Long Covid is overblown and often something else, says Oxford professor
thetimes.co.uk
thetimes.co.uk
So yeah, all I want to say is that virus infections are not a joke, even if you got through one "fine" it can absolutely have devastating and life long effects on you.
https://www.audiology-worldnews.com/research/3554-is-treatab...
https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20210630/could-the-mono-viru...
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100205115946.h...
https://www.immunology.org/public-information/bitesized-immu...
Low energy
Headaches
Upset stomach, including diarrhea, constipation, and nausea
Aches, pains, and tense muscles
Chest pain and rapid heartbeat
Insomnia
Frequent colds and infections
Loss of sexual desire and/or ability
Nervousness and shaking, ringing in the ear, cold or sweaty hands and feet
Dry mouth and difficulty swallowing
Clenched jaw and grinding teeth
Sounds like all of the physical symptoms of so-called long-COVID.
On top of the stress that would undoubtedly afflict a significant fraction of COVID patients, due to the massively inflated fears surrounding COVID, is the effects of physical isolation.
One of the requirements for all COVID positive cases is two weeks of total physical isolation. Numerous studies have shown that humans being physically isolated has significant negative health effects. No in person contact. No physical touch. For two weeks. All COVID positive cases, even asymptomatic ones.
There are no randomized studies, that control for factors, like the aforementioned psychological distress emanating from fear of COVID, and physical isolation, that suggests COVID causes these long-term symptoms. There are a host of potential confounding factors that could explain these correlations better than damage from the COVID infection.
Notice how extreme rigor is demanded for the ivermectin studies but then really just mere correlations is enough to draw scare mongering conclusions about COVID.
But: pretty much every single anecdote I've heard (online, or meatspace) tells a very consistent story. Maybe it should be studied. But I guess if some professor at a "prestigious university" says it's all psychosomatic, then I guess not.
I feel you inadvertently tried to misrepresent the symptoms of long Covid.
Please check wikipedia's article on long Covid for an objective and we'll sourced reference on the subject:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_COVID
Among the typical symptoms we have "fatigue, headaches, shortness of breath, anosmia (loss of smell), parosmia (distorted smell), muscle weakness, low fever and cognitive dysfunction".
Feeling fatigued alone does not pass off as long Covid, jus like coughing alone does not pass off as Covid.
For the sake of having a non-inflammatory discussion, please do your best to substantiate and source these sort of claim so that we avoid spreading disinformation.
That is not true. Here is a typical study purportedly showing evidence for long COVID:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/28/covid-37-of-pe...
>>One in three people infected with coronavirus will experience at least one symptom of long Covid, a new study suggests.
The most common symptom associated with "long-COVID" is anxiety..
You've said "study" but you're quoting an article from The Guardian.
Also, it seems you even failed to read your source. Your article does not refer to the incidence of long COVID-19. Your source only refers to a statistical study of the prevalence of any of the symptoms that are attributed to long COVID-19, whose goal is clearly to gather data to help understand the problem, or even if one really exists.
Also, I feel you are either misquoting or being disingenuous. The article you quoted quite clearly states that "The most common symptoms were breathing problems, abdominal symptoms, fatigue, pain and anxiety or depression."
So, a charitable interpretation of your misunderstanding of what you've quoted is that you picked up a reference to a study whose purpose is to gather initial observations on the actual incidence of long Covid, looked at the raw data and unwittingly misinterpreted correlations for consequences.
An article which describes the results of a study..
>>Also, I feel you are either misquoting or being disingenuous. The article you quoted quite clearly states that "The most common symptoms were breathing problems, abdominal symptoms, fatigue, pain and anxiety or depression."
I'm referring to the graph in that article, which shows that anxiety/depression is the most commonly cited symptom, at 15% of survey respondents:
https://i.ibb.co/27yyhGG/long-covid-symptoms.png
>>Your article does not refer to the incidence of long COVID-19.
Yes it does. Long-COVID typically refers to any expression of any of the symptoms listed, following a COVID infection.
Presenting your own editorialized conclusions is not the same as providing a primary source.
The proof is that you've tried to pass off a study on the quantification of the real world correlation of symptoms tentatively linked to long covid as, somehow, proof of a causal relationship, even though nothing of the sort was suggested.
You're inadvertently demonstrated the need to check primary sources, and the role that tabloids play in disseminating misinformation
This is a discussion forum. You seem to have an axe to grind with me that's motivated by more than just what I wrote. Are you this non-charitable and critical of those who are sounding the alarm about COVID? This double standard, motivated by political preconceptions, is how dissenting viewpoints are suppressed, and only one viewpoint - that of COVID hysteria - is allowed to express itself.
