6 ms·

The paper claims that 1/5 of people experience Long COVID after an infection. Given that approximately everyone has caught COVID by now, this does not track wit

The paper claims that 1/5 of people experience Long COVID after an infection. Given that approximately everyone has caught COVID by now, this does not track with how rarely I've heard of people with it. Wikipedia lists much lower numbers on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_COVID https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_COVID (6–7% in adults, ~1% in children, less after vaccination.) and seems to use a more liberal definition than this paper, as it mentions "Most people with symptoms at 4 weeks recover by 12 weeks" (while the paper only considers it "long COIVD" if symptoms last past 3 months). I've found studies (peer reviewed, as far as I can tell) claiming anything from well under 10% to well over 30%. What's going on here?

victorbjorklund 1y ago
Could it be that you can have different severity of long covid? Someone with very severe symptoms will notice it but someone with small symptoms might not realise it (and instead think they are just less fit)
Thorrez 1y ago
>after an acute SARS-CoV-2 infection. Maybe not all infections are considered "acute".
- DrewADesign 1y ago
  Acute, in this context, just means the infection had a finite (and usually relativity short) duration. The opposite is a chronic condition, which is what “long covid” would be in this case.
cheschire 1y ago
A lot of symptoms of long covid mirror the symptoms of unhealthy living, which may make it so people either dismiss their own symptoms and don't seek diagnosis, or their complaints are dismissed by others for needing to simply improve externalities.
- MontyCarloHall 1y ago
  Couldn’t it be the other way round, that changes in health caused by other external factors erroneously get blamed on COVID? For instance, a disproportionate amount of long COVID cases are reported by women between the ages of 40 and 60, the exact age range when most women experience menopause [0]. Menopause can cause brain fog, fatigue, and other symptoms that mirror those of long COVID. Since pretty much everyone has had COVID, it’s a basic statistical certainty that many women caught COVID exactly when their menopausal symptoms started (whose onset can be extremely sudden), and falsely causally associate the two. The exact same conflation likely happens in children, who also go through several profound developmental shifts. [0] https://telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/12/28/long-covid-may-actually-onset-menopause-women-say-experts/ https://telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/12/28/long-covid-may-actua...
  - soks86 1y ago
    Ah yes, you trust https://www.newsonhealth.co.uk/ https://www.newsonhealth.co.uk/ over research from Harvard. One, maybe two non-research docs or... a team of research docs.
    - MontyCarloHall 1y ago
      Fine, here's a source where both the second and corresponding authors are from Harvard that says the same thing [0]. That said, you don't need to be from a prestigious institution to observe the basic statistic that long COVID is most frequently reported in women ages 40-60. [0] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2829454 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...
  - jancsika 1y ago
    > Couldn’t it be the other way round, that changes in health caused by other external factors erroneously get blamed on COVID? It is possible, but not to the degree that all long Covid cases are being confused with external factors. > Menopause can cause brain fog Additionally, long Covid can cause brain fog. This was shown in brain scans from a popular HN post about a research paper just yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45539845 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45539845 Those patients were 20-59 and had "no previous history of neuropsychiatric disorders."
Ozzie_osman 1y ago
The paper says "One in five children." I wouldn't be surprised at all. Children are very dynamic, changing often as they grow and go through different developmental stages (which may include periods where they seem more tired or more cranky, etc) . They also often lack the language and agency to explain what's going on with their bodies. I don't see how you'd know the exact number without a solid diagnostic check.
tiahura 1y ago
I'm an ambulance chaser. I look at medical records all day. I've never seen anyone complaining of long covid.
- swed420 1y ago
  Most people don't even know to look for it, including doctors. Some cardiac doctors are finally beginning to take the research more seriously, however. It's slow going for everyone involved.
- marliechiller 1y ago
  Im not sure if this is a comment generated by a bot, a troll or something else to try and generate disinformation or something. I've seen a few comments on this thread which seem out of line from the usual sort of good natured discourse seen on HN. Not sure if its this particular topic or a sign of the times. Anyway, having had long covid myself for over 15 months, there are many, many people suffering with it, we are just discovering the tip of the iceberg
rr808 1y ago
I have a 87 year old uncle who says he has long covid because he gets tired and needs a nap in the afternoon. I'm half the age and felt the same even before 2020.
Llamamoe 1y ago
It takes very severe disability for it not to be brushed off as depression, anxiety, burnout, or blamed on lifestyle. Additionally, a lot of those numbers are based on earlier strains of COVID, which were much more severe. I suspect the 1/5 figure is largely true for "has some degree of cardiovascular damage and worsened general health after COVID", but the number of people actually disabled by the condition is much lower. That said, any loss of ability is a sad thing, and I am incredibly disappointed that we did not introduce any shared indoor space air quality legislation post-pandemic.
