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© 2022 AFPLong COVID symptoms affect one in eight, study suggests
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The requested article has expired, and is no longer available. Any related articles, and user comments are shown below.
© 2022 AFP
19 Comments
Gorramcowboy
These long covid symptoms, are they truly able to attribute them to covid? Some of them are very general run-of-the-mill maladies everyone experiences long before covid was on the scene.
Sven Asai
One in eight? Very optimistic. I have set the parameter to 0.9 in my calculations. Because you know, hoping for the best, but also be ready for the worst.
virusrex
Read the article, is explained very clearly there. These are an excess of people presenting those symptoms compared with people that never had the disease. What other explanation do you imagine is there for this increase of incidence only on people that got covid?
That would be the case also for the people that did not have the problem, and vaccination has been correlated with a lower incidence of long-covid.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01840-0
virusrex
Any of the dozens and dozens of other causes already related to any of the relatively general symptoms. Do you think nobody felt tired, had difficulty breathing or pain in their limbs before the pandemic began?
If the results of the study show a very important increment of those symptoms that means the virus is the cause for those patients. Covid causes an increase of incidence over the background levels in the general population.
Raw Beer
The authors suggest 12.7 % of those who had COVID (1 in 8) suffered from long Covid (chest pain, breathing difficulties, muscle pain, loss of taste and smell, and general fatigue). But 9 % of a control group which did not have COVID reported similar symptoms. And this was before Omicron! And I suspect infected people were not offered safe and effective early treatments....
virusrex
No, that is not what the article reports, 12.7% is the excess of people presenting symptoms above the 9% that would be expected, that means without covid it would be a 8.7%, with covid it becomes 21.4%.
There is nothing to justify those suspicions, everything that has demonstrated efficacy is being offered as a treatment, the drugs you keep trying to push (ivermectin and HCQ) are not offered because they give no benefit for covid patients, even if they are given before the infection, and only increase their risk because of their well known toxicity.
Raw Beer
Yes, that is why I modified the text from the article to make it clearer, and intentionally added "long covid".
The authors suggest that 12.7% of those who had covid suffered from long covid; i.e. as a result of the infection. While 9% had the same symptoms for other reasons (stress, vaccination?,...).
Are you sure about that? I don't mean to be splitting hairs but the way I interpreted it:
With Covid: 21.7%
Without Covid: 9%
Difference: 12.7% (authors suggest this difference is caused by the infection)
virusrex
Your text compares 12.7 and 9%, which is invalid, if you want to present the incidence the correct way would be 8.7 vs 21.4%.
There is no reason to think vaccination would be a significative reason for the symptoms to be present in uninfected individuals. They syndrome included general symptoms that affect people long before covid appeared, obviously also before the vaccines were developed. As the nature reference clearly points out vaccination is correlated with a reduction of the presentation of long covid syndrome, if vaccination was a significant cause the opposite would be observed.
The original source can easily be consulted and clearly says so:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(22)01214-4/fulltext
Raw Beer
It all depends how they are compared. My comments are very clear, they are not invalid. I never described the 12.7% as representing the incidence in the infected group.
You are almost as likely to get the symptoms for other reasons (8.7%) as you are of getting them from the infection (12.7%).
OK, so the above article, on which my comments are based, is wrong...
Anyway, considering that 8.7% of uninfected people also reported these symptoms, should we really be that alarmed about the virus. We might want to look elsewhere...
virusrex
Two different people clearly understood your comparison as wrong. Your representation is misleading since it appears to indicate the 12% as opposed to the 9% of the control group. (12 instead of the expected 9%) The much more clear comparison (21 instead of the expected 9%) clearly points out that the 12% is not the total fraction of infected people that presented symptoms but the extra percentage when compared with the basal number.
No, not as likely, because it represents an increase of almost 50% from the basal numbers. This is a very significative increase, If
It rounds up a number, that is not unusual, seeing the "8.8% vs 21.4%" is usually a very strong hint the source is the original research article, because neither of those numbers are mentioned in this news article.
The experts that take care of public health think this is a very serious threat worth attention and vigilance, that 12% of the people that developed covid will have long lasting health problems is something of importance., this incidence do not replace the normal one, it comes on top of it. A trillion dollars worth of economic losses because of it is not something that can just be left as unimportant either.
Raw Beer
Yes, two JT members misunderstood my comparison, despite my best efforts to make my point clear.
Exactly, "the extra percentage when compared with the basal number" that got the symptoms due to the infection. It's the "1 in 8" that is in the title, why shouldn't I use that number in my comparison. I am talking about the "1 in 8"!
virusrex
As explained before, because your comparison is misleading when you compared the extra percentage as if it was instead of the basal prevalence, not something that come on top of it.
It is the huge difference between:
12% have the symptoms after covid and 9% without covid.
and
an extra 12% have the symptoms after covid on top of the 9% that have them with or without it.
Wick's pencil
He didn't mislead, you misunderstood. Trying reading it again.
Title says "one in eight", not "one in five". Is the title also misleading?
virusrex
The misleading part from the comment is about presenting the "one in eight" in covid patients as if it came instead of the "one in eleven" in uninfected people. In reality for covid patients both cases apply.
Omitting the "extra" or "in top of" is what makes the comment misleading.
A non-misleading way to include both percentages would be to make it clear the 12% do not replace the 8% from the control group. The title is not misleading because it does not present this basal prevalence, so the 12% can easily be understood to be exclusively presented in people that had covid. For example if the title said "long covid affects one in eight covid patients, and one in eleven uninfected people" that would be misleading.
Strangerland
No. "Of those with COVID, over 21 percent had at least one new or severely increased symptom three to five months after becoming infected."
The above quote shows 21% had long covid.
No. "However nearly nine percent of a control group which did not have COVID reported a similar increase."
These people did not catch covid. The calculation they used is that if people without covid report these symptoms at 9% of the population, and people with covid report it at 21%, then 9% of the covid reports are probably just normal life. 21% - almost9% = 12.7%
No, as you can see from the two quotes I provided from the article, the article was correct. You misunderstood it.
Strangerland
No, because the study suggested that one in eight people who catch covid have long covid.