” which, as I understand it, is basically just a kind of broad term for “t cells don’t seem to be working like they should and we don’t know why” with a few specific hypotheses about the possible mechanisms. I don’t think this is something that’s like, broadly accepted and well understood yet so much as it is a plausible non-specific idea for one way to explain some observed data. At any rate, whatever is happening seems to be related to a natural Covid infection and either the spike protein encoded by the current vaccines isn’t enough to cause the immune system problems, or vaccination doesn’t produce enough of them over a long enough period of time to cause the problem. I know that “ the data is weird” isn’t a very satisfying answer but it seems to be where we’re at.

timr 4y ago

> You are (mostly) wrong. The definitions of long Covid are indeed a bit inconsistent for now, It's not a matter of "a bit inconsistent". There is no definition of "long covid". Literally anyone can claim they have it and not be wrong. > but there’s evidence that both repeated infections do tend to be worse with the omicron variants (possibly due to t-cell exhaustion but I’m not sure if that’s the only factor) No, there isn't, and "t-cell exhaustion" is not a thing. It's a phrase made up by pop scientists. > I’ve seen at least one estimate that puts the impact of an asymptomatic Covid infection on the brain as being equivalent to 10 years of normal aging. There are, sadly, a large number of irresponsible people making hysterical, pseudo-scientific claims with no data to back them up. This is a great example. Even if it were possible to quantify "10 years of normal aging" on "the brain" (it isn't), the specific claim advanced here -- asymptomatic infection leading to accelerated 'normal aging' -- is not backed by any evidence.

rebeccaskinner 4y ago
> It's not a matter of "a bit inconsistent". There is no definition of "long covid". Literally anyone can claim they have it and not be wrong. Individual studies tend to look at different things, but most of the relevant studies give a particular definition. It generally involves symptoms 3,6, or 8 months after an acute infection, and some studies further limit the definition to a particular set of symptoms. Most control for the occurrence of those symptoms in the general population too. > No, there isn't, and "t-cell exhaustion" is not a thing. It's a phrase made up by pop scientists. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41577-019-0221-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41577-019-0221-9 https://www.pennmedicine.org/news/news-releases/2021/july/penn-medicine-discovery-clarifies-the-problem-of-t-cell-exhaustion https://www.pennmedicine.org/news/news-releases/2021/july/pe... https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34288064/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34288064/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7389156/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7389156/ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41423-021-00750-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41423-021-00750-4
- cheesewhizemacs 4y ago
  At least a few of those links are in fact pop science articles like the grandparent complained they would be, and when you leave a bunch of links like this with no consideration for the discussion or explanation for lay people, it's basically gish gallop[0], which is an informal fallacy / rhetorical technique that generally underlies a bad faith argument. Anecdotally it's anti-science / conspiratorial types that tend to do these obscenely large link dumps with references to dense studies, and then pretend that they've read them all. I consider you and other proponents of the Long COVID theory to be in the same category; deploying gish gallop as a rhetorical tactic hurts your case more than it helps it, when encountered by skeptical people like me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop

the_doctah 4y ago

You lost me at "T-Cell exhaustion". If that were a thing, repeated boosters wouldn't really make sense, now would it?

rebeccaskinner 4y ago
Basically, and this is my moderately self-educated layperson understanding: Immune escape is the process where viruses basically evolve to either evade antibodies that your body has created, or do things to prevent your body from creating effective antibodies in the first place. This is a really common thing with a lot of viruses, including some other coronaviruses. We were pretty lucky that, until omicron, Covid didn’t have the greatest immune escape- but now it does. For whatever reason, omicron infection alone doesn’t give you great immunity against omicron variants or other variants. Having been vaccinated before your first omicron infection helps some, but not as much as it did with earlier variants. Now, the thing about the immune system is that even when it can’t completely stop a virus, it can often help make it more mild over time. Unfortunately, for Covid, and especially for omicron, the opposite seems to be true. On average, reinfections are worse than earlier infections. Again, the vaccine seems to make this a little better, but not a lot. The fact that reinfections are worse isn’t unknown in other diseases either. Antibody dependent enhancement is a known thing, and we know a lot of the effects of Covid seem to come from the immune system- so maybe ADE is the cause? It seems like that’s unlikely because the vaccine worked so well- but also, it seems like there are a bunch of other diseases that get worse for someone after they’ve had Covid. That would make it seem like whatever is happening to the immune system after an infection might be bigger than just Covid itself. There are a bunch of ideas about why this might be- including reservoirs of virus lingering in the body, damage from Covid making it harder to fight off other infections, and the lockdown just generally making our immune systems a bit less effective for lack of use. One of the ideas for why this might be happening is this idea of “t-cell exhaustion” which, as I understand it, is basically just a kind of broad term for “t cells don’t seem to be working like they should and we don’t know why” with a few specific hypotheses about the possible mechanisms. I don’t think this is something that’s like, broadly accepted and well understood yet so much as it is a plausible non-specific idea for one way to explain some observed data. At any rate, whatever is happening seems to be related to a natural Covid infection and either the spike protein encoded by the current vaccines isn’t enough to cause the immune system problems, or vaccination doesn’t produce enough of them over a long enough period of time to cause the problem. I know that “ the data is weird” isn’t a very satisfying answer but it seems to be where we’re at.