9 ms·

Long Covid has had a brutal effect on the workforce, study finds

64 points by deegles 4y ago

tick_tock_tick 4y ago
> "More than a year after contracting the coronavirus, 18% of Long COVID patients had still not returned to work." > Between 1 January 2020 and 31 March 2022, the New York State Insurers Fund analysed more than 3,000 workers' compensation claims for COVID-19. Hard to take this at face value; I could easily see the vast majority of these claims being grift.
- khazhoux 4y ago
  Agree. I remain skeptical of, e.g., the depression claims. Now, someone will jump in and explain that the virus can affect neural pathways, and (hand-waving) that can cause depression. Without hard evidence, which I have not seen, this is a tenous connection.
- RC_ITR 4y ago
  Whether it's grift or not, it's still keeping people out of the workforce.
- ok_dad 4y ago
  Zero evidence. Are you writing off a bunch of people's medical issues due to your medical degree, or knowledge of their specific cases? If not, your opinion is worth nothing.
  - khazhoux 4y ago
    The onus is on proving that all these disparate symptoms were caused by covid. The evidence remains (as far as I’ve seen) circumstantial.
    - kevingadd 4y ago
      It's fascinating to me that we have widespread incidence of long-term health complications in people who caught a relatively new, not-deeply-understood virus, and the evidence being (as far as you've seen) circumstantial means that it must be made up, by default. Why exactly is it necessary to prove that these symptoms are COVID-related when that's the most natural conclusion? What is your alternative hypothesis that explains everything and is supported by better evidence? People with long COVID - even if you believe it's all psychosomatic, or caused by fibromyalgia, or whatever - have had a lot of trouble accessing treatment this whole time. Even if 90% of them were somehow making it up, I think it's awful that the remaining 10% of "real" cases had to deal with so many barriers to access care. All as a part of our societal effort to pretend the virus is over.
      - khazhoux 4y ago
        I‘m not part of any societal effort to pretend it’s over :-) Someone says they still have problems breathing 6 months after a moderate covid case? I’ll believe them by default. Someone says they feel demotivated at work 6 months after a mild case? I’ll be skeptical.
        ok_dad 4y ago
        That's a fair assessment, IMO. I believe that only a small, small minority of humans are going to be out to scam or do fraud (personal belief, obviously) and so from that lens, I hate it when people try and paint a group of people with a broad brush simply because they might believe something that is not factually correct, but in reality it's the best solution for now. What I am arguing here, is that the 3000 people who have "long covid" aren't responsible for categorizing their disease, they are sick and just want to feel better. It's the medical community's responsibility to determine if that's because "long covid" is an actual disease, or if it's a set of disparate symptoms that many people have that were kicked off by covid, or something else entirely. Just because their "government services applications paperwork" (or whatever we call that stuff) says "long covid" that does not mean that later we should say they were defrauding the goverment if we find out they were actually suffering from a major lung cancer and it just so happened to coincide with some symptoms many other people were having due to everyone getting covid around the same time and as such their doctor(s) put "long covid" down as a probable cause. It's a logical fallacy that the OP made, and I pointed out that it is unlikely all 3000 are scammers. I am sure some percentage of those people are scammers, statistically.
    - howinteresting 4y ago
      > The onus is on proving that all these disparate symptoms were caused by covid. Says who? My prior is that all, or at least most, of the symptoms of long covid are caused by covid. Why is your prior better than mine?
      - mr_toad 4y ago
        Because you can’t prove a negative. May as well claim that the symptoms are Gods Will and demand proof to the contrary.
      - seneca 4y ago
        > Says who? My prior is that all, or at least most, of the symptoms of long covid are caused by covid. Why is your prior better than mine? It's called the burden of proof. The person(s) making a claim is the one obligated to provide proof of it.
        drewrv 4y ago
        How can I prove to you that I have a headache? At a certain point you just have to listen to patients and trust them. It’s really weird to get super skeptical of people’s claims only for a specific disease or a specific type of person.
        khazhoux 4y ago
        My skepticism is not whether they really have foot pain or are unmotivated at work. The question is whether it was caused by a mild COVID case half a year ago.
        howinteresting 4y ago
        If you're interested in winning a debate, a naive "burden of proof" analysis works. But if you're interested in aligning your beliefs with the truth, you should be using Bayesian reasoning. (Not to sound too much like Eliezer Y here.)
  - throwayyy479087 4y ago
    Here’s evidence： Harvard study linking preexisting mental illness to Long Covid claims: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/09/depression-anxiety-may-escalate-chances-of-long-covid-says-study/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/09/depression-an... Journal article: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-dubious-origins-of-long-covid-11616452583?st=ceevgyo76ear3zb&reflink=article_copyURL_share https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-dubious-origins-of-long-cov... Overlap with fibromyalgia, which is also untestable and mainly in depressed middle age white women: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34426540/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34426540/ It’s hokum.
    - ok_dad 4y ago
      Not evidence that proves 3000 people are scamming. If anything, that evidence might show that we're not totally sure long covid is a thing, or it's underlying issues being surfaced. I specifically am arguing against jumping to the "scammer" conclusion immediately and without any question. I totally forgot HN is full of medical doctors who know everything about covid and it's effects.
    - Madmallard 4y ago
