The incentives are all messed up for the media to provide a balanced information and with the economic devastation coming down the pipes I think both the flu and COVID will look like a walk in the park.
https://blogs.worldbank.org/developmenttalk/lives-or-livelih...
> Using those somewhat more generous – but still frugal – thresholds, the number of poverty years in the world (235 million) is 54 times the number of lost years.
And yes, without lockdowns things may be even worse, but the fact remains that the biggest impact on lives from this pandemic will likely not be directly from COVID but indirectly from economic devastation.
You say indirectly, I say directly. Even if everything was opened 100% tomorrow, many people are simply not going to go back to what they used to do. The way to avoid economic devastation was/is to deal with covid.
https://neckbeard.xyz/notice/9znbtKqgRaGgwdVxgm
..and the secondary effects of the economic and psychological devastation are pretty bad. I wrote this back in July:
https://battlepenguin.com/politics/secondary-effects/
It's been eight months! We cannot keep living like this. We know now the largest deaths came from a failure to protect the elderly and misusing nursing home facilities (Michigan, Kirkland/Seattle, NYC). We need to do more to protect the elderly, but other people need be able to assume their own risks again.
Most lockdown restrictions have ended in Ecuador. Florida and Mississippi are opening up. Pennsylvanian had a cord order by Stickman to open up, but it's been stayed pending appeal.
Humanity cannot be put into low power mode like a laptop. We are not cogs in a machine that can be stopped and started at will.
[0]: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2251615-is-swedens-coro...
Also, this whole ‘locked up’ straw man is growing tiresome. There is a large gradient between locked up and going out like there is no pandemic.
If politicians choose to do so anyway, they should know that economic devastation can be a very real outcome from going down that path.
If we hadn't politicized the virus every step of the way, we could have adopted some simple mitigation measures that would have already gotten us back to some level of normal. A national strategy of masks and distance could have kept things mostly open/got things re-opened. If people were generally trying to limit the spread, testing and contact tracing would work to control outbreaks.
Instead the US has a patchwork of rules with uncertain national leadership hoping the virus just disappears. All we have done is extend the time we have to deal with this mess, and possibly cause more deaths than necessary.
And, I just saw that the POTUS once again tweets it's just like the flu (which doesn't kill 100k Americans/year), further downplaying and extending how long any COVID recovery will take.
Ultimately, the 'economic devastation' you mention is not from the lockdowns, but our complete ineptitude around dealing with pandemic.
Do we have any reason to believe long covid is a real thing? Is this not just anecdotes being blown up by the media that is generally useless at science reporting?
It’s certainly a real thing :)
There’s many symptoms, but as most articles state, the main one being extreme fatigue, second one is probably brain fog. Another is breathing issues.
When it gets bad for me, I make extreme noises every so often when I sit down, or when I need to take a big breath of air, etc etc Eating can be exhausting - both because you’re spending energy chewing etc, but also you’re not able to breathe as much...
I agree with you, that since it coincided with lockdown, people out of jobs, not being active etc, then it could sometimes be misdiagnosed, but it’s very different and pretty easily spotted.
It feels great to see someone else with a similar experience.
As someone with a history of anxiety with somatic symptoms, I deal with this stuff, even digestive weirdness. How many times over the course of the pandemic have I felt like I can't breath?
I'm keenly aware of my mental health and how it affects me. I know that there are certain states of mind/dispositions that I need to assume in order to feel stable.
In normal times, I go about life and forget about my anxiety because my daily routine is a good distraction.
Maybe this isn't obvious to people without anxiety, but it's clear to me that way too many people are inhabiting unhealthy relationships with danger, fear, anxiety, etc.
And it's sad cause it seems like politics and technology is trapping people in that mindset.
I'm frankly sick and tired of the people condemning others as though it's immoral to not be afraid of COVID. You can understand COVID is potentially dangerous while not really worrying about it.
This is an essential technique for people with anxiety if they ever want to lead a normal and healthy life, but the zeitgeist is full on fire-and-brimestone moral righteousness and preaching if you're not absolutely consumed with fear and anxiety over a virus that almost all people survive.
I don't want to say "long COVID" isn't real especially since there so little understanding about any of this, but I would say it's more likely than not that many people are predisposed to somatic symptoms of anxiety, power of suggestion, etc. especially when large segments of the population are trapped inside for long periods of time and deprived of social activity.
The fatigue was really stange, like pushing my kids on the swing made me pause for strength. And chasing my kids for more than a few steps made me wheeze and gasp for breath.
The fatigue lasted at least a month. And was definitely different than the effects of anxiety that happened later. Especially since exercise tends to be invigorating for me in the face of anxiety.
This isn’t to say that there aren’t also lockdown related health problems conflating the issue, but I have personal reasons to think long covid is a thing, especially when looking at all the system the virus seems to ravage.
I can't tell if you're making a joke but anxiety has all those symptoms and it's obviously increasing and people are talking about it.
Do we have reason to believe that lingering fatigue, cough, etc. is a real thing? We do. Any serious infection can cause these things, and (as quoted in the article) some experts in the area say they're more common and severe than would normally be expected.
Do we have reason to believe that Covid causes some crippling disability that can never be treated or recovered from? Not strong ones, although of course even weak and inconclusive evidence should be investigated with a novel disease.
One thing I don't get is why saying C19 is "Just another Flu" is somehow taken as downplaying the virus. Seasonal Flu kills as many as 600,000 people annually. Do their lives not matter because they are taken by a regular old virus and not a novel coronavirus? And why doesn't the media report on every strain and mutation of the seasonal flu that could cause "long term effects"?
Here is a link for more information on 'excess death': https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid
So, I don't see Covid-19 as "just like the flu".