- notmyjob 1y ago
  And the lipid nanoparticle based Covid prevention shots caused myocarditis in some younger males, so earlier incidence of cardiovascular complications vs. the present (when most people especially younger healthy males are choosing not to take updated boosters) would correlate with that as well.
  - clanky 1y ago
    The one Thai prospective study that I saw on this subject (the only one I ever found which measured biomarkers of heart damage like troponin before and after injection, which is utterly shameful), estimated a rate of heart damage in adolescent males in the range of 1-3%. So even that would be nowhere near enough to reach the 1/5 number.
    - cjbgkagh 1y ago
      I got pericarditis bad enough that I thought it was going to kill me but not bad enough to show up in any test. Thankfully the cardiologist accepted my description of what I felt and prescribed me colchicine which worked. I guess it would be called subclinical pericarditis and it would be good to have some stats on how often that happens.
    - notmyjob 1y ago
      I suspect many people commit the grave sin of mixing data sources to derive percentages, which seems almost impossible not to do in this case. I also strongly suspect that rates of infection (the denominator in question) were inflated to some extent during the pandemic as insurers and hmo were incentivized to detect covid even when it may not have been the primary reason for presenting. There were also disincentives or at least a lack of incentive to detect teratogenic effects of the lipid nanoparticle based preventative, and unfortunately likely personal biases as the preventative was highly politicized. But I’m not thinking about it much deeper than that, so you may be right.
clanky 1y ago
The numbers in the range of 1/5 usually include in the definition things like "a cough that lasts six weeks after the acute phase of infection and then goes away," which is not what most people think of when they hear the term Long COVID (and is not even unique to SARS-CoV-2). For a variety of reasons, hyping the threat of infection has been a pretty widespread practice among the medical and scientific community since COVID began. There's no way on earth 1 out of 5 kids are still experiencing symptoms 3 months out.
djtango 1y ago
After covid I suffered from intermittent brain fog for years and also felt like my heart was maybe struggling more than usual when I was training at the gym. Never enough to warrant going to a doctor unless I was being super paranoid (and spend a long time convincing them I wasn't paranoid) but just enough to always wonder if there was something more to the story.
- jgsser 1y ago
  [flagged]
- ZpJuUuNaQ5 1y ago
  Similar situation, but I had (and still have) issues with the heart, and not sure whether they were from undiagnosed covid infection (never had typical Covid symptoms, and all tests for it came negative), or some rare complications from the vaccine. I started having heart flutters a day or two after my shot and had severe fever (I was 25 at the time), but the former never went a way. I brushed it off as a temporary symptom and typical after shot reaction (well, fever was at least). Heart flutters never went away and I didn't go to the doctor for at least a few months, it became so frequent that I could not sleep, exercise or even climb the stairs anymore without heart feeling like it's about to explode out of my chest. Not the high heart rate, but abrupt, irregular vibrations/twitching and sometimes feeling like you get punched in the chest, just from the inside around the heart area. Anyway, it happens frequently and in any situation, even at rest. Got diagnosed with third degree AV block. The flutters were due to the significant damage to the heart muscle, which caused the failure of the conduction system - signals from the upper chambers did not always reach the lower chambers. I am not angry at anyone or anything, just disappointed. It would feel a lot easier if it was some obvious bad decision of mine, like drinking, doing drugs, smoking, or being overweight, but I did not nor were any of these things. I still keep categorizing life as "before" and "after".
tim333 1y ago
I haven't looked it up but often odd numbers like that are often due to the paper looking at people who were hospitalised for covid which is a small percentage of those who get it.
itsme0000 1y ago
Yeah the paper is just lying. “Long Covid” is just a typical response to a severe flu. Many people are just ignorant of the fact that flus can weaken the immune system past the initial infection. It’s well meaning attempt to understand common flu symptoms but they are just relating to COVID to get more clicks and funding.
- raddan 1y ago
  Did you actually look at any part of the paper? Their approach is not some hand-wavy qualitative measure. They are measuring an actual phenomenon in people with known COVID infections. If you have a methodological problem with the paper, try using facts next time.
  - itsme0000 1y ago
    No didn’t read the paper. Yes it’s it’s extremely hand wavy of measurement. You can’t develop a methodology to determine if you have a chronic disease in less time then a a disease can be discovered are determined to be chronic. Duh.
longcovidthrowa 1y ago
I won't make a claim to the accuracy of the numbers, but I can offer an example of how long COVID can be undercounted. My daughter was a competitive long distance runner. Months after recovering from the acute symptoms of COVID, her performance numbers were still about 10% down and no amount of training would allow her to reach her previous level of performance. After many visits to doctors and specialists, she was eventually diagnosed with long COVID due to lung damage. She's still very fast by most measures, but in track, the difference between being in the 99th percentile and the 89th percentile is the difference between a top 3 finish and a bottom 3 finish. This basically ended her track career. In our case, if we didn't have hard data tracking her before and after performance levels, we may not have ever noticed a difference. How many people who aren't competitive athletes are walking around with 10% degraded pulmonary function and just didn't notice?