      These types of cringeworthy responses are really common and it's really a detriment to society. Whether it be astroturfing or other means originally founded by pharmaceutical companies knowing they originally did not test drugs for mitochondrial toxicity prior to Phase 1 trials, the source remains to be seen. The fact is that people are by and large developing metabolic dysfunction earlier on, and things like antibiotics drastically accelerate the problem. Bactericidal antibiotics are widely known in research now to be seriously toxic to mitochondria and the damage they cause leads to chronic processes because mitochondria do not have effective repair mechanisms outside of copies. When they start reproducing mutated copies, the person does not get off scot-free anymore. Processed foods and air pollution and chemical exposures from foods and other things all additionally cause more dysregulation. This is all becoming way more widely known. Some percentage of people will just not bounce back after these insults. Respiratory viruses and bacterial infections induce a large amount of oxidative stress in the human body, largely caused by your own immune system. Normally, your body has redox mechanisms to balance this out so you are fine in the end (otherwise running would cause a lot of problems really quickly!). But combining our toxic environment, toxic antibiotics that most people take (and many women take bactericidal antibiotics for UTIs!), high processed food diets leading to excessive baseline OS, you potentiate the risk for the individuals own mitochondrial machinery to be severely damaged from a high OS insult. After that, you don't bounce back. You develop chronic fatigue and severe exercise intolerance, and have much more precarious relationships with other illnesses. This is what's happening. Depression other mental disorders are already strongly associated with metabolic dysregulation in research. Don't blame the victims. It's likely you'll become one yourself before you're very old. Everyone is getting sicker.
- HarryHirsch 4y ago
  Hard to take this at face value; I could easily see the vast majority of these claims being grift Given that it's exceptionally hard to get on the disability rolls in the US, it's likely that those 3000 claims actually have merit.
- petodo 4y ago
  > > "More than a year after contracting the coronavirus, 18% of Long COVID patients had still not returned to work." I wonder how fast would their long COVID disappear if their sick pay was cut immediately, miraclous cure! The reason why you don't see self employed people with "long COVID".
  - acdha 4y ago
    Are you a doctor? Have you worked with any of these patients? If not, what is your basis for such confidential dismissal of a problem actual medical professionals are taking seriously?
decremental 4y ago
[flagged]
- throwayyy479087 4y ago
  Correct. Harvard study：https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/09/depression-anxiety-may-escalate-chances-of-long-covid-says-study/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/09/depression-an... Journal article: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-dubious-origins-of-long-covid-11616452583 https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-dubious-origins-of-long-cov... Overlap with fibromyalgia, which is also untestable and mainly in depressed middle age white women: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34426540/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34426540/
  - Snacktivist 4y ago
    Sounds like you have all the answers. I suggest you contact the CDC to get their website updated. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-effects/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-effects/...
  - acdha 4y ago
    Your own link shows it’s not correct. The researchers identify it as a real problem, and while they linked existing distress with an increased chance of developing long COVID that doesn’t mean nobody else can develop it – that’s up to 40% over the baseline of people who lack those factors, not 0.
- maxerickson 4y ago
  Women being more effected than women is crazy!
- pfannkuchen 4y ago
  > as women are affected more by mass hysterias (see: transgenderism) In terms of direct participation or support? I believe the former leans heavily towards males (assigned at birth etc), so I assume you mean the latter. Wonder if you’ve seen numbers somewhere or just personal experience? Curious as I haven’t seen any numbers in either direction, and I would not have assumed a big difference there.
throwayyy479087 4y ago
Long Covid is likely not a real disease, and appears to be linked to other psychosomatic illnesses like fibromyalgia. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/09/depression-anxiety-may-escalate-chances-of-long-covid-says-study/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/09/depression-an...
- 000ooo000 4y ago
  That article doesn't say what your comment says.
  - ZoomerCretin 4y ago
    To flesh out your argument: “To the best of our knowledge, this is the first prospective study to show that a wide range of social and psychological factors are risk factors for long COVID and daily life impairment due to long COVID,” This statement could also be used to argue that people with social and psychological factors are more likely to be impaired by Long COVID symptoms, not that they are more likely to have it. "After analyzing the responses and comparing those who developed long COVID to those who did not, the researchers determined that distress before COVID-19 infection, including depression, anxiety, worry, perceived stress, and loneliness, was associated with a 32 percent to 46 percent increased risk of long COVID. These types of psychological distress were also associated with 15 percent to 51 percent greater risk of daily life impairment due to long COVID." This very clearly does not say that Long COVID is psychological.
- ysavir 4y ago
  I understand that you want to expose people to more information and view points they haven't considered, but speaking in absolute terms and posting the same links over and over again in multiple comments is not a means that will get people to warm up to your message. If you want to help people learn more, then speak in terms of growing understanding, yours and their, share links, and focus on looking for a collaborative effort to find good answers, whatever those answers might be. Show the same open mindedness you want others to show.
- duggable 4y ago
scavenger5 4y ago
If you look at this paper: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2799116 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle... People who got covid vs other viruses. When you follow up with them 3 months later, there is no difference in symptoms between the groups. In other words, long covid symptoms are no worse than any other respiratory virus. So is it covid causing the symptoms, or the pandemic? All signs point to the pandemic, and the response. Every other long covid study are observational, and are likely confounded. Strongly recommend looking deeper at these studies. Very few have control arms, like this study does.