Covid-19 has been around for less than a year, no vaccine and, with a lockdown and closing our borders, has already killed 3x more than the seasonal flu in the US
So it’s not like the flu
It’s not just another flu. Saying it is is downplaying it.
> Half of people in a study in Dublin still had fatigue 10 weeks after being infected with coronavirus. A third were physically unable to return to work.
> Crucially, doctors found no link between the severity of the infection and fatigue.
Study here: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.29.20164293v... 128 participants (49.5 ± 15 years; 54% female)
[edit] To downvoters, consider that the placebo effect is incredibly strong, much stronger than you give it credit for most likely, and has gotten stronger over time as our faith in medicine has.
A 2014 study showed that placebo was 50% as effective as real migraine medication in treating pain after migraines [1].
Similarly for the nocebo effect. A study showed that 20% of people getting placebo drugs in a clinical trial developed side-effects. The nocebo effect may be even stronger than placebo. [2,3].
I'm not minimizing COVID and I'm not saying these people are "making it up." I'm saying, humans aren't computers, and human viruses aren't computer viruses. It's not a case of X happens to you and the result is deterministically Y. There's a lot more to your subjective experience. Generally the more strongly you believe in a potential range of outcomes, the more likely you are to, basically, get them. COVID anxiety is huge, and some of these "long-haulers" symptoms could easily be nocebo.
If this long-haul syndrome really is nocebo, it opens up potential avenues for treatment.
We need to keep an open mind.
[1] https://www.health.harvard.edu/mental-health/the-power-of-th...
[2] https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/The_nocebo...
* What is the measure of disease severity?
* Is there a correlation between measures of disease severity and anosmia in Covid-19?
* Is there a correlation between disease severity of other viruses that trigger chronic fatigue symptoms and incidences of CFS?
The anosmia question seems relevant if we assume that the virus damages the nervous system.
Be very careful with how you phrase that. Fatigue is very much a physical thing, not psychological. It's just that medically, we have no way to quantify it, so it doesn't show up easily in lab tests. That does NOT mean it doesn't exist, or that it only exists in the head. (edit: and before someone says "lactate", keep in mind that that only measures muscle strain, one of the few forms of fatigue that we do know how to measure)
How people experience fatigue has a psychological component, but saying to someone who has been fatigued for years that their issues are predominantly psychological is very dismissive. Odds are they've been hearing that from their physicians for a long time already.
Source: https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-more-than-half-of-cov...
So anywhere from 0.5% up to 2% seems to be the plausible range, which of course can differ depending on your age.
So I'm not sure why that article gives you the impression that any more than 2% is implausible.
When I see a medical journal article with n~150 saying that 50% experience fatigue after ~70 days, and an app reports that self-reported "symptoms" (may not be asking about fatigue?) are below 2% after 90 days, my takeaway is that much more data is needed because it could be that "a lot of people have long-lasting side-effects".
Think about if you (or a young healthy family member) tested positive and felt mostly fine for a week or two.
After reading both of the above, I'd be concerned that there's a decent chance (1%-60%?) that you'd be worse off in some way for a long time, possibly the rest of your life.
I had covid middle of March, and am maybe 50% energy most days, and have to do massive breaths every so often. After 7 months of “recovery”?! I don’t know if I’m even getting better... yeah extreme fatigue, brain fog, eating can be exhausting...
OTOH, A lot of people came out of it far worse...
But it seems to be rare enough that it is hard to establish a causal link / study it properly.
I wonder if there could be some common cause? Perhaps also common to CFS?
I'm not sure how common symptomatic mono is, but I suspect it (along with some things like maybe pneumonia and bronchitis?) is a good reference point.
How was your bout with mono? I recall having tonsils so swollen I was afraid I'd have to go to the hospital for a few days, and then being perpetually exhausted for ~6-8 weeks.
The article also highlights a study[1] finding over 50% suffered fatigue after 10 weeks and 33% were physically unfit to work. From that study:
> There was no association between COVID-19 severity (need for inpatient admission, supplemental oxygen or critical care) and fatigue following COVID-19
[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-britai...
[1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.29.20164293v...
Since we're all different, and will all fight viruses in different ways and strengths (depending on health/existing cnditions etc.), there'll be so many variations in how much of a 'toll' fighting it has taken on our bodies (and minds).
Since this ia a 'novel' virus, we can only really base any conlusions on the empirical evidence as it comes in.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vWaawiUteM
If your take is that Sars is just another flu, then I guess you just broadened the scope of the flu, and need to be open for the idea that the 'flu' could be more dangerous than you thought.
We do designate strains of influenza transmitted from animals (and indeed other coronaviruses transmitted from animals) as novel threats.
There are potential long term effects from most infections, especially in the elderly. Other infections can cause long term problems, and it's still super early for COVID to talk about long term effects. I remember getting pneumonia in my twenties and it taking 3 months for my lungs to fully recover.
We still don't understand exactly what happens with Lymes Disease. Is the immune system left in a state where it's continually fighting/reacting to an infection that's no longer present?
The 1976 swine flu vaccine also may have cause neurological issues for up to 4,000 of the millions who received it[1]. Would they have had the same symptoms from an actual infection from the flu? Potentially. It'd difficult to know, but people do have long term issues from other viruses, especially if they're older or have other underlying health conditions. It's not unprecedented.
[0]: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2768351
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bOHYZhL0WQ (60 Minutes)
One does wonder about the 'nocebo' factor, too - if you've been told to watch out for lingering symptoms are an infection that certainly affects the way in which you are observing your own body, especially so if you're even minimally hypochondriac. There is an understandable media narrative to portray mostly severe cases (again, understandable from some sort of public health perspective) but that also adds to psychological add-on effects one might face with this disease.
I'm in no way part of the just-the-flu crew, but feel that the OMG-COVID crew hasn't necessarily thought the above aspects through either.