- bryant 1y ago
  It's a pretty sad reflection of the times that there's a need to create a throwaway account to talk about long COVID symptoms, but this is a good personal anecdote to draw attention to what's likely happening. In my case, I only caught covid once - somepoint last year just before I would've gotten the updated booster. It took me well over a year to stop having acute pulmonary issues, and my lung performance is down year over year (measured during high intensity training) even though I finally feel no differently at baseline than I did before I caught it. Most people don't exploit the full capacity of their bodies and so would never notice, which is essentially the point OP is making. This disease very likely ravaged the 20% claimed, but the vast majority may never know because they're just never pushing their bodies hard enough.
  - longcovidthrowa 1y ago
    I mainly created the throwaway because I'm sharing personal medical information and I'd rather not do that with my main account where people know me IRL.
    - bryant 1y ago
heavyset_go 1y ago
If you get a diagnosis at all, it's going to be a catchall for "idk" like fibromyalgia, CFS, allergies or it's filed away as psychosomatic. There are probably a lot of syndromes caused by latent infections from virii like EBV, various herpes, HPV, etc that don't go properly diagnosed or treated if they can be treated at all. Also, it's been found that some viral infections retreat to tissues where their detection might be difficult/impossible without biopsy. You saw this with, for example, Ebola, where survivors could test negative for the virus, but it would still survive and replicate in different isolated tissues like those in the eye.
cjbgkagh 1y ago
Society is very stratified by intelligence, and the predispositions to long covid, like generalized joint hypermobility (GJH) strongly correlates positively with intelligence. See the work done by Dr Jessica Eccles on Bendy Brains Bendy Bodies and her published studies on long covid. Anyway, because of the stratification many people don’t know anyone with long covid, while at the same time half of my friends have it. Both can be true observations of our surroundings. On the actual numbers I would say that ~10% get some level of Long Covid while half of those recover in the first year. Of those who don’t recover around half have GJH which is a massive over representation suggesting a strong predisposition.
sampo 1y ago
> this does not track with how rarely I've heard of people with it. Maybe you are not the type of person that people feel comfortable to share their health problems information with.
traceroute66 1y ago
> What's going on here? Perhaps its a reflection of how hard it is to get the medical community to take Long COVID seriously ? I would say there is more chance of them (sadly) telling you to go home, take a couple of paracetamol and get some rest. Or if you're lucky, they might mis-diagnose you with something else.... (No first-hand experience here, just going by one or two anecdotal stories I've heard on the grapevine)
- pixl97 1y ago
  >Perhaps its a reflection of how hard it is to get the medical community to take _____ seriously There are a myriad of illnesses here that this seems to apply to.
- xienze 1y ago
  > Perhaps its a reflection of how hard it is to get the medical community to take Long COVID seriously ? Well let’s think about why. You’ve got an illness (Long COVID) that you can’t detect and manifests itself in a myriad of ways, most of which are very vague and subjective (“brain fog” or “I can’t exercise as much as I used to”) and also not detectable. Is it any wonder doctors might think of it as today’s fibromyalgia?
  - PaulKeeble 1y ago
    Ironic perhaps that Fibromylgia has been chosen given there are tests for the small fibre neuropathy that causes and it now has a firm diagnostic pathway. The same will happen for Long Covid and ME/CFS, the diagnostics are there in research, they even show up in scans and tests that can be run in healthcare systems today, its just there is a resistance to run them.
j45 1y ago
With the math of reinfection, and percentages generally being lower than reality, long COVID is likely much more common and widespread in more people than not.
- swed420 1y ago
  Agreed. https://old.reddit.com/r/ZeroCovidCommunity/comments/1o40bpc/just_asking_for_a_reality_check_about_memory/ https://old.reddit.com/r/ZeroCovidCommunity/comments/1o40bpc...
tehjoker 1y ago
That spread has been consistent in the literature for a long time. It depends on what symptoms you are looking for. Frankly, I trust the consistent message from the literature. Long covid is extremely prevalent but not always visible
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
mzan 1y ago
No, the paper says: > Long COVID (LC) impacts one in five children after an acute SARS-CoV-2 infection So, 20% of children that suffered of an acute SARS-CoV-2 infection, did not recovered immediately, but experienced also Long COVID.
Jean-Philipe 1y ago
Not sure it's relevant at all, but a therapist who's working with kids in a large clinic in Berlin told me that anorexia cases in kids have doubled since COVID. He said they don't have the infrastructure to treat all those kids. It's pretty dramatic. That being said, I wouldn't be surprised if a large portion of those cases were really caused by long COVID.
Arete314159 1y ago
Long Covid is a spectrum. It's everything from silent damage to severe functional impairment. Each subsequent infection makes noticeable damage more likely.

