Hacker News Reader

Comment by chiefalchemist | Hacker News Reader

> Sandrock said. “This is not something we’ve seen with any other infectious disease.”

It would be helpful to see this fleshed out. This statement strikes me as being the result of the spotlight on Covid. *That* is focus and sample size unprecedented. That is, just because something was noticed previously doesn't mean it wasn't there. It means there weren't significant numbers to be noticed, and/or bias and conventional wisdom pushed perceptions elsewhere.

I'm not questioning the existence of long Covid. But the context matters, and the science should be aware of how unique that is.

View on HN

I've wondered this too. There are lots of anecdotes about coughs that stay for a long time after a cold or not feeling right for some time after the flu. How much study has there been of these.

And frankly, how much of a placebo effect is there? People rush to point out how many (the majority) of vaccine reactions can be explained by placebo / nocebo or just spurious correlation between vaccination and some other event. I agree fully with this, it's common sense. But no doubt it also applies to actual infection. Anything contemporaneous or in the weeks afterwards is going to be "long covid". Have there been any studies that disentangled this somehow?

A number of recent studies have investigated whether "long COVID" symptoms are more strongly correlated to a belief that you had COVID or to you actually having COVID. The basic answer seems to be that "Long COVID" is entirely an aftereffect of thinking you had COVID, and it (mostly) doesn't matter whether the patient was actually infected.

Link?

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2787741

I'd be interested to know where these patients predominantly live, is it seen more in urban areas / cities with high levels of air pollution etc

Good question. My SO and I both got sick with (what we decided was) the flu back in the early 2000s ... and it took us both over a month to feel normal (not continually fatigued) again. I don't think I've ever seen such things addressed anywhere - so maybe this will fix that.

It's my understanding that long covid is not something new and unexpected. Apparently any virus attacking the organs can cause problems. These problems usually go away after some time.

Long flu is definitely a thing. I saw a meta study on that and was humbled by how common it could be, even after mild cases. Here's an article talking about the many complaints of such after the 1918 flu [0].

[0] https://time.com/5915616/long-flu-1918-pandemic/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com