[HN Gopher] Cognitive deficits in people who have recovered from...
___________________________________________________________________
Cognitive deficits in people who have recovered from Covid-19
Author : erentz
Score : 228 points
Date : 2021-07-24 09:33 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thelancet.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thelancet.com)
| rob_c wrote:
| FYI: the lancet has unfortunately become a rather alarmist
| journal of late. There are several articles citing "bbc.co.uk" as
| fact which is similar to a Russian source citing "rt.com". Those
| articles in turn getting cited by the beeb in the uk to publish
| daily mail style FUD headlines which are quickly buried on the
| site.
|
| Ignoring this, I think most other comments cover the fact that
| this study has the normal problem with this type of study. Poor
| stats which aren't statistically corrected for the subset the
| population who end up in hospital due to covid. (or again the
| subset with symptoms strong enough to be tested and diagnosed)
|
| The "its just a flu" crowd have unfortunate points that many
| conditions sound like immunological effects brought on by a
| severe reaction to a virus in some way. Yes this is a different
| flu, but again we know this is not smallpocks or ebola and we
| should be taking advantage of this to determine the poorly
| understood impacts of covid virii on long term health of those
| who end up sick.
| viraptor wrote:
| > which aren't statistically corrected for the subset the
| population who end up in hospital due to covid
|
| What subset do you mean?
| rob_c wrote:
| Not everyone in the pre-vaccine world would have ended up on
| a ventilator due to covid.
|
| If the was a subset of the population who are at risk due to
| covid. (other than the over 80s the sake of argument). Its
| difficult to know how much an impact on this subset the virus
| will be having. Its easiest to assess this by looking at
| those of the population on who did end up in hospital and
| trying to determine common effects by looking at those who
| contacted them and comparing the probabilities.
|
| Ultimately the end goal is to infer how much of a risk impact
| this would/could have on the total population.
|
| Failing to correct for the statistical population differences
| before making an inference is akin to saying A&E centers in
| the US or the EU are great for preventing tiger attacks. They
| don't treat it due to there not being so many tigers.
|
| Again reporting on the worst case scenario for the virus
| impact on over 80s as being something that would/could impact
| 8yo people is obviously incorrect and potentially dishonest.
| viraptor wrote:
| I think you expect more from the study than it explicitly
| says.
|
| From the abstract: "Interpretation. These results accord
| with reports of 'Long Covid' cognitive symptoms that
| persist into the early-chronic phase. They should act as a
| clarion call for further research with longitudinal and
| neuroimaging cohorts..."
|
| Yes, the impact and recovery will be different between
| those people. They didn't intend the paper to be a complete
| answer and with the method they used, it would be
| impossible to achieve. What you ask for is interesting and
| I hope other papers will be published digging deeper, but
| why not accept this result for what it is?
| rob_c wrote:
| Again, hence my warning about the quality of the lancet
| and how the published result will be interpreted.
|
| It's no different from a theorist publishing on arxiv "an
| analysis on the chances of the lhc destorying the solar
| system" vs "micro singularity formation cross sectional
| calculations for 7TeV".
|
| The ultimate "further study needed" has become a comical
| tag line for poor stats and might as well be "chances of
| covid leading to me winning the lottery". Both are valid
| questions, but they have clear implications beyond
| enhancing scientific rigour.
| viraptor wrote:
| > and how the published result will be interpreted.
|
| I think we lost that long time ago when news started
| hyping up any study containing "cancer" and reporting
| their ideas as "researchers say".
|
| The best we can do is discuss details as we do here, but
| without the hyperbole. There are claims made by the study
| and there are things not done in it. (whether missed or
| not possible to do from the data) Let's acknowledge them.
| But I think the "winning the lottery" is just going ad
| absurdum. If you'd like to see the split of impact for
| smaller groups, it will have to come from another paper.
| But it doesn't make this paper wrong or show "poor
| stats".
