What doctors wish patients knew about long Covid
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What I’m curious about is how does the frequency of “long-Covid” compare to other post-viral syndromes? Having various forms of malaise, lethargy, and other health problems after an illness is not a new phenomenon. Does this affect 1 in 100 or 1 in 100,000 people severely? How does this compare with say past flus? It’s hard to compare long Covid to anything without a basis for comparison.
I’ve had the flu before and was a physical wreck for about 6 months after until my body finally snapped back. Because it was pre-Covid times, I just sucked it up and focused on struggling through my day and then resting. I can easily imagine people going through something similar today, and because everybody is scared because of the media, we’re looking for a problem and labeling it rather than just generally sucking it up. (This isn’t to say that we shouldn’t work to understand and treat this problem, just that it might not be anything significantly different than all prior human experience)
How much of the concern over “long-Covid” is simply a byproduct of psychology? We may be fixated on a problem and looking for it and therefore finding it more even though it’s not necessarily any more common of a problem. Maybe a direct comparison with other viruses shows different, but this is the comparison I’d like to see to better understand the risk-management here.
Long-covid is an increase in prevalence, and also does seem to present some unique symptoms.
Is it though? That data is exactly what the commenter above is asking for, and I've also not seen any data comparing prevalence of long covid to long-lasting side effects of other diseases.
> I feel like it might be more that we weren’t concerned I’m about post-viral symptoms enough in the past than that we are overly concerned with them now. ME and Chronic Fatigue and similar can be life changing (in a bad way)
Being in a car crash can be life changing in a bad way (if not life ending) and yet most of us choose to get in cars on a regular basis. My point is that the severity alone is not useful: you can only make an informed decision knowing both severity and the probability of a particular outcome.
Nowadays we are constantly bombarded with things fighting for our attention. Everyone is "raising awareness" for something, but as humans we are very limited in the things we can be constantly vigilent about. The only rational response is to prioritise the things that most warrant consideration, and ignore everything else.
Long covid is a particularly pointless thing to be aware of, because it's not like any sane person chooses to get covid, so the risk calculation is already two steps divorced from the actions we can actually take to avoid it.
Regarding awareness, I meant more societal awareness such that we might direct funding towards it as we have done with cancers.
This sounds true if you don’t think long and hard about it, but actually the mechanics of viral spread are not quite that simple. For example there’s the phenomenom of interferon-mediated “viral interference” where infection with virus X wards off infection from virus Y (say, the influenza strain de jeur), which is thought to be attributable to acute upregulation of the innate immune system.
So, it’s not always quite so simple.
But even if there's no medical flaws with this study, it doesn't necessarily answer the question to me because this overall point might really be more of a psychological question mark than a medical question.
If you tell people they had Covid, some portion of people who have been stressed out by the media focus may panic and mentally exaggerate post-viral symptoms based solely on the fear they feel with Covid over the flu, even if the actual medical conditions they experienced would not cause them to panic if they were told they had the flu.
I think a study that would actually illuminate here is to tell half the patients who had Covid that they actually had the flu, and telling half the patients that had the flu that they actually had Covid, and then doing a comparison on how peoples' perception of which illness they had impacted how frequently they reported symptoms. (I don't know, but I doubt that would be considered medically ethical though.) My guess is that the media focus on Covid is impacting how people choose to go to the doctor regarding post-viral symptoms and there's no real way to measure this without some unusual experimental design.
Being skeptical until proven unequivocally is a good approach to scientific enquiry, but it is not good public policy where we must take decisions and act despite uncertainty.
I don't have objective proof of this in the sense of "2+2=4", but I think what I've been talking about in many previous posts is a logical systemic explanation and has been repeatedly observed in the last few years.
The media's business model has changed.
At one point the media's business model was based on trust. People watched a guy like Dan Rather repeatedly because they thought he seemed genuine about telling the truth. I'm sure they knew he'd have his own feelings and human biases, but they came back to him because they thought he was focused on truth and felt trustworthy.
The media's business model has changed because of technology such as the ability to measure clicks, measure the intensity of emotion, and social-media and search algorithms that promotes what gets the most activity. Once the media has the ability to essentially drive their own profit via algorithms promoting the emotionally most intense news stories and ideas that gets people sharing and watching, the fear-porn or outrage-porn of the current news cycle will become the only reality for many people.
As an example, many people went from being overly scared about Omicron and Covid-19 fear a few weeks ago, to supreme outrage about Putin and Ukraine and making that the central part of their identity without skipping a beat. And I have to note that almost nobody gave half a shit about past Russian invasions of Ukraine or Georgia until the media told them that they needed to care about this. (Not suggesting that people shouldn't care about this, but the intensity of this switch and suddenly caring about this part of the world feels notably shaped by the media promoting it this time.)
