Is that really a problem if asymptomatic cases are less infectious and do not cause much issues to the carrier?
(This is a question, not a statement)
(This is a question, not a statement)
It depends on the purpose of the test.
For example, a trillion dollar question is still long covid. Very significant numbers of people are on disability right now. About 10% of Americans have some form of long covid, and >1% are unable to work due to long covid (or >2% of the workforce). Long covid comes up even with mild and asymptomatic cases, and seems to have a strong autoimmune component. If you're trying to understand where those sorts of symptoms came from, it's good to know whether or not you had covid before they started.
Given that we don't understand what's going on here medically at all, it's not immediately useful, but it may be useful to know as treatments come up. A big part of the reason why I test is simply to know.
There are many other potential purposes one might have for testing too. For example, studies might want to track prevalence of covid in populations. It's good to know, methodologically, what they're tracking.
My own speculation is that it's autoimmune, simple due to having it seen resolved when people were vaccinated. However, "anecdote" is not the plural of "data," and it just as well be unrelated.
There are wonky changes to organs during covid, which many doctors speculate are the root cause.
In either case, I'm unaware of any mainstream theories where paxlovid would be likely to help.
Footnote: That's a 180 turn-around from state-of-the-art science a year or so ago. At the time, we thought there were individuals where it persisted (evidence in immunocompromised), but nothing like this.
Anecdotally, for people I know, it would take six weeks to half a year to resolve.
Like, if I had to bet money on it, I'd wager that "long flu" and even "long cold" are real things that happen at least sometimes, but just haven't gotten much attention (and, to be fair, they might also be less common, or less-commonly-as-severe, if they are real).
Also, n=1, but I had a bout of bacterial laryngitis a few weeks ago (was briefly intubated for elective surgery—apparently this is a common side effect) and I'm still feeling a little breathless/cough-y despite having hacked up every last bit of phlegm and finished a full course of antibiotics. Doesn't seem shocking that my lungs would take a bit to recover, even if the bacteria in question have already cleared out.
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M21-4905
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/replication-attempt-bi...
That’s bizarre. I’m not sure what would cause those numbers regardless of whether long covid is real.
Why?
“According to large population-based surveys, up to 33.7% of the population are affected by an anxiety disorder during their lifetime.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4610617/
published prior to covid
- Had severe memory problems for a few months following covid
- Had severe balance problems for a few months following covid (to the point of falling when walking around the house)
- Basically couldn't talk for a month after a mild covid infection, due to coughing fits (despite having mild/no respiratory symptoms during a very mild covid).
... and so on. These are not psychosomatic symptoms. You can't make up a hoarse voice with an extreme cough.
You can talk to doctors too. This stuff is pretty severe. If your argument was that, rather than 4 million people out on long covid disability, it was, say, 2 million, I'd listen. However, your argument is like someone near the equator arguing snow doesn't exist.
Under/over/misdiagnosis is a thing for a lot of conditions, but that doesn't mean those conditions don't exist.
You'd also be better off citing medical journals than conspiracy web pages with web surveys and sample biases.
It's not to begin treatment. So it is a pretty big problem!
Why, if asymptomatic cases are unlikely to infect others, is a false negative for asymptomatic cases a problem? Doesn't this all boil down to "if you feel sick, stay home, if you don't, don't worry about it?"
Defense-in-depth gives a broad range of tactics, and the goal is to combine enough of them to limit risks.
If you think one risk profile is reasonable, and you're interacting with someone who has a much more conservative profile and putting them at risks they consider unreasonable, you're probably being a dick (and vice-versa). That's not just diseases -- it's everything from gun safety to outdoors safety to sparring.
If you've been exposed to covid, and are asymptomatic, you should take reasonable precautions. For introverts, that might be staying at home. For others, it might be testing. For others, it might be using a high-filtration mask. It sort of depends on your preferences. Asymptomatic spread is pretty common, and it's not unreasonable to try to prevent it.
If you've been exposed to covid and are symptomatic, you should take stronger precautions.
This isn't saying everyone needs to be testing at all times and tests should be 100% effective - some situation require testing, and it'd be nice if it caught asymptomatic covid as well.
It's just funny that you have to mention this is a question even if a question mark exists. It shows how much toxic people got instead of understanding others.
- It's [X]
- Have you considered it might be [X]?
- Is it possible it might be [X]?
- ...
The goal is to not appear overly assertive / confident / arrogant. Once that happens, people start to read subtexts into questions, and all of a sudden, you need disclaimers.
I like direct communications, so I find this obnoxious, but I don't think it's ill-willed or toxic.
You don't have to mention anything and be afraid of what people might say because you don't want toxic behavior towards you.
People need to stop. Read, understand, conclude and write. This is basic communication.
1) In a multicultural setting, words written and words read may carry different meaning. Words carry subtly different meanings, and tones and subtexts need to be translated.
2) Unless one takes 2 hours to draft each email, people will misspeak.
Miscommunications are part of life. Any process needs to account for that.
Excessively-defensive Internet writing style. You have to make everything clear in three different ways and over-explain everything so that careless, poor, or hostile readers won't/can't flame you or derail the conversation over something that isn't even actually true about your post.
See also: disclaiming "in my opinion", sometimes more than once, for things that are obviously opinions, just to keep idiots from going "LOL that's just your opinion but you're stating it as fact" in all your responses. Once you notice this style, it's a can't-unsee kind of thing. Makes reading Web forums frustrating.
This kind of distracting, mealy-mouthed crap is absent from any decent, say, traditional-publishing book or article, but is standard online.
It's worse on HN (which, you'd think the whole "read generously" guidance would counter it pretty well—but no) than most places, but it's common all over. It's a bad way to write, generally, but there's a reason people do it in these kinds of contexts—one reliably draws lots more stupid or angry-for-dumb-reasons responses, when one does not so-write.