5 ms·

I suggest you read the article—it may not be what you think from the headline. It’s not that NIH didn’t find a cause of “long COVID”…it’s not that they didn’t

I suggest you read the article—it may not be what you think from the headline. It’s not that NIH didn’t find a cause of “long COVID”…it’s not that they didn’t find any treatments for long COVID if such a thing truly exists…the NIH just did a whole lot of nothing. The National Institutes of Health hasn’t signed up a single patient to test any potential treatments — despite a clear mandate from Congress to study them. And the few trials it is planning have already drawn a firestorm of criticism, especially one intervention that experts and advocates say may actually make some patients’ long Covid symptoms worse. Instead, the NIH spent the majority of its money on broader, observational research that won’t directly bring relief to patients. But it still hasn’t published any findings from the patients who joined that study, almost two years after it started. A really spectacularly expensive whole lot of nothing.

boringg 3y ago
Sounds like they are a consulting group.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Retric 3y ago
Oddly enough that complaint doesn’t show the money was wasted, yet. Some studies really do take longer than 2 years and wait to publish data. As much as people complain about CEO’s focusing on the next quarter’s profits they still seem to want quick results. That said, most of the money was probably wasted.
roenxi 3y ago
Lets look at both sides of the coin here - this is research, it isn't meant to be quick. Throwing lots of money into research is about letting lots of people try to tackle a problem to find the 1 person in the ignorant, seething mass of average humans who happens to know how. It is expected that most money on research will be wasted funding people who, in hindsight, had no idea and were doing something that was in fore- and hind- sight obviously not going to work [0]. Although, that said, I do want to stand up for the anti-government argument here. The NIH isn't going to be as effective as a private market at identifying who is effective. Everyone is affected by COVID, it isn't like they need to force people with money to take an interest in what is happening here. Ironically, although the NIH is effectively throwing people at a problem here to play the odds, we'd probably find that a private organisation is much better at it by similar logic. I'd keep an eye on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation myself, Gates seemed to be quite busy through COVID. Similar efforts by other wealthy people are also likely to be happening. [0] Vulcanization is a fun example. Both in fore- and hind- sight the experiment didn't work. Dude just happened to be clumsy.
- anigbrowl 3y ago
  The objection isn't that they're trying things that won't work, it's that they're not trying things. An example would be pointing out that other studies which obtained funding almost 2 years years later than the NIH have already recruited a panel of patients. I'm all for being deliberate and getting things right, but if your procedures are so elaborate that you're not getting anything done, maybe they're flawed.
  - darkwizard42 3y ago
    This is what I would call "the Google special" - infinite process, barely incremental progress, languishing public results
- whakim 3y ago
  Why is the NIH going to be less effective than the private market at allocating research funding? Funding scientific research is a great example of a problem markets don't solve well for the exact reasons you describe. Most research doesn't lead to tangible progress (or financial reward) not because the researchers are all idiots, but because you have to try a bunch of things and a lot of them won't work, especially with poorly understood novel phenomena. Markets will instead allocate funding to the least-adventurous surest bets. That argument aside, when you allow wealthy people to dictate the direction of scientific research, you're essentially subsidizing their individual research preferences using public money (the wealthy get to take a tax deduction for contributions to their foundations).
  - darkwizard42 3y ago
    Because the payoff isn't in the result, it is in the initial grant...you get paid first, why does the result matter. Private capital works hard on this to gain a return. They spend first, then are under pressure to make a return. In government funded research, it often is the opposite. You get paid first...then have to deliver something (even barely trying and ending in failure) and you can then get paid again the next time grant money is available. Most research doesn't result in incremental progress as you pointed out, yet pharma companies still spend a TON of research. They live and breathe by getting to the next "big" drug to make them money and make up for all the failures. Basically, while the Gates foundation isn't the example I was thinking of, the dangling of a big payoff from the government did spur a LOT of research for COVID (see vaccine and treatment methods for COVID). Private enterprises took some breakthrough concepts (mRNA vaccines) and did a ton of ground work to test and make them viable for humans. I do strongly agree with your last point, public funded research should be directed at areas with no scalable return since private venture won't go into those areas (but having wealthy non-profits like the Gates foundation working on this is nice!)
antisthenes 3y ago
> A really spectacularly expensive whole lot of nothing. Wait until you find out about the DOD. At least the NIH salaries aren't going to warmongers & building weapons.
stuaxo 3y ago
That sounds like useful research that future projects without the budget can use.
lamontcg 3y ago
> if such a thing truly exists… It exists. Sounds like NIH got hijacked by a bunch of people who believed otherwise and required proof of pathobiology first.
- redeeman 3y ago
  [flagged]
- bheadmaster 3y ago
  I am always surprised by the amount of people on HN who just put out statements like "it exists" without any explanation, as if it informs anyone of anything else but the implicit "[I am convinced that] it exists". Like, why? Can you share any more information? Some reasons on why you're convinced of that statement? Or do you consider yourself so important that you expect your opinions to be taken as real arguments, as facts, as something self-evident?
  - smrtinsert 3y ago
    Maybe because it takes the bare minimum of effort to find information on it. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-effects/index.html?s_cid=11840:long%20covid:sem.ga:p:RG:GM:gen:PTN:FY23 https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-effects/...
    - bheadmaster 3y ago
      A website written by a US government agency doesn't convince me that there's a disease out there which has exactly the same symptoms as being locked inside the house for months, and whose only method of detection is through those symptoms.
  - bsder 3y ago
    Maybe because everybody who has relatives over 50 knows somebody with Long Covid--probably multiple people. What I don't believe is that this kind of syndrome is specific to Covid, I suspect it holds for every serious virus you get infected with. The only difference this time is that the medical community is watching. The fact that Epstein-Barr is causative with MS and HPV is causative with cervical cancer shows that the damage that even fairly mild virii do persists for a very long time. Any claim that a virus doesn't cause persistent damage simply means you haven't looked very hard.