Outrage or fear porn is the new ruler of reality. The media has supreme influence in shaping peoples' perceptions, and if a study about Covid after-affects is done, I'm sure that peoples' fears that are magnified by this new media business model will have some impact in how people report symptoms. If you tell people that Covid is super-scary and long-covid is the new big concern, at least some people will feel panic and be more likely to go to the doctor and express concern over identical symptoms that they otherwise might have not cared about if they experienced it in say 2014 with a flu.
But I don't think that's a reason not to be worried about this. Reading various threads here, there are people describing pretty awful post-COVID conditions, some that seem way more severe than anything associated with post-flu conditions.
Yes, these are anecdotes. But if we believe them to be true, they should still worry us, even if the incidence is less than 1%. Because if there is even a 0.1% (or maybe even 0.01%)[0] chance that, after recovering from COVID, I might end up physically debilitated for months or years, I will absolutely change my behavior to make it less likely that I get COVID in the first place, regardless of loosening of masking and distancing restrictions. Some might consider that an overreaction, but that's my choice to make.
As you and others point out in this thread, it's not just incidence that matters; severity is important too. If I have a 0.1% chance of dying doing a particular optional activity, I would not do that activity. If instead I have a 0.1% chance of a minor injury doing that activity, I would probably still do it if it was something I believe I'd enjoy.
[0] Just to give you an idea of my own personal risk tolerance: I just did a quick search on fatalities from skydiving, and it looks like it's around 0.0002% (tandem, not solo, based on 2019 reports). That's pretty low, but still high enough for me to not be particularly interested in doing it, even though I think it would be fun. Granted, this is a very different situation than trying to avoid getting COVID.
You and I have somewhat different thought-processes when it comes to thinking about risk. All other things being equal, I wouldn't want to risk even a 0.001% chance of significant problems either: but the deciding factor for me is valuing my freedom and not wanting to be scared for the rest of my life. Also, there's no guarantee that you can still avoid Covid anyway even if you do 100% of things perfectly anyway.
That said, I respect everybody's right to choose. That's one value that I hope everybody can learn to respect again.
I don't know about you, but I've never heard of a young person getting these kind of symptoms from flu. Other viruses like Glandular Fever are known to cause these kind of affects of course. Based on this I rather suspect that the reason there is more media focus on long-covid than long-flu is because covid is causing a lot more post-viral symptoms than flu does. That doesn't mean there is no media focus factor, but I don't think it's the main driver.
1) Depression and anxiety are the most common "long covid" symptoms, by far. Even "abnormal breathing" doesn't linger to nearly the same extent (fig 1). In fact, when you look at the co-variate matrices, depression and anxiety stand out as a brightly colored axis for the "long covid" cohort (but not for flu), indicating that many/most "long covid" patients had correlated problems with depression and anxiety that aren't seen in the "long flu" group (fig 3).
2) If you look at the last figure (fig 5), it's obvious that the "long covid" symptoms are enriched in the oldest and sickest patients -- yet the main text doesn't break out these groups explicitly, and instead presents "long covid" symptoms as something equally likely to affect all. That's clearly not true. The authors could easily have done this, but did not.
3) The "long covid" symptoms include the primary disease itself (measurements start on day 1), and drops off by 3 months after diagnosis (fig 1), but the authors try to distract from this by emphasizing the group that develops symptoms at any point in the six months after diagnosis, even if they don't have the corresponding symptom in the first 90 days after infection. In fact, 40% of the people in the "symptoms within six months" cohort do not have symptoms in the first 90 days! The authors try to claim that this is proof of some kind of evolving "network" of symptoms...but ignore the simpler explanation that they're detecting "symptoms" unrelated to the original illness.
Long covid papers often make the mistake of blurring together severe, long-term symptoms with minor or unrelated ones, and mixing old people with young people. The authors here have done little to prevent either class of error. Also, looking at this, you also have to conclude that the "long covid" cohort cannot easily be separated from a group of people struggling with depression and anxiety. Are the symptoms caused by the depression? With symptoms like "fatigue" and "pain", it's quite probable.
I'd disagree with this. I'd argue that the causation is equally likely to go the other way. Fatigue is a well-documented symptom of multiple viral infections. And painful auto-immune induced symptoms are well-documented in post-covid patients. And who wouldn't be depressed if they can no longer work or do the activities they usually enjoy because they can't get through a day without running out of energy while they can see everyone else getting back to their normal lives.
Does Covid cause depression and anxiety, or are depressed and anxious people more likely show up to the doctor seeking covid treatment? You can't tell from a study like this, but the latter is a simpler explanation, consistent with a radical, society-wide initiative that uprooted people's social structures during the study period.
Also, this:
> painful auto-immune induced symptoms are well-documented in post-covid patients.
Is not true. There is some speculation and self-reporting of symptoms, but it has not been "well documented", or documented at all.