- deepfriedchokes 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - dontknowwhyihn 4y ago
    “Long Covid” is just our euphemism for adverse reactions. The fact that you’re not even allowed to bring this up casts serious doubt on all studies into the phenomenon.
- mjevans 4y ago
  Maybe the severity of the symptoms is worse; or maybe people are getting medical care more than is common for 'common' colds. The smart parts of the response to the pandemic included: limiting risk / exposure, additional precautions while exposed, and a higher standard of care. Now that the Endemic phase is here we must continue to limit risk where realistic, take precautions (and vaccinations) seriously, and it really would be nice if the _right_ to healthcare were made law and reality.
- gotoeleven 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - viraptor 4y ago
    There's really not much information in just seeing that situation. When I drove for 2min between a supermarket and a clinic, I didn't bother taking it off for example. (Also a good idea not to touch it anyway) You'll need to actually have the context of why they have it on.
verisimi 4y ago
[flagged]
6177c40f 4y ago
I don't really get how people can be so quick to dismiss long covid as made up. Is it too much to just admit that you don't have enough evidence to decide whether it's real instead of trying to write claimants off as grifters or mentally ill? Further, it's odd that some people aren't willing to even entertain the possibility that it could be real, given that a number of examples of post-viral syndromes have been observed in other viruses. E.g. post-Ebola virus syndrome [1] and Epstein-Barr's role in the development of multiple sclerosis [2]. At the very least, this warrants taking claims of long COVID seriously, does it not? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-Ebola_virus_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-Ebola_virus_syndrome [2] https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2022/01/epstein-barr-virus-multiple-sclerosis.html https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2022/01/epstein-barr-...
- pengaru 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - hayst4ck 4y ago
    You are making a claim, probably similar to "I scraped my knee badly and it was fine, so how can someone scrape their knee in a similar way and be in agony?" You are making assumptions that pain is objective, not subjective. A knee physically scraped in the same way will have the same levels of pain. I don't see any reason to believe that. I could easily see the same injury on two different people resulting in different levels of pain. I could also see a kid who's parents pushed them off a bike in an act of abuse resulting in a knee scrape re-experiencing the emotional trauma of the abuse through the physical pain of the knee. I could also see an injury in the same spot over time turn into something debilitating. I don't deny that there are people who take advantages of bad sets of incentives, but there are also people who aren't taken seriously because people look at the incentives involved and say they must be faking it. I don't think it's just to punish the innocent along with the guilty.
    - pengaru 4y ago
      I'm making no such claim. I'm saying because there's a non-zero percentage of the population that has learned to milk playing the victim, the rest of the population tends to look at ambiguous self-reported ailments like long covid with suspicion. It's not for me to say if long covid is real or not, I'm just noting the social problem with this situation and why many people are so dismissive.
zoklet-enjoyer 4y ago
I work with an older guy who's been out of work for over a month now from COVID. I'm pretty worried about him long term
linuxftw 4y ago
[flagged]
djha-skin 4y ago
I have long covid. I used to bike to the train so I could get to work and back again at the end of the day for a total time of being on the bike per day of over an hour. There's a brutal hill to climb up to get to my house from the train and I did it every day. 1 month after getting the disease last February, I wasn't able to bike to work anymore. I simply couldn't get my air. I was able to bike immediately after getting over the disease, but over the course of the next month or so things got worse. I could barely get up the stairs. I went to my general practitioner last March and he give me a prescription for heartburn (which had also magically become a problem when it wasn't before) and a rescue inhaler, which helped. He told me to report back in 2 weeks if it was still a problem. It was. I reported a little later than 2 weeks; it was 6 weeks, but it doesn't matter. I live in Utah County, Utah. He told me to go up to Salt Lake, to the University of Utah hospital, 40 minutes north. They had a covid clinic up there. He got me an appointment to get up there in June. Apparently they had a backlog. When I saw the nurse practitioner in Salt Lake, she said I probably had asthma and to go to a pulmonary specialist. She gave me a referral. I was able to use that referral to get another appointment with the pulmonary specialist... in December. So I waited 6 months and then had an appointment in December with the pulmonologist. During that time when I would go to bed my lungs sounded like pop rocks. Snap, crackle, pop. Wheeze, wheeze, wheeze. My throat was constricted so much that you could hear a whistling sound when I breathed out and in. It was hard during the day, too. I would climb a flight of stairs and my coworkers would ask why I was out of breath and sweating like I had just run a mile. The time finally came to see the specialist. He appeared to be a venerable gentleman at the end of his career, with white hair and a polished demeanor. He gave me a new inhaler, which eventually helped, and an extension of the heartburn prescription. I had new chest x-rays done and he ran a bunch of tests on me. I walked the hall a few times timed. They took my blood pressure before and after. I had to breathe into a tube really hard several times in different ways (spirography). All the tests came back normal. No asthma. He said he's getting a lot of long covid patients where all the tests are coming back normal. When I told him I had stopped biking because of covid he was incredibly surprised. "Do you mean to tell me that you've stopped all physical activity?" Said he. I said, "Why do you think I've come here? My pulse is over 90 (100? Can't remember) just