victorbjorklund 1y ago

Could it be that you can have different severity of long covid? Someone with very severe symptoms will notice it but someone with small symptoms might not realise it (and instead think they are just less fit)

Thorrez 1y ago

>after an acute SARS-CoV-2 infection. Maybe not all infections are considered "acute".

DrewADesign 1y ago
Acute, in this context, just means the infection had a finite (and usually relativity short) duration. The opposite is a chronic condition, which is what “long covid” would be in this case.

cheschire 1y ago

A lot of symptoms of long covid mirror the symptoms of unhealthy living, which may make it so people either dismiss their own symptoms and don't seek diagnosis, or their complaints are dismissed by others for needing to simply improve externalities.

MontyCarloHall 1y ago
Couldn’t it be the other way round, that changes in health caused by other external factors erroneously get blamed on COVID? For instance, a disproportionate amount of long COVID cases are reported by women between the ages of 40 and 60, the exact age range when most women experience menopause [0]. Menopause can cause brain fog, fatigue, and other symptoms that mirror those of long COVID. Since pretty much everyone has had COVID, it’s a basic statistical certainty that many women caught COVID exactly when their menopausal symptoms started (whose onset can be extremely sudden), and falsely causally associate the two. The exact same conflation likely happens in children, who also go through several profound developmental shifts. [0] https://telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/12/28/long-covid-may-actually-onset-menopause-women-say-experts/ https://telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/12/28/long-covid-may-actua...
- soks86 1y ago
  Ah yes, you trust https://www.newsonhealth.co.uk/ https://www.newsonhealth.co.uk/ over research from Harvard. One, maybe two non-research docs or... a team of research docs.
  - MontyCarloHall 1y ago
    Fine, here's a source where both the second and corresponding authors are from Harvard that says the same thing [0]. That said, you don't need to be from a prestigious institution to observe the basic statistic that long COVID is most frequently reported in women ages 40-60. [0] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2829454 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...
- jancsika 1y ago
  > Couldn’t it be the other way round, that changes in health caused by other external factors erroneously get blamed on COVID? It is possible, but not to the degree that all long Covid cases are being confused with external factors. > Menopause can cause brain fog Additionally, long Covid can cause brain fog. This was shown in brain scans from a popular HN post about a research paper just yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45539845 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45539845 Those patients were 20-59 and had "no previous history of neuropsychiatric disorders."