This lead to cell death and regeneration all over, but with the aging of the organs affected.
In the case of the heart, there is almost no regeneration, mostly scarification. That mean the even young persons not feeling bad from covid could lose years of heart health.
The same apply to the mRNA vaccine if it is injected in a vein by error and goes to the heart.
Omicron seems to stay more in upper respiratory and thus being of less concern.
There is a bunch of things people can do to increase their chances of it being mild:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Zzo4SJopcY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN30emwcNS4
And when the vaccine starts in your arm it eventually gets to the heart anyways.
I was told that at least some portion of the many nurses hired to do the vaccine injections appeared to have very little experience with that type of injection and weren't following the set procedures setup by the head doctor of the center. Because of the rushed nature of setting up the vaccination center, the hiring was rushed and the training was limited and the quality control and supervision was pretty bad.
I have a feeling that at least some of the reports of vaccine injuries may have just been caused by improper injection technique due to the rushed process.
I disagree. While I certainly would prefer to not get COVID, I'm vaccinated and boosted, so if I do get it, my (primary) symptoms will likely be mild or nonexistent. So from the perspective of primary symptoms, I am at the point where I want to just live my life, not have restrictions, and if I get it... ok, well, I get it, no big deal. Essentially I will treat it like a cold or the flu: I would prefer not to get it, but I'm not going to change my day-to-day life in order to avoid it.
But the possibility of long COVID changes that. If long COVID is both prevalent and severe, I would choose to avoid crowds, stay home more often, continue masking and social distancing even when/where my local health guidelines don't require it, etc.
This is wrong. Many of us are in a position to avoid getting covid with high probability, at the heavy cost of a complete sacrifice of an offline social life. Long covid heavily affects the expected QALY loss calculation, so it's of enormous material interest.
>it's not like any sane person chooses to get covid
I know lots of insane people then. They say things like "Omicron is mild so I decided it was a good time to get it" - by which they meant they would stop paying the cost to avoid it (and predictably contracted it immediately). They might have decided differently if it turns out that long covid is a) common and b) life-wrecking.
I don't think that is true for most of Europe.
Well it's only year 3 of the pandemic and we are on our 4th variant. Is it even possible to get reliable, steady long term data?
Dr Ron Davis has a capillary check under fingernails and a metabolic check that test plasma.
Immunoassays, I forget the actual marker but done by CellTrend
Max exertion test for Post Exertional Malaise (PEM). While such a test is cheaper it could result in worsening of fatigue.
Tilt table test for POTs.
I haven't seen any numbers, and this general area of symptoms does get pretty blurry (and has many weird rabbitholes - for me methyl-b12 injections for a year worked amazing - for someone else? maybe not)
The most disabling part of the illness was learning that I can't just "push through" without paying for it for days afterwards. For months after, a single beer and a big meal would lay me out. You don't usually think of digesting food as strenuous, but in my weakened state, I'd start seeing stars and almost black out.
Now, it would be easy to dismiss me, blame me for not being healthier, but when young athletes who are fit have having these symptoms, and doctors (with better access to healthcare then I) are recording their own symptoms as scientists, it's not made up.
The worst part of having long covid is people (including doctors!) who don't believe long covid is real. Thankfully for long covid, there are biomarkers that can be tested for now so unbelievers don't have to take it on faith. After the medical gaslighting I've experienced, I really feel for people that suffer from fibromyalgia or other mysterious un-seeable maladies that there are not tests for.
That wasn’t really the question though. The question isn’t, is long-covid a gut punch to anybody? It sure does seem to be so. The question is how many people is it affecting very badly, and is it radically different than other post-viral syndromes like flu sufferers have?
Im trying to put the risk profile in proper context that I can understand.
If for example ordinary influenza has an effect as bad as yours in say 1 in 500,000 patients, and Covid has an effect like that in say 1 in 400,000 patients, we can start to put the risk into a proper context that people can understand. That’s the type of clear and digestible comparison that I think we’re missing.
>In potentially more reliable clinic-based assessments, 33% to 98% of survivors have symptoms or complications for at least a month.
https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/94524
Clinic-based symptoms or complications for at least a month means those individuals were monitored for at least a month, which leaves out everyone I know who had it and lived.
And how many of them were in a dire need of attention?
> In a recent study, researchers from several universities and centers, including the University of Washington, the Institute for Systems Biology (ISB), and Swedish Medical Center in Seattle, discovered that four biological factors might help predict whether a patient goes on to develop long COVID.
I didn't even notice covid.
Doesn’t the article say 20–30% of people get some form of it, dropping by 50% for breakthrough (getting Covid despite being fully vaccinated) cases?
This entire schmozzle is a cluster of historic proportions from our "leaders" at the top all the way down to your local GP. And it's clear that society won't be able to be dealt with it in an adult, non-political, evidence-based, and non-hysterical manner for years to come.
