8 ms·
UPDATE: I've read up a bit more about Long COVID. I believe a relative minority of people who suffered from COVID experience lingering health issues. I think Lo
by Stamp01 4y ago
UPDATE: I've read up a bit more about Long COVID. I believe a relative minority of people who suffered from COVID experience lingering health issues. I think Long COVID is currently ill-defined. The respiratory and cardiopulmonary symptoms make perfect sense given what is known about COVID. Other symptoms like mental fogginess make sense as secondary symptoms from respiratory and cardiopulmonary complications.
I still don't find this particular study convincing in its claims of hair loss and sexual dysfunction being mechanically related to COVID aside from the general stress of it.
As a layperson, I have some sort of cognitive dissonance calling it "Long COVID" as if it's a separate but related disease, or a continuation of the primary infection. People's bodies suffer long-lasting damage while successfully fighting off all sorts of infections. But I don't recall it being framed this way.
ORIGINAL: Like most people here in the comments, I'm coming at this report with a healthy amount of skepticism.
The relatively paltry numbers and self-reporting remind me of the folks in cancer clusters in Londonderry Township, Pennsylvania, who completely believe they're victims of the Three Mile Island accident even though it's scientifically impossible for that to be true.
I believe the symptoms are real. But about a million things can cause hair loss and sexual dysfunction, including stress. Perhaps the stress of getting sick during a pandemic when people are dying and you know you're infected with the same illness? The fear of the unknown? Seeing people survive with complications and worrying that the worst of your particular case is yet to come? The guilt from wondering why you were pardoned when so many others weren't so lucky?
I'm pretty sure there's historical precedent for psychological symptoms made physical among the survivors of pandemics throughout history.
That's not to say that there are no precedents of lingering disorders, for example encephalitis lethargica in the wake of the 1918 flu pandemic. But my layperson's application of Occam's razor is telling me this is more Morgellons than encephalitis lethargica given the data currently available.
I would be more than happy to be proven wrong about so-called "long COVID" if it meant there could be a more effective treatment than the complicated world of psychiatric healthcare. If there could be a pill or a shot that could relieve these symptoms, I'd be delighted to eat crow.
- VancouverMan 4y ago
- buscoquadnary 4y agoFor those curious about the capability of.something to present horrifying symptoms and still be psycho-somatic check out https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_plague_of_1518 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_plague_of_1518
- thaumasiotes 4y ago> about a million things can cause hair loss and sexual dysfunction, including stress Both are well known to be caused by age.
- Stamp01 4y agoI wish there was a way to measure how many people would self-report these symptoms without having had COVID first. Unfortunately, those numbers aren't being collected.
- Jedd 4y ago> I wish there was a way to measure how many people would self-report these symptoms without having had COVID first. Unfortunately, those numbers aren't being collected. There is a way, those data are being collected, the authors cover this in their study - you may care to read it: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01909-w https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01909-w
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Jedd 4y ago> The relatively paltry numbers .. Wait, what? "A total of 486,149 non-hospitalized individuals had a coded record of SARS-CoV-2 infection [...]. From the pool of patients with no recorded evidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection, 1,944,580 individuals were propensity score-matched to patients infected with SARS-CoV-2."
- Stamp01 4y agoPut another way, according to Johns Hopkins, there have been a total of 24,079,325 reported cases of infection in the UK. That means a smidge more than 8% of infected people are suffering from prolonged symptoms as they are defined in this study. That is statistically significant, but not exactly overwhelming by my personal yardstick of whether or not I'd gamble money on it. Not exactly scientific, I know.
- Jedd 4y agoI may have misunderstood one or both of your numerical dismissals, then. As I read it, your first post suggested this was a blip, similar to some subset of the 8000 people in a village that thought they had increased cancer risk from a fission power plant accident. I wasn't sure what you meant by 'paltry numbers', given the study was across 2.5m patients. This post is now saying that (extrapolating) the 2 million people in the UK with long COVID are not compelling to you, either because you believe there's no connection to COVID, or because that's not many people -- I'm not sure which?
- giraffe_lady 4y agoWhat percent of your total net worth would you gamble on a 92% chance in your favor btw? Genuinely kinda curious because to me 8% is an incredibly high chance for something that would negatively affect you for the rest of your life.
- Stamp01 4y agoCan I flag my own comment?
- deminature 4y agoWHO claims 17 million long COVID sufferers in Europe total during the pandemic period, these are hardly 'paltry' numbers [1] [1] https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/13-09-2022-at-least-17-million-people-in-the-who-european-region-experienced-long-covid-in-the-first-two-years-of-the-pandemic--millions-may-have-to-live-with-it-for-years-to-come https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/13-09-2022-at-least-17-...