Ozzie_osman 1y ago

The paper says "One in five children." I wouldn't be surprised at all. Children are very dynamic, changing often as they grow and go through different developmental stages (which may include periods where they seem more tired or more cranky, etc) . They also often lack the language and agency to explain what's going on with their bodies. I don't see how you'd know the exact number without a solid diagnostic check.

tiahura 1y ago

I'm an ambulance chaser. I look at medical records all day. I've never seen anyone complaining of long covid.

swed420 1y ago
Most people don't even know to look for it, including doctors. Some cardiac doctors are finally beginning to take the research more seriously, however. It's slow going for everyone involved.
marliechiller 1y ago
Im not sure if this is a comment generated by a bot, a troll or something else to try and generate disinformation or something. I've seen a few comments on this thread which seem out of line from the usual sort of good natured discourse seen on HN. Not sure if its this particular topic or a sign of the times. Anyway, having had long covid myself for over 15 months, there are many, many people suffering with it, we are just discovering the tip of the iceberg

rr808 1y ago

I have a 87 year old uncle who says he has long covid because he gets tired and needs a nap in the afternoon. I'm half the age and felt the same even before 2020.

Llamamoe 1y ago

It takes very severe disability for it not to be brushed off as depression, anxiety, burnout, or blamed on lifestyle. Additionally, a lot of those numbers are based on earlier strains of COVID, which were much more severe. I suspect the 1/5 figure is largely true for "has some degree of cardiovascular damage and worsened general health after COVID", but the number of people actually disabled by the condition is much lower. That said, any loss of ability is a sad thing, and I am incredibly disappointed that we did not introduce any shared indoor space air quality legislation post-pandemic.

notmyjob 1y ago
And the lipid nanoparticle based Covid prevention shots caused myocarditis in some younger males, so earlier incidence of cardiovascular complications vs. the present (when most people especially younger healthy males are choosing not to take updated boosters) would correlate with that as well.
- clanky 1y ago
  The one Thai prospective study that I saw on this subject (the only one I ever found which measured biomarkers of heart damage like troponin before and after injection, which is utterly shameful), estimated a rate of heart damage in adolescent males in the range of 1-3%. So even that would be nowhere near enough to reach the 1/5 number.
  - cjbgkagh 1y ago
    I got pericarditis bad enough that I thought it was going to kill me but not bad enough to show up in any test. Thankfully the cardiologist accepted my description of what I felt and prescribed me colchicine which worked. I guess it would be called subclinical pericarditis and it would be good to have some stats on how often that happens.
  - notmyjob 1y ago
    I suspect many people commit the grave sin of mixing data sources to derive percentages, which seems almost impossible not to do in this case. I also strongly suspect that rates of infection (the denominator in question) were inflated to some extent during the pandemic as insurers and hmo were incentivized to detect covid even when it may not have been the primary reason for presenting. There were also disincentives or at least a lack of incentive to detect teratogenic effects of the lipid nanoparticle based preventative, and unfortunately likely personal biases as the preventative was highly politicized. But I’m not thinking about it much deeper than that, so you may be right.

clanky 1y ago

The numbers in the range of 1/5 usually include in the definition things like "a cough that lasts six weeks after the acute phase of infection and then goes away," which is not what most people think of when they hear the term Long COVID (and is not even unique to SARS-CoV-2). For a variety of reasons, hyping the threat of infection has been a pretty widespread practice among the medical and scientific community since COVID began. There's no way on earth 1 out of 5 kids are still experiencing symptoms 3 months out.