Get your vaccine turbo and afterburner for all I care, but this already moved beyond ridiculous. I am very sure my easily scared country will need a long time to drop mask mandates.
Honest question: What would you use it for? I'm trying to come up with a reason I would want to know whether I ever had covid (I don't think I did but who knows), but I can't think of anything I would do with that information, or any way it would change anything about my current behavior.
For example, one commentator suggests possibly every patient, doctor, and researcher has missed that merely taking cough drops would completely clear up long covid.
Even if it's true in some rare cases, I think we would be better off presuming that any active subject of research can't be solved by an outsider thinking about it for five minutes.
The vaccines are not going to prevent contraction or transmission anymore. And per this article, you can apparently be asymptomatic but still get long COVID? So why is "get you vaccine and booster" in the first sentence?
It goes on to state that "10% to 30% of people might get long COVID." Not only is there no citation for that, what does that mean exactly? Isn't it 100% of people who get COVID may get long COVID?
This piece isn't real science or medicine.
So... yeah, persistent cough is a non-symptom, and I suspect a decent amount of long COVID research is a function of perverse incentives in medical research.
In other words, having symptoms for 3-6 months sucks, I don't deny it, but with the very likely prospect of recovery for most it's not the worst thing. Anecdotally though I don't know a single person who has had covid who is still reporting any symptoms after ~2 months (n=~20).
I understand others may want to take the gamble that, while there are short and medium term symptoms, Covid has minimal long term effect. Until there's much better research that doesn't make sense to me. I'd rather take the known small suffering of wearing a mask and avoiding indoor activities instead of accepting the unknown risk of never being able to code large projects, climb, or hike for the rest of my life.
Once you start extending symptoms to "unverifiable claims made by the patient", it can be very real for the patient, but you can never eliminate the possibility that the mind is creating the symptom, and nothing is physically wrong.
That "fatigue" is one of the most common "long covid" symptoms, for example, is confounded by the fact that fatigue is one of the major symptoms of depression.
The answer of course, is that there is no such thing. Perhaps the fatigue/depression is due to issues with neurotransmitters or the organs that regulate them, neurons, blood oxygen levels, blood-brain barrier issues, brain structure, nerves in other parts of the body, endocrine function, etc.
If we figured out tomorrow that we could treat it with an injection of B vitamins or a pill of serotonin or a session of magnetic therapy or a fecal transplant to change the patient's gut microbiome or whatever new thing, then you could easily point to the "physically wrong" thing which was causing it. But treating "the mind" as a separate, non-physical thing is no different than suggesting some other supernatural, non-physical thing like God or spirits or curses is causing it.
Also, the existence of a treatment no more implies the existence of a physical mechanism than the existence of a placebo implies the existence of magic. Every illness is a mixture of biological and psychological factors, and simply feeling like someone is caring for you can cure even intransigent symptoms.
Is Covid causing depression? Nobody knows. But leaping to the conclusion that it is -- and therefore we must do X,Y or Z in response -- is irresponsible when there's a more parsimonious explanation: people have have just lived through a mass cultural event that is causing a great deal of depression, everywhere.
Brain fog is very real, and I never said it was not.
It's literally there in the second sentence -
"The odds of illness severe enough to warrant hospitalization are dramatically lowered if you stay up to date on your COVID-19 vaccine, including a booster dose."
[1] https://mobile.twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1505262670714322...
Less effective, but not ineffective, especially after a booster.
When I worked in grocery store had crap all the time. Then after having kids went through random sickness every 2 to 3 months. In fact I have 2 doctor visits I can point to pre covid. One in 2016 and one in 2018 when I literally went and was like I've been sick for 2 months. Doctors were like, yea you had some random virus, could take a while to shake it. Just took forever to get over it.
Why is this all the sudden a thing? I know Covid can potentially cause (maybe?) more damage than the Flu/or random colds but did people literally not get sick before Covid? Because it really seems like it.
Also are there studies on people who are hysterical about Covid getting more "Long Covid". I'm not saying there aren't physical symptoms. Definitely lost of taste or distorted taste is a big symptom, but could some symptons be mental too?
In my entire life, I cannot think of anyone I personally know (family, friends, colleagues) who has been seriously ill (either in the short term or long term) due to a cold, cough, or flu.
On the other hand, in just two years of the pandemic, I've personally known several people who have either ended up in hospital with the virus itself, or have persistent problems over a year after infection (e.g. loss of smell).
To make things more concerning, I know of people in their 20s and 30s that have been badly affected by Covid. Not just people who are 55+.
The loss of smell one is going to be huge but that's a side effect of any virus. Maybe what we're seeing here is an insane amount of people getting a virus, not necessarily that it has worse post viral syndrome than any other virus. Either way we're in for a shit show.
