She got ill when the pandemic hit – and still is, six months later | Hacker News Reader

She got ill when the pandemic hit – and still is, six months later

bbc.co.uk

Focusing on the long tail distribution in any disease isn’t usually helpful for making policy. If you look at any disease the possible side effects and symptoms extend to an absurd array of often contradictory outcomes (constipation / diarrhea). But usually there is a majority of side effects, symptoms, etc. that can guide things.

With COVID the media scaring us is never ending. Anecdotally the people I know who got the disease ranged from “mild cold” to “bad flu” and I don’t personally know anyone that died, although there are many of course.

We also don’t know how many deaths caused by COVID were actually caused by COVID. For example, if you die of a heart attack then your corpse tests positive for COVID, it will be marked a COVID death but that is entirely unknown if COVID was the primary cause of the heart attack or even a contributing cause. We don’t have much data, what we have isn’t always reliable, and the media jumps on any news immediately to scare us as they do with any story they cover because they need clicks.

Sweden was criticized by almost everyone for being calm and staying open with reasonable restrictions. Their economy wasn’t hit as hard. They had elevated deaths compared to some countries, but they certainly weren’t the worst, and some of the countries previously praised as “gold standard” are now having outbreaks because we have no cure and the virus always seems to spread throughout the population anyways. Ideally we are getting herd immunity while the hospital system is not overwhelmed.

In summation, health authorities still don’t know what is truly happening and any anecdotal data about people being sick for long period of time (like in this article) after getting COVID are rare situations at best or entirely unrelated (undiagnosed fatigue related illness) at worst.

Actually Sweden had a month with more flu related deaths than the worst month during the Corona outbreak.

A lot of deaths in Sweden happened in care homes and hospitals, which is now also happening in Victoria, Australia. But it looks like all of Australia is hit, while it's actually confined to a small part of the country.

The bigger perspective is that it is almost impossible to protect the elders in care homes and hospitals, which makes the swedish approach seem like the most reasonable.

This made Sweden's outcome sound a lot better than it actually is.

Here are numbers: Sweden still had an economic contraction of ~ -8.3% (Germany ~ -11.7%) while having 5.5 times (i.e. 550%!) the deaths per million inhabitants (Germany: ~ 110/1M, Sweden: ~ 575/1M).

You can compare them to e.g. the UK or Spain though and justifiably claim that they had a far better economic outcome per casualty than them if you like.

Or compare them to e.g. Denmark or Lithuania and see that Sweden got 10 times the casualty rate and a worse economic contraction.

Source: https://ourworldindata.org/covid-health-economy

Far more plausibly she has a health anxiety and never had the coronavirus to begin with. She isn’t well but it is most likely a psychological rather than a physiological condition.

Why is this more plausible? You don't know her, and are applying a psychological condition to her with no basis whatsoever. Just because you don't want to believe it's true, I assume?

My wife has something similar. Caught it in late February - at the same time as me - and _still_ has debilitating coughing fits some days, and no energy to move some days. Unless you're also going to tell me that's in her head too, and mine.

I was expecting a different story. This may or may not be covid related.

A very long article describing an anecdote about a woman who is ill and has never tested positive for COVID-19.

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