>>The proof is that you've tried to pass off a study on the quantification of the real world correlation of symptoms tentatively linked to long covid as, somehow, proof of a causal relationship, even though nothing of the sort was suggested.
To clarify, my criticism is of the many who are in fact taking these preliminary results, and drawing the conclusion that long-COVID is afflicting one third of all COVID patients.
I would also add that while I was certainly a bit depressed by the lockdown, I live in the UK where we are no longer locked down and my mental health has improved greatly. But I am still unable to participate in vigorous exercise, and tire much much more easily than my friends. And this is despite going for regular walks during lockdown.
Finally, I would comment that post viral fatigue is a well established phenomenon for other viral diseases including flu. And has also been noted to be particularly bad in other coronaviruses like the original SARS. So it’s hardly a stretch to think that cocos might have similar effects.
One study on pro-athletes found that 0.6% of cases were confirmed, after cardiac MRI, to have inflammatory heart disease post COVID infection:
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2021/03/few-pro-...
This is only 1/10th as much as the percentage who report chest pain. Some caveats: these are young adults, and athletes, so probably in the lowest risk category. Other demographics could face much higher risks.
So I guess the chest pain could be a real symptom of long-COVID, but I am much more skeptical of the other symptoms (e.g. anxiety, depression, etc).
It's also worth noting that heart inflammation from infections like flu will generally subside over time.
>>One could easily make the case that the drastic rise in violent incidents in public spaces across the world has not been due to the effects of local and sporadic lockdowns on psychological health, but more likely due to the partial frontal lobotomies being performed by the virus.
You don't think it could be a result of massive numbers of careers being destroyed, businesses going bankrupt, and people being physically isolated, as governments restrict people's economic and civil liberties?
And isn't it possible that fearful speculation of the type you're engaging in, is creating political support for the restrictions that are creating all of these adverse social effects?
It's also pretty widely known that virtually all viruses can have a post-viral syndrome so if it would be MORE surprising if there wasn't a long covid.
I've had long covid for the last 10 months, and finally seem to be coming out of it. At its worst, I would get "episodes" where my entire body would start buzzing, so extreme that it felt like I was plugged into an electric socket. I can't convey to you how extreme this was, and if anyone were to suggest that this was caused by pandemic stress, they would be liable to a stressed response from my fist.
You use antibody tests to find undiagnosed prior cases, where the patient was unaware they had it during their infection. Then you can compare those who had COVID, without the associated psychosocial impact and two week isolation, to those who did not, to try to determine what long-term impact COVID has.
Also: what if the stress symptoms they're feeling, are due to the body fighting long-covid?
The guy quoted for said statement is a professor of medicine of a reputable university, so he does have the authority thing sorted out.
Also, I feel the quote means something different than the original interpretation. After reading the article, it seems that John Bell simply states that a) long Covid is "more complicated than people assume", and b) it's incidence is lower than initial (and conservative) estimates.
The article mentions that "half of people suffering from long Covid may not have it."
And that's pretty much it.
There is no harm in improving our understanding of the real world effects of a disease.
That’s fallacious. There are loads of professors spewing bullshit, including about their field, including at Oxford. It says nothing about the validity of the point they are making. Particularly after the point has been filtered through journalists with a questionable understanding of science.
No, not really. The fallacious bit is blindly and outright dismissing any statement, along with attacking and accusing anything a researcher says as being "spewing bullshit", just because you didn't liked hearing it.
Eve though I agree that appeals to authority are no way to get close to the truth, what we are seeing here is pure denialism and a primal anti-intellectual attitude directed towards a researcher from a reputable university just because he dared point out that initial conservative estimates might have been conservative.
To be quite clear, John Bell does not dictate the truth just because he is a professor of medicine at Oxford. But that is not the problem. The problem is actually trying to attack him just because he had the audacity to quote statistics on the real-world incidence of long Covid and state that initial estimates were off.
Sounds like the BMJ dont trust this chap and are questioning his financial interests. Therefore I would question his motives with regard to this article, he isnt very forthcoming which is usually indicative of having something to hide.
The article you mentioned only refers to stock portfolio and potential conflicts of interest regarding policy decisions on performing antibody tests.
The statement that was quoted in this discussion is about an entirely unrelated subject: the prevalence of long Covid. The initial claim is that the statement is supported by data from the Office for National Statistics.
If you want to question John Bell's claim regarding the prevalence of long Covid, just check if his statement is corroborated by the data. Either it's supported or not.