sitting here. Look at me; I'm all sweaty." Replied he, "But surely you are sweaty because you had to come up the stairs to get here." (The pulmonologist's office was on the third floor). "No", I said. "I took the elevator." And for all that I owe the hospital a hefty bill because it was a specialist. Well the pulmonologist recommended that I take pulmonary rehabilitation. Basically it's physical therapy. The first time I went they said I had to start walking 6 minutes four times a day. Then I had to start walking or biking 10 minutes three times a day. I'm up to 12 minutes three times a day now, sometimes back on my bike, and it feels pretty good. So far this is what has helped the most. I don't feel like I need the rescue inhaler anymore, I've stopped wheezing and pop rocking, and I notice less when I go up the stairs now. But understand me when I say that people who think that long covid isn't real are in a most enviable position. I can assure you, it's real and it's not fun. I remember biking yesterday and feeling so alive. Not being able to do that for so long has been really rough. You don't know what you miss until it's taken away from you. Edit: it's not depression, see my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35176860 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35176860
hayst4ck 4y ago
The general demeanor in this thread is something else, there are a lot of awfully strong opinions and confidence from a lot of people who are probably aren't frequent readers of their field's journals... I think what should shake everyone's biases a bit is a story about COVID and Ivermectin with one conclusion: Ivermectin is actually effective in improving covid outcomes, but only in areas with a high incidence of parasitic worms like India. Here, in my opinion, is one of the best science reads to come out of COVID: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ivermectin-much-more-than-you-wanted https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ivermectin-much-more-t...
8bitsrule 4y ago
US National Institute of Health on Long Covid: "Symptoms of COVID-19 can last months — or even longer — after infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Symptoms vary from person to person and can affect almost any part of the body." https://covid19.nih.gov/covid-19-topics/long-covid https://covid19.nih.gov/covid-19-topics/long-covid Statement by Mayo Clinic: "Research suggests that between one month and one year after having COVID-19, 1 in 5 people ages 18 to 64 has at least one medical condition that might be due to COVID-19...." https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/in-depth/coronavirus-long-term-effects/art-20490351?p=1 https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/i... Johns Hopkins: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/covid-long-haulers-long-term-effects-of-covid19 https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseas...
Slava_Propanei 4y ago
[dead]
thenerdhead 4y ago
Long Covid sucks. It has had a detrimental effect for sure. I was lucky to have it early at a young age and being physically healthy. I am now mostly recovered 2 years later. I could not imagine having it being older. https://jondouglas.dev/long-covid/ https://jondouglas.dev/long-covid/ The studies on the effectiveness of nattokinase, Bromelain + NAC, and nitric oxide are seriously worth considering if you suspect you have it. I wish I knew about those earlier. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36080170/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36080170/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7999995/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7999995/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9295384/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9295384/
- uslic001 4y ago
  Nattokinase had been a godsend for me.
Madmallard 4y ago
Long Covid is real. If you don't think it's real, you're either completely nontechnical in biology or just have been out of the loop and are regurgitating garbage you're spreading around that makes you feel better about not being sick or something. I don't know the reason, but it's harmful as fuck to society regardless. Whether it be astroturfing or other means originally founded by pharmaceutical companies knowing they originally did not test drugs for mitochondrial toxicity prior to Phase 1 trials, the source remains to be seen. It's also possible they just weren't aware of the problems before they became problems. Heterogeneous damage to cellular respiration does not generally become apparent until it's obvious for example in really old people. The fact is that people are by and large developing metabolic dysfunction earlier on, and things like antibiotics drastically accelerate the problem. Bactericidal antibiotics are widely known in research now to be seriously toxic to mitochondria and the damage they cause leads to chronic processes because mitochondria do not have effective repair mechanisms outside of copies. When they start reproducing mutated copies, the person does not get off scot-free anymore. Processed foods and air pollution and chemical exposures from foods and other things all additionally cause more dysregulation. This is all becoming way more widely known. Some percentage of people will just not bounce back after these insults. Respiratory viruses and bacterial infections induce a large amount of oxidative stress in the human body, largely caused by your own immune system. Normally, your body has redox mechanisms to balance this out so you are fine in the end (otherwise running would cause a lot of problems really quickly!). But combining our toxic environment, toxic antibiotics that most people take (and many women take bactericidal antibiotics for UTIs!), high processed food diets leading to excessive baseline OS, you potentiate the risk for the individuals own mitochondrial machinery to be severely damaged from a high OS insult. After that, you don't bounce back. You develop chronic fatigue and severe exercise intolerance, and have much more precarious relationships with other illnesses. This is what's happening. Depression other mental disorders are already strongly associated with metabolic dysregulation in research. Don't blame the victims. It's likely you'll become one yourself before you're very old. Everyone is getting sicker.
petodo 4y ago
[flagged]
uslic001 4y ago
I got a DVT and a peripheral neuropathy from the first two Pfizer COVID shots so I could not get any boosters. Then I got Covid first week of 2023. I had fatigue for two months but then started taking Nattokinase which has helped my fatigue tremendously. Now I have more good days than bad days.