Unfortunately, we can't really dwell on Long Covid. We can only do what we can individually to reduce risk and move on. Unless of course we want to live in a bubble the rest of our lives.
Also if related to loss of smell for your friends, I'd recommend them trying scent training. I ordered a kit through here https://abscent.org/learn-us/smell-training. It does seem to help. I'm doing it as a meditation almost and thinking back to past memories with the scent. It's kind of cool.
So you're experience isn't typical; the average person knows more people who suffered of flu.
It (Long COVID) is not suddenly "a thing." It's been talked about for quite some time. I remember first hearing about it in 2020. If you think it's just now a thing, it's because you haven't been paying attention to this.
* https://www.nature.com/articles/s41418-020-0530-3
* https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7322475/
* Study: https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04407390
* https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S147149062...
Anyway, yes, it sucks, the only way I got through it was by reassuring myself that for the vast majority of people issues like brain fog do tend to resolve depending on their underlying cause. I won't lie and say it wasn't scary though. Essentially it deleted three months of my life.
There are at least two orders of magnitude difference in efficacy depending on what type of mask you happen to be wearing and what the fit is[1].
And that's assuming OP is the only party wearing a mask. If all parties are wearing them then it's four orders of magnitude depending on mask type/fit.
I don't know what the actual time-to-infection is for Omicron. But that's quite a spread in mask efficacy to blithely encapsulate with the single word "mask." Given that, I don't think it makes sense to talk about "masks" without specifying which category of mask. It's like talking about "latency" in audio-- unless users prefix it with "round trip" they are almost certain to misunderstand what it is they are measuring and will end up just confusing themselves further.
> It will not, look at a place like South Korea or Singapore to see why that's just not reality.
But OP is OP, not an entire country of citizens. And we already know a subset of citizens called "nurses" can learn to wearing a tight-fitting, uncomfortable NIOSH-approved N95 for extended periods of time. If OP wants to do that when buying groceries, OP will likely lower the risk of infection for themselves. And hell, at some point somebody is probably going to create a decent mask that is both tight-fitting and not so painful to wear. Maybe by that point there will even be a better indication of what the actual time to infection for Omicron is.
At this point, I generally find it more inconvenient to remember the mask than to wear it for extended periods of time, even at the gym doing lifting.
If it gets listed on that site of NIOSH approved masks I'll certainly give it a shot, though.
From the FAQ:
"Are ULTRA FIT™ masks rated as an N95 respirators?"
"No. N95 respirators are intended for healthcare workers and, if used correctly, must be fitted to the user’s face in a specialized process called “fit testing.” A professionally fitted N95 respirator will provide more protection than an ULTRA FIT™ mask but will be much less breathable and much less comfortable than an ULTRA FIT™ mask. N95 respirators are designed for front line healthcare workers looking after COVID patients. N95 masks are not suitable for general community use, because most people will not reliably wear an uncomfortable mask in low risk community settings. ULTRA FIT™ masks are designed for comfort, compliance, and better protection than any other mask for general community use."
But then they go on to show some decent results from their ASTM testing!
They desperately need a copywriter, marketer, or someone else who's going to put a little more thought into what they're communicating.
If you dig deep, it looks legit. On the surface the claims are impressive. But right below the surface— where many scam-averse PPE shoppers will be lurking— you start to see warning signs. They're comparing it to an N95 too much but the qualifiers are awful. That FAQ answer is both condescending in the way scam copy is, and fails to offer any justification for why THEY made the comparison. They don't mention the ASTM certification, let alone the impressive tests results. The only efficacy numbers they show are at the bottom of a linked PDF.
Seems like a good product but a great example of how communication isn't making something look and sound nice. A mask made by two doctors, one also a medical engineer, working in two of the best hospital systems in the country, will look no different than some random factory pressing stuffed animal batting into the shape of KN95 masks without the proper communication.
While 3-6 months is a standard recovery timeline for longer term effects, many people are looking at years or a lifetime of serious effects. I'm close to someone who is still recovering from mono over 2 years later. Their entire life has been upended, their career is over, and most of their passions are now physically impossible.
We're looking at many millions of people of people being temporarily or permanently disabled every year on top of previous contributors like flu, etc. Many people don't have the resources to be exhausted and struggling with cognition for months. How many billions of years of life will collectively be deleted over the coming years? I believe this is worse than we realize, and it's going to get worse sooner than we're ready for.
It's all about adding layers of prevention that each drop your chances of catching it (and its potential severity) by N% each. Get enough of those, and your chances start to look pretty good.
Anecdotally, I was triple vaccinated (2x Moderna + booster), but I still caught covid twice (Aug 2021 and Jan 2022). Both times I had mild brain fog and cold-like symptoms (runny nose and light headache). Both times I recovered completely within 4 or 5 days. I'm a healthy 25 year-old man living in San Francisco, California.