There is a very good way to verify the claims: check the data.
Dragging in questions regarding antibody test policies, stock portfolios, and potential conflicts of interest just sound like cheap character assassination attempts that have absolutely no relation with the prevalence of long Covid.
Don't accept things blindly because you agree with them (or the converse), "be a good judge of who is a good judge".
If that's what you're going with then you only need to verify the data to either refute or verify his claim.
Everything else is just noise at this point.
You didn't even bothered to look, did you?
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan...
That is not nearly good enough.
This is HN. We should be posting peer-reviewed research results, not just-any-professor-in-the-field's-feelings.
That's a completely baseless statement, and there is some serious fuckery going on here, either with the article, or the supposed expert they're citing.
Remember these are the same media organisations that will deny climate change and find scientists who will push that agenda for them. Just because they have a pulpit, it doesn't make them correct.
For someone in his position to say long covid is overblown and usually something else without any explicit diagnosis for those cases is no more responsible than the “it’s just a flu” brigade have been since this started.
Literally everything has become so poisoned by misinformation that we can’t even present real science and reviewed data without feeling the need to represent probabilities as certainties for fear of the conspiracy mob running with it, which it seems like is happening here, and I think is even more dangerous.
The rest of us aren’t listening to the whackadoodles on Facebook, but we’re certainly paying attention to credible scientists.
I’m sure it’s infuriating for the science community that you have to clear a really high bar of evidence and critical examination of data before making an assertion, whereas Karen or Chad just write whatever stupid and demonstrably impossible nonsense they like on Facebook without a care in the world.
The morons don’t have standards. It sucks. But resorting to their tactics, even a little, is a really slippery slope.
The people in CFS documentaries look as bedridden as those with long covid to me. So why does long covid get this much attention, while CFS remains obscure?
I think it’s probably simply a numbers thing. A lot more people with long focus than other forms of CFS. Hopefully it will get a lot more attention in the present circumstances.
But the name `long covid` is also a little misleading. A lot of virus infections can shake up your body so you will need a long time to recover. A great example is the Epstein Barr virus: very contagious and it can take months or even years to recover from it.
So as a "gotcha" political point against all these "sky is falling" liberals, it's not actually very useful. What it sounds like is right-wing contrarians looking for any authoritative figure to bolster their claims that all the sick people and dead people didn't really die or get sick and stay sick, or if they did they were already sick, so they can simply return the economy - which is the only thing they give a shit about - to making them money.
It's not actually very convincing or compelling if you're not, y'know, a free market loony or a sociopath.
The real problem isn't that one guy has an opinion.
The real problem is that there's an article about it, and this article is somehow getting massive promotion and engagement as if it's real valid science.
I’ll have to look at the survey in more detail but incidence rates would have to be really inconsistent with that study (i.e. probably an order of magnitude lower) to indicate that long COVID is anything other than a massive and serious problem.
Almost every symptom listed could be a result of anxiety, which in turn can be a result of the extreme fear that is now surrounding COVID.
There is some weak evidence of a higher rate of anxiety among people who've had COVID, including [0] as well as another nonzero but statistically insignificant difference from Amin-Chowdhury et al. But the difference in anxiety prevalence would only be a few percentage points (point estimates of 4.3% and 4.2% respectively), nowhere enough for that to be an underlying causal explanation for long-term symptoms that occur >20% of the time.
In any case, unless you're claiming that social isolation causes a loss of taste and smell that persists for 8+ months, it's pretty clear that some symptoms of COVID persist for a long time in a significant minority of the population. I think you'd really have to jump through hoops to argue that (1) some symptoms caused directly by COVID persist for a long time, (2) other symptoms caused directly by COVID reliably go away after a few weeks, but (3) people who have had COVID re-develop those same symptoms at a higher rate than the general population, months later, for reasons not caused directly by COVID.
Any one who was diagnosed with having had COVID was prescribed to two weeks of total physical isolation, which is pretty unusual experience amongst people who did receive a COVID diagnosis. But yes it's possible that this did not have a significant impact. We wouldn't know without controlling for it.
>>In any case, unless you're claiming that social isolation causes a loss of taste and smell that persists for 8+ months, it's pretty clear that some symptoms of COVID persist for a long time in a significant minority of the population.
The two week physical isolation is one of many psychosocial differences between the two groups, and could affect one of many of the reported symptoms of long-COVID, some of which are much more likely to have a psychosomatic origin than loss of smell/taste, like the most commonly reported "long-COVID" symptom: anxiety.