djtango 1y ago

After covid I suffered from intermittent brain fog for years and also felt like my heart was maybe struggling more than usual when I was training at the gym. Never enough to warrant going to a doctor unless I was being super paranoid (and spend a long time convincing them I wasn't paranoid) but just enough to always wonder if there was something more to the story.

jgsser 1y ago
[flagged]
ZpJuUuNaQ5 1y ago
Similar situation, but I had (and still have) issues with the heart, and not sure whether they were from undiagnosed covid infection (never had typical Covid symptoms, and all tests for it came negative), or some rare complications from the vaccine. I started having heart flutters a day or two after my shot and had severe fever (I was 25 at the time), but the former never went a way. I brushed it off as a temporary symptom and typical after shot reaction (well, fever was at least). Heart flutters never went away and I didn't go to the doctor for at least a few months, it became so frequent that I could not sleep, exercise or even climb the stairs anymore without heart feeling like it's about to explode out of my chest. Not the high heart rate, but abrupt, irregular vibrations/twitching and sometimes feeling like you get punched in the chest, just from the inside around the heart area. Anyway, it happens frequently and in any situation, even at rest. Got diagnosed with third degree AV block. The flutters were due to the significant damage to the heart muscle, which caused the failure of the conduction system - signals from the upper chambers did not always reach the lower chambers. I am not angry at anyone or anything, just disappointed. It would feel a lot easier if it was some obvious bad decision of mine, like drinking, doing drugs, smoking, or being overweight, but I did not nor were any of these things. I still keep categorizing life as "before" and "after".

tim333 1y ago

I haven't looked it up but often odd numbers like that are often due to the paper looking at people who were hospitalised for covid which is a small percentage of those who get it.

itsme0000 1y ago

Yeah the paper is just lying. “Long Covid” is just a typical response to a severe flu. Many people are just ignorant of the fact that flus can weaken the immune system past the initial infection. It’s well meaning attempt to understand common flu symptoms but they are just relating to COVID to get more clicks and funding.

raddan 1y ago
Did you actually look at any part of the paper? Their approach is not some hand-wavy qualitative measure. They are measuring an actual phenomenon in people with known COVID infections. If you have a methodological problem with the paper, try using facts next time.
- itsme0000 1y ago
  No didn’t read the paper. Yes it’s it’s extremely hand wavy of measurement. You can’t develop a methodology to determine if you have a chronic disease in less time then a a disease can be discovered are determined to be chronic. Duh.

longcovidthrowa 1y ago

I won't make a claim to the accuracy of the numbers, but I can offer an example of how long COVID can be undercounted. My daughter was a competitive long distance runner. Months after recovering from the acute symptoms of COVID, her performance numbers were still about 10% down and no amount of training would allow her to reach her previous level of performance. After many visits to doctors and specialists, she was eventually diagnosed with long COVID due to lung damage. She's still very fast by most measures, but in track, the difference between being in the 99th percentile and the 89th percentile is the difference between a top 3 finish and a bottom 3 finish. This basically ended her track career. In our case, if we didn't have hard data tracking her before and after performance levels, we may not have ever noticed a difference. How many people who aren't competitive athletes are walking around with 10% degraded pulmonary function and just didn't notice?

bryant 1y ago
It's a pretty sad reflection of the times that there's a need to create a throwaway account to talk about long COVID symptoms, but this is a good personal anecdote to draw attention to what's likely happening. In my case, I only caught covid once - somepoint last year just before I would've gotten the updated booster. It took me well over a year to stop having acute pulmonary issues, and my lung performance is down year over year (measured during high intensity training) even though I finally feel no differently at baseline than I did before I caught it. Most people don't exploit the full capacity of their bodies and so would never notice, which is essentially the point OP is making. This disease very likely ravaged the 20% claimed, but the vast majority may never know because they're just never pushing their bodies hard enough.
- longcovidthrowa 1y ago
  I mainly created the throwaway because I'm sharing personal medical information and I'd rather not do that with my main account where people know me IRL.
  - bryant 1y ago