boringg 3y ago

Sounds like they are a consulting group.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Retric 3y ago

Oddly enough that complaint doesn’t show the money was wasted, yet. Some studies really do take longer than 2 years and wait to publish data. As much as people complain about CEO’s focusing on the next quarter’s profits they still seem to want quick results. That said, most of the money was probably wasted.

roenxi 3y ago

Lets look at both sides of the coin here - this is research, it isn't meant to be quick. Throwing lots of money into research is about letting lots of people try to tackle a problem to find the 1 person in the ignorant, seething mass of average humans who happens to know how. It is expected that most money on research will be wasted funding people who, in hindsight, had no idea and were doing something that was in fore- and hind- sight obviously not going to work [0]. Although, that said, I do want to stand up for the anti-government argument here. The NIH isn't going to be as effective as a private market at identifying who is effective. Everyone is affected by COVID, it isn't like they need to force people with money to take an interest in what is happening here. Ironically, although the NIH is effectively throwing people at a problem here to play the odds, we'd probably find that a private organisation is much better at it by similar logic. I'd keep an eye on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation myself, Gates seemed to be quite busy through COVID. Similar efforts by other wealthy people are also likely to be happening. [0] Vulcanization is a fun example. Both in fore- and hind- sight the experiment didn't work. Dude just happened to be clumsy.

anigbrowl 3y ago
The objection isn't that they're trying things that won't work, it's that they're not trying things. An example would be pointing out that other studies which obtained funding almost 2 years years later than the NIH have already recruited a panel of patients. I'm all for being deliberate and getting things right, but if your procedures are so elaborate that you're not getting anything done, maybe they're flawed.
- darkwizard42 3y ago
  This is what I would call "the Google special" - infinite process, barely incremental progress, languishing public results
whakim 3y ago
Why is the NIH going to be less effective than the private market at allocating research funding? Funding scientific research is a great example of a problem markets don't solve well for the exact reasons you describe. Most research doesn't lead to tangible progress (or financial reward) not because the researchers are all idiots, but because you have to try a bunch of things and a lot of them won't work, especially with poorly understood novel phenomena. Markets will instead allocate funding to the least-adventurous surest bets. That argument aside, when you allow wealthy people to dictate the direction of scientific research, you're essentially subsidizing their individual research preferences using public money (the wealthy get to take a tax deduction for contributions to their foundations).
- darkwizard42 3y ago
  Because the payoff isn't in the result, it is in the initial grant...you get paid first, why does the result matter. Private capital works hard on this to gain a return. They spend first, then are under pressure to make a return. In government funded research, it often is the opposite. You get paid first...then have to deliver something (even barely trying and ending in failure) and you can then get paid again the next time grant money is available. Most research doesn't result in incremental progress as you pointed out, yet pharma companies still spend a TON of research. They live and breathe by getting to the next "big" drug to make them money and make up for all the failures. Basically, while the Gates foundation isn't the example I was thinking of, the dangling of a big payoff from the government did spur a LOT of research for COVID (see vaccine and treatment methods for COVID). Private enterprises took some breakthrough concepts (mRNA vaccines) and did a ton of ground work to test and make them viable for humans. I do strongly agree with your last point, public funded research should be directed at areas with no scalable return since private venture won't go into those areas (but having wealthy non-profits like the Gates foundation working on this is nice!)

antisthenes 3y ago

> A really spectacularly expensive whole lot of nothing. Wait until you find out about the DOD. At least the NIH salaries aren't going to warmongers & building weapons.

stuaxo 3y ago

That sounds like useful research that future projects without the budget can use.

lamontcg 3y ago

> if such a thing truly exists… It exists. Sounds like NIH got hijacked by a bunch of people who believed otherwise and required proof of pathobiology first.

redeeman 3y ago
[flagged]
bheadmaster 3y ago
I am always surprised by the amount of people on HN who just put out statements like "it exists" without any explanation, as if it informs anyone of anything else but the implicit "[I am convinced that] it exists". Like, why? Can you share any more information? Some reasons on why you're convinced of that statement? Or do you consider yourself so important that you expect your opinions to be taken as real arguments, as facts, as something self-evident?
- smrtinsert 3y ago
  Maybe because it takes the bare minimum of effort to find information on it. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-effects/index.html?s_cid=11840:long%20covid:sem.ga:p:RG:GM:gen:PTN:FY23 https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-effects/...
  - bheadmaster 3y ago
    A website written by a US government agency doesn't convince me that there's a disease out there which has exactly the same symptoms as being locked inside the house for months, and whose only method of detection is through those symptoms.
- bsder 3y ago
  Maybe because everybody who has relatives over 50 knows somebody with Long Covid--probably multiple people. What I don't believe is that this kind of syndrome is specific to Covid, I suspect it holds for every serious virus you get infected with. The only difference this time is that the medical community is watching. The fact that Epstein-Barr is causative with MS and HPV is causative with cervical cancer shows that the damage that even fairly mild virii do persists for a very long time. Any claim that a virus doesn't cause persistent damage simply means you haven't looked very hard.