Long Covid happens in 4% of infections | Hacker News Reader

Long Covid happens in 4% of infections

yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com

45 pointsapwheele21 comments

I wish there was more research in hearing damage caused by COVID. I've always had weaker ears, tubes as a child, frequent inner-ear infections.

And COVID pushed me over the edge. 24/7 screaming tinnitus.

Not to get too personal, but how's your blood pressure? If you have a cuff, may I suggest taking a reading when it's really bothersome. FWIW, I think COVID-HBP-Tinnitus is linked somehow.

Nothing personal about it. I wish more people shared their COVID journey.

My blood pressure is fine. When this all started I was a super healthy guy. That said, I am on ADHD medication, but regardless of whether I take them or not, the beep is there. Even if I don't take them for multiple days.

(I had hip surgery recently, so I put on some pounds).

And I'll get a cuff. Thanks for suggesting.

My tinnitus greatly increased along with my diastolic pressure post COVID. Correlation? Maybe.

I hope you find some relief.

The claim is that long covid happens in 4% of infections.

The article links to a study as proof of this. The study is based on "self-reported long COVID" data.

So, once again, zero scientific evidence for long covid, only that people reported that they thought they had long covid.

If you want to look to more objective measures, since late 2021 there has been a ICD code assigned to long Covid (so it is diagnosed by a medical professional, not self report).

For example, https://www.dovepress.com/positive-predictive-value-of-the-i..., A Danish cohort of over 20k people that had a positive Covid test, 1.4% have subsequently been diagnosed with long Covid.

Now, you could continue to be really skeptical (are these really Covid related, or would these have happened absent Covid?). To say zero scientific evidence though seems to me to be sticking your head in the sand.

I’m sure some post-viral syndrome characteristic of Covid exists, but a diagnostic code does not a diseass make.

A brief look through the history of those ICD and DSM codes emphasize how their are sorts of factors that go into establishing, revising, and retracting codes — political, administrative, clinical, epidemiological, etc etc

In fact, it’s normal for a code to show up as a bucket to help broadly track purported cases well before any etiological basis or scientific consensus is established. The codes are more of an input to science than an output.

Is there zero evidence? No, of course not. However, the amount of evidence is so ridiculously skimpy, even after multiple years of study, that at this point I have no interest in entertaining the idea.

Really? https://www.science.org/content/article/blood-abnormalities-...

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome has a similar link to other viruses and fibromyalgia quite possibly does as well. They haven't really made a whole lot of progress on those for decades despite them each affecting a percent or two of the population..

My interest is less in long covid than in whether the medical community is finally going to get itself together on viral induced damage instead of making up funny names for different combinations of damage.

Do you have a suggestion for an objective test a physician can do to cover the breadth of symptoms that have been reported?

I think they need a better definition of what 'long covid' is .. and even in the article they even also refer to 'severe long covid'

.. and that these could get better after 7 months?

I know it took me about a year and a half to recover.. I guess that puts me in the 'long covid' group although I have never really been diagnosed as such.. probably just due to my age and ability to 'deal' with it. (compared to older people)

I imagine the numbers are probably higher than they suggest because I imagine most people who are sufferers are also just 'dealing' with it on their own.

To support this anecdatally, I had severe pneumonia Senior Year in High School. Absolutely wrecked my health and athletic ability for years — and I was an active runner and participant in various combat sports.

Severe infections and diseases wreck your body in the same way a car crash or a serious athletic injury does. It leaves a mark on the body.

Long Covid seems real enough and we should do more to find ways to combat it from onset — I am afraid the current sufferers might only find mitigations and not total solutions.

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