Not trying to imply anything about long-covid, but it hasn't been my experience or that of anyone I personally know.
Links would be appreciated. By all accounts I've heard, for vaccinated people, Omicron (the dominant variant) is like a mild cold.
Omicron appears mild in the statistics because by the time it hit western countries like the US and UK, there was almost nobody left who hasn’t either been vaccinated or exposed to a prior variant, or both.
Countries with low vaccination rates and low prior exposure rates are seeing severity of outcome with Omicron that is comparable to prior variants.
https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1503420660869214213?...
How is that relevant when the complaint is specifically about how "masks aren't mandatory in public in the US"? Vaccines have been freely available in the US for a year, yet the US should mandate masks because other countries have low vaccination rates?
People who have specific concerns about COVID and want to protect themselves (or others) should be encouraged to wear an N95 mask. Cloth and surgical masks should no longer be treated as a valid medical choice.
Yet because 'some guy we know' had it easy, there are a bunch of people hanging around internet forums willing to refute all talk of covid being serious.
Sorry to hear that. Hope you end up finding a way to recover.
> Yet because 'some guy we know' had it easy
I have no idea where you're pulling this from. I wasn't citing you an anecdote I gathered from "some guy I know". I was citing facts that have been circulating all over the news for a while now, along with the relevant hospitalization statistics. And I hadn't heard anything to the contrary. Here's [1] one link:
> In fully vaccinated and/or boosted people, omicron symptoms tend to be mild. In unvaccinated people, symptoms may be quite severe, possibly leading to hospitalization or even death.
[1] https://health.ucdavis.edu/coronavirus/covid-19-information/...
Mild in comparison to other strains of Covid, yes. Tends not to require hospitalisation and has a lower risk of death. It doesn't say 'mild compared to a cold' though. I think it its too early for a study too be able to suggest that Omicron changed the possibility of developing long Covid either.
In regards to identifying yourself as one of the people I was targeting in my comment about 'some guy', I will put that down to a guilty concience.
"Mild compared to a cold" is not what I wrote either. I said it's "like a mild cold" for vaccinated people. "Mild cold" being, you know, what people get all the time: some sore throat/cough/congestion. No high fevers, not bedridden, etc.
If you read the news beyond that one link I pasted above, you'll see what I said is pretty consistent with what has been reported. Here's [1] another one:
> For many people, especially those who are vaccinated and otherwise healthy, Omicron does appear to have relatively mild symptoms, including upper respiratory or cold like symptoms like a runny nose congestion, sneezing, and sore throat—which is relatively common—and headaches. Fever is less common than we’ve seen with other variants, especially in vaccinated people.
[1] https://healthblog.uofmhealth.org/wellness-prevention/omicro...
4 people in my company, my sister and their spouses (so 10 all together) just had Covid in the last 3 weeks. 2 reported mild flu like symptoms, the others range between that and full blown flu. The least affected said it was like a cold but went on for longer. The ones at my company all tried to work through it and all failed to keep a full schedule, despite being the kind of people who might work through a cold.
That's massively understating the effects of vaccination or acquired immunity on hospitalizations for omicron. 3 doses of MRNA are 99% effective, and where it doesn't work there are often other health issues at play.
VE against hospitalization with Delta or Omicron infection after three doses was greater than 99% across the study population. Of the four patients hospitalized with Omicron infections who had received three COVID-19 vaccine doses, all were older than 60 years and had chronic diseases; one had a compromised immune system.
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2022/02/3-covid-...
All the data I’ve seen suggests GP’s claim is accurate. https://www.healio.com/news/infectious-disease/20220201/hosp...
a) demanded hard proof b) presented an anecdote as contradictory evidence
I think you should probably hold yourself to the same standards that you hold others
If we're not going to mandate an effective mask, I honestly don't see what the point of mandates are. It makes as much sense to me as mandating seatbelts and accepting a knitted scarf as an acceptable form of seatbelt.
It's also possible there is more than one mechanism, and that an n95 or equivalent mask with fine enough particulate filter can additionally reduce exposure significantly (initial exposure level also being accepted as having some effect for viruses in general).
So you can look down on people with those fabric masks, but possibly not be completely correct. Honestly though... the whole mask wearing thing is more about trends of what is "socially acceptable" than science. I'm not saying there is no value, but that the forces dictating when most people do or do not wear a mask have very little to do with how well informed they are or on the current accepted understanding having changed, and far more to do with what is considered socially acceptable at the present time... so it's hardly surprising no one particularly cares about the type of mask.
And strapping yourself to your car seat with a knitted scarf might reduce injury risk/severity relative to a person with no seatbelt. That doesn’t mean we should expand the seatbelt mandate to include scarves.