| rob_c wrote:
| I'm sorry, but I strongly, firmly, believe with evidence
| based research to back my concerns that this is a large
| amount of alarmist research which at best is to cash in
| on readily available covid money. I unfortunately believe
| this to be shortsighted and ultimately unethical.
|
| This is a virus from the covid family.
|
| What reasonable assumption should lead us to suspect it
| behaves so strongly asymptomatically as to cause severe
| hitherto unheard of side effects compared to say "bird-
| flu"?
|
| I am very much up for caution and as I say I very much
| welcome a renewed effort to say compare long term flu
| effects and things like cronif fatigue. But I think
| writing about evidence being inconclusive vs "there is no
| evidence to suggest" are strongly different lines for a
| journal which knows has the attention of a major global
| news source.
|
| This is the difference between publishing this in nature
| and saying "more research needed" rather than "cautiously
| there is no strong evidence for".
|
| In not invoking ad-abusurdism I'm highlighting mixing 2
| statistically unlikely events can reveal unfortunate data
| points which incorrectly leads to the wrong result. If I
| caught the lottery after being diagnosed I could say I've
| strong evidence for when I don't. This is no different to
| getting cancer after being diagnosed and blaming cancer
| on covid from 1 case.
|
| We are in vaccine autism territory again with long term
| covid studies and I just hope that the research community
| (not an individual researcher) and the media tred
| carefully. So far they have both been rather like a bull
| in a china shop with their subtleties.
| mellosouls wrote:
| _There are several articles citing "bbc.co.uk" as fact which is
| similar to a Russian source citing "rt.com"._
|
| Not remotely similar; whatever their flaws, the BBC is still
| internationally respected for impartiality and professionalism,
| and the UK is still a country that values the freedom of ideas
| and expression of them.
| pydry wrote:
| >BBC is still internationally respected for impartiality and
| professionalism
|
| It may still hold some latent respect from the pre-david
| kelly days but it has fully transitioned to being an rt-like
| government mouthpiece.
|
| A recent yougov poll found the british public considered them
| among the least trustworthy media outlets.
| rob_c wrote:
| I'm sorry but frankly no. You are so demonstrably incorrect
| on this assertion.
|
| There are many areas where RT report really well and have
| been rewarded. I however wouldn't ever trust them as a
| reputable source of the status of the Russian vaccination
| program or Russian voting.
|
| Frankly this is common sense, read the foreign reporting on
| any issue in a country to balance what is correct and what is
| being magnipulated regardless of who is reporting on it. This
| is how grown ups are supposed to use the Internet rather than
| falling into a bubble of trusting 3or4 sites as gospel.
|
| The same way I would be weary of the BBC reporting on any
| topic remotely close to the political arena in the uk at the
| time.
|
| The beeb are getting demonstrably concerningly biased their
| manipulation or changes to page ranking within their site.
| They regularly do publish quoting lancet pages without
| directly linking to them, the story then falls out of the
| ranking within 24hr and the external index engines struggle
| to find the static published content they still have. It's
| they're it's "just gone". This is not a result of reasonable
| reporting or sensible journalism. When the article is
| mistitled for clicks this is even worse.
|
| I'm being nice to aunty beeb here. I want it to exist. But
| pretending it's currently an infallable entity and is
| unbiased is an insult to its heritage.
| mellosouls wrote:
| Me: _whatever their flaws..._
|
| You: _But pretending it 's currently an infallable
| entity..._
|
| Completely not what I said.
|
| Seriously, you should be more careful with your words:
| twice wide of the mark now - in just two comments.
| rob_c wrote:
| Impartiality and professionalism with a global context is
| a bit of an absolutist statement.
|
| They're an award winning news organisation with
| international respect and something worth being proud of
| certainly, but they're far from globally impartial or
| completely professional.
| 100011 wrote:
| They did not have the bravery to control for race. You might as
| well throw it in the trash, it is already politically colored
| junk.
| viraptor wrote:
| Are you implying that covid infections depend on the race? If
| not then controlling for socio-economic attributes should
| fulfill the role that you'd often see approximated via race.