64 points by deegles 4y ago

> "More than a year after contracting the coronavirus, 18% of Long COVID patients had still not returned to work." > Between 1 January 2020 and 31 March 2022, the New York State Insurers Fund analysed more than 3,000 workers' compensation claims for COVID-19. Hard to take this at face value; I could easily see the vast majority of these claims being grift.

khazhoux 4y ago
Agree. I remain skeptical of, e.g., the depression claims. Now, someone will jump in and explain that the virus can affect neural pathways, and (hand-waving) that can cause depression. Without hard evidence, which I have not seen, this is a tenous connection.
RC_ITR 4y ago
Whether it's grift or not, it's still keeping people out of the workforce.
ok_dad 4y ago
Zero evidence. Are you writing off a bunch of people's medical issues due to your medical degree, or knowledge of their specific cases? If not, your opinion is worth nothing.
- khazhoux 4y ago
  The onus is on proving that all these disparate symptoms were caused by covid. The evidence remains (as far as I’ve seen) circumstantial.
  - kevingadd 4y ago
    It's fascinating to me that we have widespread incidence of long-term health complications in people who caught a relatively new, not-deeply-understood virus, and the evidence being (as far as you've seen) circumstantial means that it must be made up, by default. Why exactly is it necessary to prove that these symptoms are COVID-related when that's the most natural conclusion? What is your alternative hypothesis that explains everything and is supported by better evidence? People with long COVID - even if you believe it's all psychosomatic, or caused by fibromyalgia, or whatever - have had a lot of trouble accessing treatment this whole time. Even if 90% of them were somehow making it up, I think it's awful that the remaining 10% of "real" cases had to deal with so many barriers to access care. All as a part of our societal effort to pretend the virus is over.
    - khazhoux 4y ago
      I‘m not part of any societal effort to pretend it’s over :-) Someone says they still have problems breathing 6 months after a moderate covid case? I’ll believe them by default. Someone says they feel demotivated at work 6 months after a mild case? I’ll be skeptical.
      - ok_dad 4y ago
        That's a fair assessment, IMO. I believe that only a small, small minority of humans are going to be out to scam or do fraud (personal belief, obviously) and so from that lens, I hate it when people try and paint a group of people with a broad brush simply because they might believe something that is not factually correct, but in reality it's the best solution for now. What I am arguing here, is that the 3000 people who have "long covid" aren't responsible for categorizing their disease, they are sick and just want to feel better. It's the medical community's responsibility to determine if that's because "long covid" is an actual disease, or if it's a set of disparate symptoms that many people have that were kicked off by covid, or something else entirely. Just because their "government services applications paperwork" (or whatever we call that stuff) says "long covid" that does not mean that later we should say they were defrauding the goverment if we find out they were actually suffering from a major lung cancer and it just so happened to coincide with some symptoms many other people were having due to everyone getting covid around the same time and as such their doctor(s) put "long covid" down as a probable cause. It's a logical fallacy that the OP made, and I pointed out that it is unlikely all 3000 are scammers. I am sure some percentage of those people are scammers, statistically.
  - howinteresting 4y ago
    > The onus is on proving that all these disparate symptoms were caused by covid. Says who? My prior is that all, or at least most, of the symptoms of long covid are caused by covid. Why is your prior better than mine?
    - mr_toad 4y ago
      Because you can’t prove a negative. May as well claim that the symptoms are Gods Will and demand proof to the contrary.
    - seneca 4y ago
      > Says who? My prior is that all, or at least most, of the symptoms of long covid are caused by covid. Why is your prior better than mine? It's called the burden of proof. The person(s) making a claim is the one obligated to provide proof of it.
      - drewrv 4y ago
        How can I prove to you that I have a headache? At a certain point you just have to listen to patients and trust them. It’s really weird to get super skeptical of people’s claims only for a specific disease or a specific type of person.
        khazhoux 4y ago
        My skepticism is not whether they really have foot pain or are unmotivated at work. The question is whether it was caused by a mild COVID case half a year ago.
      - howinteresting 4y ago
        If you're interested in winning a debate, a naive "burden of proof" analysis works. But if you're interested in aligning your beliefs with the truth, you should be using Bayesian reasoning. (Not to sound too much like Eliezer Y here.)
- throwayyy479087 4y ago
  Here’s evidence： Harvard study linking preexisting mental illness to Long Covid claims: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/09/depression-anxiety-may-escalate-chances-of-long-covid-says-study/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/09/depression-an... Journal article: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-dubious-origins-of-long-covid-11616452583?st=ceevgyo76ear3zb&reflink=article_copyURL_share https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-dubious-origins-of-long-cov... Overlap with fibromyalgia, which is also untestable and mainly in depressed middle age white women: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34426540/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34426540/ It’s hokum.
  - ok_dad 4y ago
    Not evidence that proves 3000 people are scamming. If anything, that evidence might show that we're not totally sure long covid is a thing, or it's underlying issues being surfaced. I specifically am arguing against jumping to the "scammer" conclusion immediately and without any question. I totally forgot HN is full of medical doctors who know everything about covid and it's effects.
  - Madmallard 4y ago
    These types of cringeworthy responses are really common and it's really a detriment to society. Whether it be astroturfing or other means originally founded by pharmaceutical companies knowing they originally did not test drugs for mitochondrial toxicity prior to Phase 1 trials, the source remains to be seen. The fact is that people are by and large developing metabolic dysfunction earlier on, and things like antibiotics drastically accelerate the problem. Bactericidal antibiotics are widely known in research now to be seriously toxic to mitochondria and the damage they cause leads to chronic processes because mitochondria do not have effective repair mechanisms outside of copies. When they start reproducing mutated copies, the person does not get off scot-free anymore. Processed foods and air pollution and chemical exposures from foods and other things all additionally cause more dysregulation. This is all becoming way more widely known. Some percentage of people will just not bounce back after these insults. Respiratory viruses and bacterial infections induce a large amount of oxidative stress in the human body, largely caused by your own immune system. Normally, your body has redox mechanisms to balance this out so you are fine in the end (otherwise running would cause a lot of problems really quickly!). But combining our toxic environment, toxic antibiotics that most people take (and many women take bactericidal antibiotics for UTIs!), high processed food diets leading to excessive baseline OS, you potentiate the risk for the individuals own mitochondrial machinery to be severely damaged from a high OS insult. After that, you don't bounce back. You develop chronic fatigue and severe exercise intolerance, and have much more precarious relationships with other illnesses. This is what's happening. Depression other mental disorders are already strongly associated with metabolic dysregulation in research. Don't blame the victims. It's likely you'll become one yourself before you're very old. Everyone is getting sicker.
HarryHirsch 4y ago
Hard to take this at face value; I could easily see the vast majority of these claims being grift Given that it's exceptionally hard to get on the disability rolls in the US, it's likely that those 3000 claims actually have merit.
petodo 4y ago
> > "More than a year after contracting the coronavirus, 18% of Long COVID patients had still not returned to work." I wonder how fast would their long COVID disappear if their sick pay was cut immediately, miraclous cure! The reason why you don't see self employed people with "long COVID".
- acdha 4y ago
  Are you a doctor? Have you worked with any of these patients? If not, what is your basis for such confidential dismissal of a problem actual medical professionals are taking seriously?