That said even if they were shown to be effective I would still oppose them on basis human rights ground. I do not believe it is the proper role of government in general, and certainly not the US Federal government to mandate what I wear when I leave my home. At most that should be a local matter, but even though I would advocate against it in my local government. However is certainly has no constitutional basis under our system of government for the federal government to impose such a mandate
I hear this as an argument against left and right, but when I ask why it is different from the vaccine requirements for public schools I typically get a "it just is" response. Here's hoping someone might have a better response to why this vaccine is different in that aspect.
There are many things that I think are a good idea, but that I oppose the Federal government taking the power to do. I don't object to my state or city taking that same power.
I doubt that. I couldn't STOP hearing the arguments last year. Not trying to be 'smart', but just believe a minimal effort to understand an opposing view gets you there.
> hoping someone might have a better response
Regarding required vaccines for grade-school kids at public schools in the U.S.:
1. Aren't actually forced. You can opt out in several ways.
2. The diseases they treat have a much higher death/hospitalization and/or transmissibility rate among children.
3. We better understand the diseases they treat.
4. Approvals for vaccines were not given under emergency order.
5. Meet the CDC's pre-2019 definition of 'vaccine'.
6. Side affects are published, well known, and readily available.
That's just off the top of my head. And I assume you and I agree on most things.
I'm glad you don't run things here. We have a constitutional republic that makes it impossible for the federal government to unilaterally mandate such things as masks and vaccines. Biden tried to mandate vaccines through OSHA but the Supreme Court determined that was an overreach.
What kind of masks? Cloth masks are proven to be worthless and only well fitting N95 masks may help prevent infection.
I think what's going to happen is COVID will be less and less damaging as time goes on (like all novel diseases) and we will go on to live our lives as free people.
This isn't the only way the Fed can get things done. For example, the drinking restriction for 21+ is a state level issue strongly encouraged by the Fed. Louisiana tried to hold to 18+ for the longest, but the Fed finally won by threatening to withhold federal funding for highways.
Masks clearly have a measurable impact on mental health. Given what he know about aerosolization and cloth masks, masks are near useless in public spaces.
If we are talking about reducing the populations' micromorts[1] by reducing common freedom, then there are far better things to do. Enforcing helmets for drivers, breathalyzers ($70) as default in cars, banning right-turns on red are all significantly more effective at reducing total deaths than mask enforcement, with much lower costs to a civilization. Similarly, banning certain foods and mandating exercise would massively improve American health outcomes.
I find that 'masks for everyone and everything' have become more of a political rallying call driven by hysteria, than a principled outcome focused measure. It reeks of the same blind faith as those who shout 'trust science' while healthy discourse makes up a fundamental pillar of the process of science.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort#:~:text=A%20micromor....
Bullshit. Citation?
Anecdotally, I have yet to meet a single person IRL over 2 years of the pandemic who enjoys wearing masks. It varies from minor inconvenience to a thorn in your side.
For one, uncontrolled observational studies show that there is pretty strong correlation between the pandemic and depression. [1] In narrow studies, masks are shown to reduce interpersonal trust [2] , ability to evaluate emotions. [3] and might accelerate cognitive decline in older populations [4]
There is an alarming lack of studies directly targeting the mental health impact of masks. I couldn't even find a survey. On one hand, I understand that getting any good self-reported data from the hysterically polarized population is probably futile. I tried to find peer reviewed studies, but I am not a public health / psychiatry professional. On the other hand, silence can be deafening.
Tangentially, my trust in peer reviewed medical research has declined sharply over the pandemic. These folks need statistics, a sophisticated understanding of causality, experiment design and variable control. I can see why many of the best healthcare writers exclusively stick to meta-studies instead of individual studies.
[1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...
[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-96500-7
[3] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.5668...
In direct contradiction to what you say, there are many businesses in red state US who will stop you from wearing a mask if you try to enter.
I live in a red state and have not seen this anywhere.
In fact my state encourages you to do what you want, including wearing a mask or refusing to do so. Nobody will bother you if you are masked.
Or "stop you if you try to enter while wearing a mask"?
Or are you talking about wearing a ski mask inside Idaho Regional Credit Union in July?
Jerks are everywhere. And they exist in blue states too my friend.
> Given what he know about aerosolization and cloth masks, masks are near useless in public spaces.
Both of these claims are false.
Masks have had no proven impact on mental health.[2] Masks have proven to be one of the most effective tools we have for preventing the spread of COVID-19 in public places.[2]
Mask use is science-based, as countless studies have proven. Anti-mask rhetoric is politically- and emotionally-driven hysteria.
[1] "The evidence that we have does not point us to any concern that masks affect mental health negatively." — Jeremy Kendrick, MD, assistant professor of psychiatry, Huntsman Mental Health Institute https://healthcare.utah.edu/healthfeed/postings/2021/08/_mas...