heavyset_go 1y ago

If you get a diagnosis at all, it's going to be a catchall for "idk" like fibromyalgia, CFS, allergies or it's filed away as psychosomatic. There are probably a lot of syndromes caused by latent infections from virii like EBV, various herpes, HPV, etc that don't go properly diagnosed or treated if they can be treated at all. Also, it's been found that some viral infections retreat to tissues where their detection might be difficult/impossible without biopsy. You saw this with, for example, Ebola, where survivors could test negative for the virus, but it would still survive and replicate in different isolated tissues like those in the eye.

cjbgkagh 1y ago

Society is very stratified by intelligence, and the predispositions to long covid, like generalized joint hypermobility (GJH) strongly correlates positively with intelligence. See the work done by Dr Jessica Eccles on Bendy Brains Bendy Bodies and her published studies on long covid. Anyway, because of the stratification many people don’t know anyone with long covid, while at the same time half of my friends have it. Both can be true observations of our surroundings. On the actual numbers I would say that ~10% get some level of Long Covid while half of those recover in the first year. Of those who don’t recover around half have GJH which is a massive over representation suggesting a strong predisposition.

sampo 1y ago

> this does not track with how rarely I've heard of people with it. Maybe you are not the type of person that people feel comfortable to share their health problems information with.

traceroute66 1y ago

> What's going on here? Perhaps its a reflection of how hard it is to get the medical community to take Long COVID seriously ? I would say there is more chance of them (sadly) telling you to go home, take a couple of paracetamol and get some rest. Or if you're lucky, they might mis-diagnose you with something else.... (No first-hand experience here, just going by one or two anecdotal stories I've heard on the grapevine)

pixl97 1y ago
>Perhaps its a reflection of how hard it is to get the medical community to take _____ seriously There are a myriad of illnesses here that this seems to apply to.
xienze 1y ago
> Perhaps its a reflection of how hard it is to get the medical community to take Long COVID seriously ? Well let’s think about why. You’ve got an illness (Long COVID) that you can’t detect and manifests itself in a myriad of ways, most of which are very vague and subjective (“brain fog” or “I can’t exercise as much as I used to”) and also not detectable. Is it any wonder doctors might think of it as today’s fibromyalgia?
- PaulKeeble 1y ago
  Ironic perhaps that Fibromylgia has been chosen given there are tests for the small fibre neuropathy that causes and it now has a firm diagnostic pathway. The same will happen for Long Covid and ME/CFS, the diagnostics are there in research, they even show up in scans and tests that can be run in healthcare systems today, its just there is a resistance to run them.

j45 1y ago

With the math of reinfection, and percentages generally being lower than reality, long COVID is likely much more common and widespread in more people than not.

swed420 1y ago
Agreed. https://old.reddit.com/r/ZeroCovidCommunity/comments/1o40bpc/just_asking_for_a_reality_check_about_memory/ https://old.reddit.com/r/ZeroCovidCommunity/comments/1o40bpc...

tehjoker 1y ago

That spread has been consistent in the literature for a long time. It depends on what symptoms you are looking for. Frankly, I trust the consistent message from the literature. Long covid is extremely prevalent but not always visible

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

mzan 1y ago

No, the paper says: > Long COVID (LC) impacts one in five children after an acute SARS-CoV-2 infection So, 20% of children that suffered of an acute SARS-CoV-2 infection, did not recovered immediately, but experienced also Long COVID.

Jean-Philipe 1y ago

Not sure it's relevant at all, but a therapist who's working with kids in a large clinic in Berlin told me that anorexia cases in kids have doubled since COVID. He said they don't have the infrastructure to treat all those kids. It's pretty dramatic. That being said, I wouldn't be surprised if a large portion of those cases were really caused by long COVID.

Arete314159 1y ago

Long Covid is a spectrum. It's everything from silent damage to severe functional impairment. Each subsequent infection makes noticeable damage more likely.