decremental 4y ago

[flagged]

throwayyy479087 4y ago
Correct. Harvard study：https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/09/depression-anxiety-may-escalate-chances-of-long-covid-says-study/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/09/depression-an... Journal article: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-dubious-origins-of-long-covid-11616452583 https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-dubious-origins-of-long-cov... Overlap with fibromyalgia, which is also untestable and mainly in depressed middle age white women: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34426540/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34426540/
- Snacktivist 4y ago
  Sounds like you have all the answers. I suggest you contact the CDC to get their website updated. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-effects/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-effects/...
- acdha 4y ago
  Your own link shows it’s not correct. The researchers identify it as a real problem, and while they linked existing distress with an increased chance of developing long COVID that doesn’t mean nobody else can develop it – that’s up to 40% over the baseline of people who lack those factors, not 0.
maxerickson 4y ago
Women being more effected than women is crazy!
pfannkuchen 4y ago
> as women are affected more by mass hysterias (see: transgenderism) In terms of direct participation or support? I believe the former leans heavily towards males (assigned at birth etc), so I assume you mean the latter. Wonder if you’ve seen numbers somewhere or just personal experience? Curious as I haven’t seen any numbers in either direction, and I would not have assumed a big difference there.

throwayyy479087 4y ago

Long Covid is likely not a real disease, and appears to be linked to other psychosomatic illnesses like fibromyalgia. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/09/depression-anxiety-may-escalate-chances-of-long-covid-says-study/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/09/depression-an...

000ooo000 4y ago
That article doesn't say what your comment says.
- ZoomerCretin 4y ago
  To flesh out your argument: “To the best of our knowledge, this is the first prospective study to show that a wide range of social and psychological factors are risk factors for long COVID and daily life impairment due to long COVID,” This statement could also be used to argue that people with social and psychological factors are more likely to be impaired by Long COVID symptoms, not that they are more likely to have it. "After analyzing the responses and comparing those who developed long COVID to those who did not, the researchers determined that distress before COVID-19 infection, including depression, anxiety, worry, perceived stress, and loneliness, was associated with a 32 percent to 46 percent increased risk of long COVID. These types of psychological distress were also associated with 15 percent to 51 percent greater risk of daily life impairment due to long COVID." This very clearly does not say that Long COVID is psychological.
ysavir 4y ago
I understand that you want to expose people to more information and view points they haven't considered, but speaking in absolute terms and posting the same links over and over again in multiple comments is not a means that will get people to warm up to your message. If you want to help people learn more, then speak in terms of growing understanding, yours and their, share links, and focus on looking for a collaborative effort to find good answers, whatever those answers might be. Show the same open mindedness you want others to show.
duggable 4y ago

scavenger5 4y ago

If you look at this paper: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2799116 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle... People who got covid vs other viruses. When you follow up with them 3 months later, there is no difference in symptoms between the groups. In other words, long covid symptoms are no worse than any other respiratory virus. So is it covid causing the symptoms, or the pandemic? All signs point to the pandemic, and the response. Every other long covid study are observational, and are likely confounded. Strongly recommend looking deeper at these studies. Very few have control arms, like this study does.