[2] "In settings of very high mask use, in-school transmission of the coronavirus is less than 1%. The best way to protect health and safety—particularly of those that are not vaccinated—is to wear a mask." — Adam Hersh, MD, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at University of Utah Health and Intermountain Primary Children’s Hospital https://healthcare.utah.edu/healthfeed/postings/2021/08/_mas...
I will concede that there has been no peer reviewed study that explicitly tries to identity an association between mask wearing and mental health. Thus, no impact has been measured. It was not for lack of trying to find a study though. There are literally no good studies (from my cursory google scholar peek) that opined one way or the other.
> There is no evidence that a child wearing a mask causes depression or anxiety
But, saying this is not correct either. [1]
> transmission of the coronavirus is less than 1%.
These studies are strongly confounded with city policy, distancing measures, individual measures and odds of being vaccinated. It is really difficult to get exclusive numbers for mask efficacy using observational or questionnaire based studies of any kind.
As for my second claim, please evaluate it in context. Public spaces is usually taken to mean outdoor spaces or high ventilation large indoor spaces. My comments are also in time where covid's fatality has collapsed and hospitals aren't overwhelmed.
Almost every mask study I read makes assumptions of ideal wearing patterns that do not seem to be match real world observations. Even then, they project modest gains when using the most common forms of cloth masks in perfectly covid-favored situations. Vaccines can't ensure zero-covid. Masks can't ensure zero-covid. The end game is that it can become endemic or we wear masks forever.
Masks are 'useless' in the same way that seat-belts in school buses are useless. The risks for the concerned demographic are orders of magnitude lower. The ideal testing scenario is impossible to recreate in practice. It is impossible to enforce compliance. It has knock-on effects that no one seems keen to study. And lastly, if draconian measure are to be used, there are alternatives with greater effectiveness and lower social cost can should be tried first.
[1] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/the-phrase-no-evidence...
I had it in Feb 2020 before it really took off, and I recovered just fine. The reality is that we don’t have the medical technology to stop it. It’s here to stay.
Could this just be due to being indoors and quarantine.
The video explains in detail exactly what I was referring to . . . .
This paper suggests I should visit a physician, but apart from eliminating other causes I start to wonder what the point is?
There is no test to diagnose. There is no recovery timeline. I was simply told "you should get better within 1-5 years" by an endocrinologist. Luckily it took only 12 months to get my life onto track and somewhere around 2-3 years before I was comfortable doing strenous exercise.
If you want to know what to do look at this video by a doctor treating people with covid. There is a host of things you can do to stack the chances in your favor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN30emwcNS4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Zzo4SJopcY
Everyone knows vaccines and masks help, but there seems to be remarkably little being studied about dietary habits/supplements/physical activities that might aid before or after covid.
Anecdotally, my brain fog was lifted pretty quickly once I started taking vitamin D and B-complex, which I just took on a hunch, but I honestly have no idea if it actually helped. Does anyone know of any larger-scale data collection efforts?
The rest of us in the household had the 3rd dose. None of us got covid despite not really following the guidelines for isolation.
Seems like the 3rd dose vaccine was pretty effective for us.
Maybe by sheer luck two out of three could have remained uninfected by omicron without being vaccinated, but I'd be pretty surprised.
Do PCR tests indicate if you've ever been infected? I thought they only indicate if you're currently infected. In fact I'm curious if there is any test that can tell whether you've been infected by any variant of SARS-CoV-2 more than a few months ago; is there?
Antibody tests can determine whether someone was infected previously, and I have heard that there are some that look for antibodies that are associated with infection but not vaccination. I don't know anything more about them than that, but maybe that could provide a thread to help start searching if you are interested in finding out more about them.
> IgG antibodies, including IgG against the S and N proteins, persist for at least several months in most persons, but the precise duration of time that antibodies persist after infection is unknown.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/lab/resources/anti...
Still vaccination reduces, in aggregate, the severity and duration of Omicron illnesses.
So the statement that vaccines prevent infection, can be interpreted both ways.
It's also true that vaccines can also cause illnesses, and again it's nuanced.
"Rare instances" of breakthrough infection? I had been taking the article seriously up to this point, but it lost all credibility when I saw this sentence.
In this article, the long-COVID symptoms include:
- loss of taste and smell, anxiety, depression, insomnia, cognitive dysfunction (brain damage), palpitation, shortness of breath (damage to lungs), loss of appetite, bowel symptoms, permanent acute kidney injury, blood clots, hair loss, rashes, sick euthyroid syndrome
I have yet to read about anyone concluding that Omicron causes long COVID in vaccinated folks. If they have (or anyone else has) evidence indicating this is likely, I would love to hear it. Even the article doesn't claim this is the case.