Like any infection, long-term effects in some cases are very likely. The question is how many effects, and how common they are. Without much more rigorous studies, or some of cross-comparative analysis showing that COVID infections result in a markedly more severe clinical presentation than other infections, I think it's irresponsible to start sounding the alarm about some impending public health crisis from long-COVID. The very hysteria this could rouse could result in far more harm to public health, through more physical/social isolation and greater economic decline, both of which have a documented negative impact on health.
And the harm that a climate of fear can cause is already evident, from the massive increase in childhood overweightedness/obesity during the COVID era:
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7037a3.htm?s_cid=mm...
"Among a cohort of 432,302 persons aged 2–19, rate of body mass index increase approximately doubled during pandemic compared to prepandemic period. Persons w/ prepandemic overweight or obesity & younger school-aged children experienced largest increases."
That’s still a fairly high incidence rate. At least to the extend that we can’t really ignore it.
Only 5% of all COVID cases report persistent symptoms.
And 3.4% of the general population report the same symptoms.
Edit: Comment this is in reply to originally had 50%, now changed to 5%.
Right now the UK is getting something like 30,000 new cases a day.
This adds up to a lot, last time I checked the UK was only behind India on total cases.
For whatever reason the people running the UKs actions are doing the opposite of protecting people.
That's easy to verify: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
Currently, India is behind the USA (#1) on total cases, UK ranks 4th, Brazil 3rd. If we look at cases/population size, UK ranks #22, but the only large country in the top 20 is the USA.
To be fair, the UK government has been fairly consistent that their target has always been to protect the NHS, not the people. As long as the hospitals aren't running beyond capacity, the UK is meeting their stated goal.
Whether 25 or 2.5%, it’s still millions of people.
"Affecting approximately 2 to 5 percent of the population, hypochondria has no specific cause, but is often found in people who have had previous experience with a serious illness, especially in childhood" (source: https://www.everydayhealth.com/anxiety/understanding-hypocho...)
Not disputing/arguing whether Long Covid exists or how bad it could be since I'm not qualified to. But just remarking that there are plenty of people out there who regularly think they're sick/have symptoms anyway.
Like, if you were suffering from brain fog, you’d attribute it to a brain tumor or aomething.
I think we still need a lot more research. Those ACE receptors express in many tissues.
A lot of people suffer under it and a big problem is that a lot of people and doctors think it's made up or lazyness.
I hope now that there are so many cases we can get a better understanding and actually be able to properly diagnose and treat it.
This is probably the #1 reason why I was so careful about avoiding the virus back when there was a lot of voices yelling "just catch the virus, you won't die". I knew the people who didn't die but just got lingering afflictions would be treated like gulf war syndrome vets.
Right now there are no mitigations for Covid in UK schools.
One of the things safer schools campaigners are pointing out is the risk of long Covid (as well as hospitalisations etc).
Example of Covid in one area of the UK https://mobile.twitter.com/DmodosCutter/status/1445303921300...
J/K but the well of truth has indeed been poisoned hasn't it?
https://twitter.com/PandaTribune/status/1440192783260655618?...
>>Great clip of Bill Maher citing a survey in which 41% of Democrats said that if you catch COVID, the chances of going to the hospital are >50%... (the correct answer is between 1% - 5%) Maher says the "liberal media needs to take responsibility for scaring the sh*t out of people"
Why this matters is that an over-estimation of the risk for low-risk demographics has led to behavioral patterns that are net harmful. For example, the climate of fear around COVID has maybe reduced the very minute risk the virus poses to children (0.003% IFR, or about equivalent to the risk of dying if stung by a bee), at the cost of an unprecedented rise in childhood obesity:
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7037a3.htm?s_cid=mm...
"Among a cohort of 432,302 persons aged 2–19, rate of body mass index increase approximately doubled during pandemic compared to prepandemic period. Persons w/ prepandemic overweight or obesity & younger school-aged children experienced largest increases."
The response to COVID, with respect to children, is going to cause far more deaths in the long run than it mitigates.
Addressing your specific points, the BLM rioters were almost exclusively Democrats, and there were hundreds of BLM riots: https://acleddata.com/acleddatanew/wp-content/uploads/2020/0...
As for ivermectin, it has been used in hundreds of millions of humans, so characterizing it as "horse paste" is not accurate:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivermectin#History
If you wanted to point to some way in which Republicans in general are worse, you could point out how anti-vaccine conspiracy theories are more prevalent among Republicans. This form of ignorance has done considerable harm.