deepfriedchokes 4y ago
[flagged]
- dontknowwhyihn 4y ago
  “Long Covid” is just our euphemism for adverse reactions. The fact that you’re not even allowed to bring this up casts serious doubt on all studies into the phenomenon.
mjevans 4y ago
Maybe the severity of the symptoms is worse; or maybe people are getting medical care more than is common for 'common' colds. The smart parts of the response to the pandemic included: limiting risk / exposure, additional precautions while exposed, and a higher standard of care. Now that the Endemic phase is here we must continue to limit risk where realistic, take precautions (and vaccinations) seriously, and it really would be nice if the _right_ to healthcare were made law and reality.
gotoeleven 4y ago
[flagged]
- viraptor 4y ago
  There's really not much information in just seeing that situation. When I drove for 2min between a supermarket and a clinic, I didn't bother taking it off for example. (Also a good idea not to touch it anyway) You'll need to actually have the context of why they have it on.

verisimi 4y ago

[flagged]

6177c40f 4y ago

I don't really get how people can be so quick to dismiss long covid as made up. Is it too much to just admit that you don't have enough evidence to decide whether it's real instead of trying to write claimants off as grifters or mentally ill? Further, it's odd that some people aren't willing to even entertain the possibility that it could be real, given that a number of examples of post-viral syndromes have been observed in other viruses. E.g. post-Ebola virus syndrome [1] and Epstein-Barr's role in the development of multiple sclerosis [2]. At the very least, this warrants taking claims of long COVID seriously, does it not? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-Ebola_virus_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-Ebola_virus_syndrome [2] https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2022/01/epstein-barr-virus-multiple-sclerosis.html https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2022/01/epstein-barr-...

pengaru 4y ago
[flagged]
- hayst4ck 4y ago
  You are making a claim, probably similar to "I scraped my knee badly and it was fine, so how can someone scrape their knee in a similar way and be in agony?" You are making assumptions that pain is objective, not subjective. A knee physically scraped in the same way will have the same levels of pain. I don't see any reason to believe that. I could easily see the same injury on two different people resulting in different levels of pain. I could also see a kid who's parents pushed them off a bike in an act of abuse resulting in a knee scrape re-experiencing the emotional trauma of the abuse through the physical pain of the knee. I could also see an injury in the same spot over time turn into something debilitating. I don't deny that there are people who take advantages of bad sets of incentives, but there are also people who aren't taken seriously because people look at the incentives involved and say they must be faking it. I don't think it's just to punish the innocent along with the guilty.
  - pengaru 4y ago
    I'm making no such claim. I'm saying because there's a non-zero percentage of the population that has learned to milk playing the victim, the rest of the population tends to look at ambiguous self-reported ailments like long covid with suspicion. It's not for me to say if long covid is real or not, I'm just noting the social problem with this situation and why many people are so dismissive.

zoklet-enjoyer 4y ago

I work with an older guy who's been out of work for over a month now from COVID. I'm pretty worried about him long term

linuxftw 4y ago

[flagged]

djha-skin 4y ago

I have long covid. I used to bike to the train so I could get to work and back again at the end of the day for a total time of being on the bike per day of over an hour. There's a brutal hill to climb up to get to my house from the train and I did it every day. 1 month after getting the disease last February, I wasn't able to bike to work anymore. I simply couldn't get my air. I was able to bike immediately after getting over the disease, but over the course of the next month or so things got worse. I could barely get up the stairs. I went to my general practitioner last March and he give me a prescription for heartburn (which had also magically become a problem when it wasn't before) and a rescue inhaler, which helped. He told me to report back in 2 weeks if it was still a problem. It was. I reported a little later than 2 weeks; it was 6 weeks, but it doesn't matter. I live in Utah County, Utah. He told me to go up to Salt Lake, to the University of Utah hospital, 40 minutes north. They had a covid clinic up there. He got me an appointment to get up there in June. Apparently they had a backlog. When I saw the nurse practitioner in Salt Lake, she said I probably had asthma and to go to a pulmonary specialist. She gave me a referral. I was able to use that referral to get another appointment with the pulmonary specialist... in December. So I waited 6 months and then had an appointment in December with the pulmonologist. During that time when I would go to bed my lungs sounded like pop rocks. Snap, crackle, pop. Wheeze, wheeze, wheeze. My throat was constricted so much that you could hear a whistling sound when I breathed out and in. It was hard during the day, too. I would climb a flight of stairs and my coworkers would ask why I was out of breath and sweating like I had just run a mile. The time finally came to see the specialist. He appeared to be a venerable gentleman at the end of his career, with white hair and a polished demeanor. He gave me a new inhaler, which eventually helped, and an extension of the heartburn prescription. I had new chest x-rays done and he ran a bunch of tests on me. I walked the hall a few times timed. They took my blood pressure before and after. I had to breathe into a tube really hard several times in different ways (spirography). All the tests came back normal. No asthma. He said he's getting a lot of long covid patients where all the tests are coming back normal. When I told him I had stopped biking because of covid he was incredibly surprised. "Do you mean to tell me that you've stopped all physical activity?" Said he. I said, "Why do you think I've come here? My pulse is over 90 (100? Can't remember) just sitting here. Look at me; I'm all sweaty." Replied he, "But surely you are sweaty because you had to come up the stairs to get here." (The pulmonologist's office was on the third floor). "No", I said. "I took the elevator." And for all that I owe the hospital a hefty bill because it was a specialist. Well the pulmonologist recommended that I take pulmonary rehabilitation. Basically it's physical therapy. The first time I went they said I had to start walking 6 minutes four times a day. Then I had to start walking or biking 10 minutes three times a day. I'm up to 12 minutes three times a day now, sometimes back on my bike, and it feels pretty good. So far this is what has helped the most. I don't feel like I need the rescue inhaler anymore, I've stopped wheezing and pop rocking, and I notice less when I go up the stairs now. But understand me when I say that people who think that long covid isn't real are in a most enviable position. I can assure you, it's real and it's not fun. I remember biking yesterday and feeling so alive. Not being able to do that for so long has been really rough. You don't know what you miss until it's taken away from you. Edit: it's not depression, see my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35176860 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35176860

