This IS good news.
Now (soon, hopefully) people can acquire immunity through a vaccine, instead of through a virus that leaves long-lasting damage to the body (in particular, but not limited to, the brain).
Now (soon, hopefully) people can acquire immunity through a vaccine, instead of through a virus that leaves long-lasting damage to the body (in particular, but not limited to, the brain).
In what percentage of people who get COVID-19 is there long-lasting damage to the body? What other conditions did the people who get long-lasting damage to the body have? How does these numbers compare with other diseases?
Would appreciate citations.
And this is one kind of neurological effect. This is a more global view of how the virus could affect the brain:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-we-know-so-f...
And I'm not even touching the subjects of damage to the heart, clotting problems, etc.
However, those covid-induced strokes definitely affect the brain.
https://www.thestar.com/life/health_wellness/2010/09/02/sars...
> One in 20 people with coronavirus are likely to have symptoms for eight weeks or more, according to a new study by King's College London.
> The research, which uses data from the COVID Symptom Study App, suggested so-called "long COVID" affects around 10% of 18 to 49-year-olds who become unwell with coronavirus.
Whole study is here: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/study-identifies-those-most-risk-...
The actual study seems to say 1 in 20 have symptoms for eight weeks, which might be closer to what you could fairly describe as “long-term”, but says nothing about the severity (though I haven’t waded through the whole article).
Anyway, the drop-off from 10% having symptoms at 4 weeks to 5% at 8 weeks is encouraging - it intuitively suggests that the negative symptoms aren’t permanent, even if they take a long time to go away.
Long term health effect claims are being made all over the show - if this is the measure that is outrageous reporting.
Most people would worry about 'long term health effects' as they'd usually assume that it's going to go on for years.
I feel a lot of Covid effects are being massively overblown because people aren't aware that other more common viruses that we don't worry about can have these "long term" effects as well.
Those 4 week and 8 week statistics are part of an attempt to understand what's going on. It doesn't mean 8 weeks is considered long covid.
They are worried about effects where people got it months ago and are still disabled from it. Things like still struggling to walk upstairs 6 months after getting covid.
And that young, fit people are reporting it, not just "old".
The worry is that it doesn't appear to be getting better for them yet. The greatest worry is that people who get it might never recover, or might take years to recover. We can't know yet.
Flu and other viruses affect some people that way, but it's a small number of unlucky people. The worry is that the number affected by long covid in this way are a much larger number of people.
My fear is that this is super, super, super rare, but figures are including long term as low as 8 weeks, so we have absolutely no idea how small / large the number of people having this critical level of long term effect actually is.
There are plenty of anecdotes to be found of people reporting debilitating long-covid symptoms for 6 months so far. That's "still sick since I had it back in March/April".
(It hasn't been around for a year so nothing can be said about that timescale yet.)
That's significant enough that public health officials are talking openly about it as a concern, so it's not just a few isolated anecdata.
There are some reports suggesting neurological impairment. Along with observed blood changes (thickening), which is concerning regarding long term damage for rational reasons. If that turns out to be true, that sort of damage tends to never completely recover. Rather you learn to adapt and live with it.
However, they stating they're also counting 8-10 weeks as long term, so the stats are obviously way inflated. I'd really like to know the number of people having the extreme effects, without the media trying to inflate the figure.
However, the efficacy of this vaccine (and all the other candidates) still needs to be clarified - ie is it like a measles vaccination (~90% efficacy) or the flu vaccines (~ 25% - 50% I believe).
- Efficacy of at least 60%
- Lower bound of efficacy (confidence interval) >= 30%
- Minimum safety data for at least one or two months post vaccination (I don't remember if it's one or two)
- At least five severe cases in the control arm
- Requirements for the trials to go on even if efficacy is found for an additional year after the trial end (for most of the trials, this means two years in total)
Judging from our response to Covid-19, if this had actually been the collectively-feared zombie virus, the pandemic would have been far worse than any fictional account has manage to capture so far.
World War Z
Walking Dead
Shawn of the Dead *
28 Days Later
The Last of Us
What's worse than the above?
* (ok maybe not this one)