Discussions
Reply to: The Pandemic is Only Beginning: The Long COVID Disaster Posted August 27, 2023
Reply to: The Pandemic is Only Beginning: The Long COVID Disaster Posted August 19, 2023

Thanks Eric. But you are not characterizing my blog accurately. In particular, this section: Under these assumptions, after 10 years: 40% of people will have had long COVID at some point.30% of people will have active long COVID.7.5% of people will be so disabled from long COVID it will impact their work. To put it in terms of your chart, I’m projecting that the purple line trends up to 40%, the green line trends up to about 30%, and yellow/red line (hard to distinguish between them) trends up to about 7.5% over the next 10 years. I would hesitate to simply take the data we have and project it linearly for several reasons: We don’t have that much data. Note that your yellow/red line only extend back to last September — that’s less than a year of data. Long COVID is challenging to define. A lot of people have it, and don’t know it. Many doctors don’t know what it is or how to diagnose it. I’ve talked to several people in their 30s now who think their brain fog is just “getting old”. Surveys of how many people in a population actually have it will be deeply flawed for this reason. There were restrictions in place until late 2022 in different parts of the world, limiting the number of infections/reinfections. Given that all restrictions have been lifted now, the average number of infections in the years ahead may be greater than the last 3 years. There is a growing body of evidence that reinfections are actually more harmful than initial infections, and may be more likely to cause long COVID than initial infections (see recent study from NIH, CDC communications about the risks of reinfection, etc.). This would actually make the situation much worse. The virus is continuing to mutate at a rapid pace. New variants may be more or less likely to cause long COVID. No one knows. Lastly, I’m an analyst. My projections are, and always will be, wrong. The world is highly uncertain, and the future is unknowable. I try to take data and use it to build some type of model about what the future might look like given the path that we’re headed down. This is in the hopes that people will take this information and use it to help them make informed decisions, knowing that there’s a high degree of uncertainty no matter what. Overall, I especially wish to counter the narrative that’s being relentlessly pushed in the media and by the government that COVID is over, that COVID is a cold, that COVID can be ignored. That’s just not true.

Reply to: The Pandemic is Only Beginning: The Long COVID Disaster Posted August 14, 2023

I’m the author, and would love to be wrong. Can you be clear about how I’m being misleading? The best retorts I’ve heard so far: The vaccine offers better protection against long COVID than 15%. Some studies put at 20-50%. My response: Ok, maybe. Still doesn’t change my point. There may be some magic number of infections where long COVID stops being a risk. For example, if you’ve had 5 infections and do not have long COVID, you are unlikely to ever get it. My response: Sure, but there’s no evidence for this. We don’t have a good understanding of how COVID reinfections affect those with long COVID. The best data I’ve found is that survey. You can imagine a scenario where: someone contracts long COVID, recovers after 2 years, and then never gets long COVID again no matter how many times they’ve been reinfected. That would be great, but there’s no evidence for this. We don’t know that everyone will get COVID once a year forever. Sure, but there’s no evidence for this, and we continue to have surge after surge as the virus continues to mutate.

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Reply to: The Pandemic is Only Beginning: The Long COVID Disaster Posted August 27, 2023
Reply to: The Pandemic is Only Beginning: The Long COVID Disaster Posted August 19, 2023

Thanks Eric. But you are not characterizing my blog accurately. In particular, this section: Under these assumptions, after 10 years: 40% of people will have had long COVID at some point.30% of people will have active long COVID.7.5% of people will be so disabled from long COVID it will impact their work. To put it in terms of your chart, I’m projecting that the purple line trends up to 40%, the green line trends up to about 30%, and yellow/red line (hard to distinguish between them) trends up to about 7.5% over the next 10 years. I would hesitate to simply take the data we have and project it linearly for several reasons: We don’t have that much data. Note that your yellow/red line only extend back to last September — that’s less than a year of data. Long COVID is challenging to define. A lot of people have it, and don’t know it. Many doctors don’t know what it is or how to diagnose it. I’ve talked to several people in their 30s now who think their brain fog is just “getting old”. Surveys of how many people in a population actually have it will be deeply flawed for this reason. There were restrictions in place until late 2022 in different parts of the world, limiting the number of infections/reinfections. Given that all restrictions have been lifted now, the average number of infections in the years ahead may be greater than the last 3 years. There is a growing body of evidence that reinfections are actually more harmful than initial infections, and may be more likely to cause long COVID than initial infections (see recent study from NIH, CDC communications about the risks of reinfection, etc.). This would actually make the situation much worse. The virus is continuing to mutate at a rapid pace. New variants may be more or less likely to cause long COVID. No one knows. Lastly, I’m an analyst. My projections are, and always will be, wrong. The world is highly uncertain, and the future is unknowable. I try to take data and use it to build some type of model about what the future might look like given the path that we’re headed down. This is in the hopes that people will take this information and use it to help them make informed decisions, knowing that there’s a high degree of uncertainty no matter what. Overall, I especially wish to counter the narrative that’s being relentlessly pushed in the media and by the government that COVID is over, that COVID is a cold, that COVID can be ignored. That’s just not true.

Reply to: The Pandemic is Only Beginning: The Long COVID Disaster Posted August 14, 2023

I’m the author, and would love to be wrong. Can you be clear about how I’m being misleading? The best retorts I’ve heard so far: The vaccine offers better protection against long COVID than 15%. Some studies put at 20-50%. My response: Ok, maybe. Still doesn’t change my point. There may be some magic number of infections where long COVID stops being a risk. For example, if you’ve had 5 infections and do not have long COVID, you are unlikely to ever get it. My response: Sure, but there’s no evidence for this. We don’t have a good understanding of how COVID reinfections affect those with long COVID. The best data I’ve found is that survey. You can imagine a scenario where: someone contracts long COVID, recovers after 2 years, and then never gets long COVID again no matter how many times they’ve been reinfected. That would be great, but there’s no evidence for this. We don’t know that everyone will get COVID once a year forever. Sure, but there’s no evidence for this, and we continue to have surge after surge as the virus continues to mutate.