hayst4ck 4y ago

The general demeanor in this thread is something else, there are a lot of awfully strong opinions and confidence from a lot of people who are probably aren't frequent readers of their field's journals... I think what should shake everyone's biases a bit is a story about COVID and Ivermectin with one conclusion: Ivermectin is actually effective in improving covid outcomes, but only in areas with a high incidence of parasitic worms like India. Here, in my opinion, is one of the best science reads to come out of COVID: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ivermectin-much-more-than-you-wanted https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ivermectin-much-more-t...

8bitsrule 4y ago

US National Institute of Health on Long Covid: "Symptoms of COVID-19 can last months — or even longer — after infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Symptoms vary from person to person and can affect almost any part of the body." https://covid19.nih.gov/covid-19-topics/long-covid https://covid19.nih.gov/covid-19-topics/long-covid Statement by Mayo Clinic: "Research suggests that between one month and one year after having COVID-19, 1 in 5 people ages 18 to 64 has at least one medical condition that might be due to COVID-19...." https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/in-depth/coronavirus-long-term-effects/art-20490351?p=1 https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/i... Johns Hopkins: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/covid-long-haulers-long-term-effects-of-covid19 https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseas...

Slava_Propanei 4y ago

[dead]

thenerdhead 4y ago

Long Covid sucks. It has had a detrimental effect for sure. I was lucky to have it early at a young age and being physically healthy. I am now mostly recovered 2 years later. I could not imagine having it being older. https://jondouglas.dev/long-covid/ https://jondouglas.dev/long-covid/ The studies on the effectiveness of nattokinase, Bromelain + NAC, and nitric oxide are seriously worth considering if you suspect you have it. I wish I knew about those earlier. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36080170/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36080170/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7999995/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7999995/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9295384/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9295384/

uslic001 4y ago
Nattokinase had been a godsend for me.

Madmallard 4y ago

Long Covid is real. If you don't think it's real, you're either completely nontechnical in biology or just have been out of the loop and are regurgitating garbage you're spreading around that makes you feel better about not being sick or something. I don't know the reason, but it's harmful as fuck to society regardless. Whether it be astroturfing or other means originally founded by pharmaceutical companies knowing they originally did not test drugs for mitochondrial toxicity prior to Phase 1 trials, the source remains to be seen. It's also possible they just weren't aware of the problems before they became problems. Heterogeneous damage to cellular respiration does not generally become apparent until it's obvious for example in really old people. The fact is that people are by and large developing metabolic dysfunction earlier on, and things like antibiotics drastically accelerate the problem. Bactericidal antibiotics are widely known in research now to be seriously toxic to mitochondria and the damage they cause leads to chronic processes because mitochondria do not have effective repair mechanisms outside of copies. When they start reproducing mutated copies, the person does not get off scot-free anymore. Processed foods and air pollution and chemical exposures from foods and other things all additionally cause more dysregulation. This is all becoming way more widely known. Some percentage of people will just not bounce back after these insults. Respiratory viruses and bacterial infections induce a large amount of oxidative stress in the human body, largely caused by your own immune system. Normally, your body has redox mechanisms to balance this out so you are fine in the end (otherwise running would cause a lot of problems really quickly!). But combining our toxic environment, toxic antibiotics that most people take (and many women take bactericidal antibiotics for UTIs!), high processed food diets leading to excessive baseline OS, you potentiate the risk for the individuals own mitochondrial machinery to be severely damaged from a high OS insult. After that, you don't bounce back. You develop chronic fatigue and severe exercise intolerance, and have much more precarious relationships with other illnesses. This is what's happening. Depression other mental disorders are already strongly associated with metabolic dysregulation in research. Don't blame the victims. It's likely you'll become one yourself before you're very old. Everyone is getting sicker.

petodo 4y ago

[flagged]

uslic001 4y ago

I got a DVT and a peripheral neuropathy from the first two Pfizer COVID shots so I could not get any boosters. Then I got Covid first week of 2023. I had fatigue for two months but then started taking Nattokinase which has helped my fatigue tremendously. Now I have more good days than bad days.