Measures to protect adults against coronavirus have not come for free for children. Mental health referrals amongst children have doubled since before the pandemic [1]. In more unintended consequences, smoking amongst young people has also surged [2].
Now that we have the vaccine in the UK, and most adults and the vulnerable are vaccinated, I'm against anything that further disrupts a normal childhood, as at this stage, measures would be causing more harm than good.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/sep/23/childrens-nh... [2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-58317263
Children should not have to wear masks for 6 hours a day, and should be allowed to interact with each other normally.
Whilst being the group least at risk of coronavirus, the most has been asked from children and young people, and now is the time when we need to return to normal in society, accepting we balance freedom with risk, and that they will always accompany each other.
There doesn't seem to be a syndrome here. There's a handful of different symptoms, and they mostly don't occur together. There's certainly long-term symptoms, and mostly correlated with disease severity. You have long-term effects of hypoxia, and long term effects of lung damage, which you see in a significant number of patients who had severe disease. The hypoxia from untreated covid infection causes all sorts of multiple organ damage. This is entirely uncontroversial and well-understood.
In addition, there is some kind of likely autoimmune response, which is sometimes triggered by covid, sometimes goes away after vaccination, and has very variable severity and duration. This is really poorly understood, and seems to be similar to CFS. It is more frequent in more severe cases, but not exclusive to them (just rare for low-severity cases).
On top of that, there's an increased level of anxiety and depression in patients, but there's not enough data here to exclude a population effect. Anxiety and depression has jumped on a population level in covid-affected regions regardless of infection status.
Now, while having any long-term effect is common, having any particular long-term effect is rare, and multiple effects coinciding is both rare and strongly correlated with disease severity. My opinion is that treating these three categories of long-term effects as a syndrome is wrong, and trying to treat them as if they're the same thing is going to lead to worse patient outcomes.
There's a huge problem with this however - "long covid" is a patient-preferred term for a reason - it gets taken seriously. Those that have done the research on CFS know that patients with CFS get ignored and shrugged at for decades, and know if they lose the "long covid" wave of interest in the biomed/research/practitioner community they're screwed for the foreseeable future. Which is why patients insist on long-term post-covid effects being seen as a syndrome, and attack anyone who questions this (I have personally been attacked verbally about expressing this opinion). And I get it. CFS patients have been left alone in the dark for far too long, just like several other poorly understood diseases that systematically get ignored, mis-treated, or patients accused of making it up (see also: fibromyalgia, depression, a number of cognitive disorders in history). "long covid" is getting a fresh look at by the medical community, and this is a source of hope that it's mean to destroy. But reality doesn't care about whether it's mean, and I believe in reality we're dealing with a number of entirely separate syndromes that need to be treated very differently from each other, and bunching them together is distorting both the conversation and the treatments.
The medical community seems to take the problem(s) seriously, but has very little idea how to treat it. Hopefully the high profile of the problem will lead to increased research in this area over the next few years.
ps. In my subjective opinion, Long Covid is completely overblown. I know even fewer people that have suffered from it (0) than people who have had symptomatic Covid (2).
I myself have a relatively mild case so I can still mostly do my everyday activities, but what has gone is my ability to push myself past my comfort limits. Stay up late onto get something done? Go for a 15 minute run? Previously I’d have felt a bit tired and shit the next day. Now it might leave me ill and in bed with heart pain for 3-5 days.
US Right-wingers since 2020.
Meanwhile: 700K Covid deaths in the USA.
She could have had a mild case, or it could be something else.
The 1% of legit cases are being let down because were being dragged down by the same mass hysteria that linked vaccines and autism.
Chances are this isn't even covid related but an abnormal autoimmune response I'd bet, but given I'm only trained in statistical analysis I could be wrong.
People are always look for something to blame and given the hysteria it's not shocking they are blaming the magical bioweapon that will catch you in your sleep...
It's estimated one in seven kids will suffer long Covid.
The symptoms aren't the symptoms of depression.
Aka : in the immense majority people < 65 are not going to die, and people < 30 barely won't notice anything.
15% of which kids ? the ones that end up in ICU ?
Of all PCR confirmed cases [0]. Disclaimer: preprint.
My opinion is that both should require extreme rigor mind you.
There is no statistically significant evidence for this in large scale analyses.
Also, yes of course covid causes an immune response. It's that response that leads to pneumonic symptoms that in the elderly and at risk prove to be fatal. I fail to see how there is any point to be made over stating you get sick and your body reacts.
My statement is that the immune system isn't perfect and there are long term conditions caused by it misbehaving, and that we need to understand this more.