| And if yes - could you link a relevant paper?
| murgindrag wrote:
| They did control for race.
|
| And no, controlling for socio-economic attributes does not
| fulfill the role "approximated via race."
|
| Statistically, racial differences tend to include:
|
| - Cultural differences, including preferences for field-of-
| work, family structure, socialization patterns, etc., all of
| which affects R0
|
| - Economic differences (e.g. Does one need to take a Tylenol
| and show up to work even when sick?)
|
| - In some cases, medical differences (e.g. vitamin D, which
| appears to play a major role in COVID19)
|
| - Geographic differences (communities tend to segregate by
| race, and outbreaks are geographic in nature)
|
| - Trust of institutions (which impacts vaccination, testing,
| and treatment rates)
|
| ... and so on.
|
| This is about group-level statistics, and isn't helpful with
| individuals.
|
| But if you're doing a population study, yes, this is an
| important control.
| tpxl wrote:
| > In some cases, medical differences
|
| Sickle cell disease is an example of this, as it mostly
| appears in black people ("Sub-saharan descent").
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sickle_cell_disease
| murgindrag wrote:
| I like vitamin D since we have a clear mechanism-of-
| action specifically for COVID19:
|
| - We adapt skin color based on latitude to maintain
| vitamin D levels and prevent sunburns at different levels
| of sun exposure.
|
| - At this point, we have incredible strong correlations
| between vitamin D and COVID19 outcomes.
| maweki wrote:
| They tried to control for uneven sociodemographic distribution
| of virus prevalence. Why would explicitly controlling for race
| be any more useful than that?
| 100011 wrote:
| The question was about COVID's effects on IQ. For example,
| there's a consistent one standard deviation IQ difference
| between Whites and Africa-Americans. Feel like it should be
| an important factor to get the better signal rather than a
| proxy (education) out there when talking about effects on IQ.
| [deleted]
| mrob wrote:
| The controlled for "racial-ethnic group". How does this differ?
| mushufasa wrote:
| I didn't see a regression table in the paper. Did I miss
| something?
|
| It just looked like a series of graphs and summary statistic
| tables.
| stjo wrote:
| The paper has a paragraph or two dedicated to the software used:
|
| > All Cognitron tests were programmed in HTML5 with JavaScript by
| AH and WT. They were hosted on a custom server system (Cognitron)
| on the Amazon EC2 that can support diverse studies via custom
| websites. The server system was specifically developed to handle
| spikey acquisition profiles that are characteristic of main-
| stream media collaborative studies, fitting the number of server
| instances in an automated manner to rapid changes in demand.
| Here, maximum concurrent participants landing on the website
| information page was ~36,000, with this occurring at the point of
| the documentary airing on BBC2 in May.
|
| Why wouldn't they also publish the source code? I took a couple
| of minutes to play with the test and I think I found some bugs. I
| would love to check myself. Isn't it quite important to audit the
| source code, given that it is the thing that collected the data?
| xyst wrote:
| When a person(s) says they programmed it in HTLM5, you know
| they fucked up.
| chriswalz wrote:
| If they don't share it we can safely assume it's shitty
| rob_c wrote:
| It almost certainly is. And that's not entirely awful its a
| tool used by scientists to do work.
|
| (it is inexcusable in 2021 in my personal opinion, but in
| many ways science is still in the dark ages wrt some of the
| tools being used, just as the ML community is learning a lot
| about things like reproducability and falsafiability from
| scientists with experience here)
|
| I just with the community would share code more to prevent
| common mistakes and repeated effort and so we can all learn.
|
| Imagine a world with publically well documented code that
| helps people learn science rather than scientists having to
| teach coders what they want and codes having to teach
| scientists intracasies of languages and hardware choices.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Since COVID will become endemic like HIV, I wonder if the average
| IQ around the works will experience a measurable downwards blip.
|
| It's interesting that this will likely contribute to further
| inequality as the rich had access to vaccines first and the
| uneducated are more likely to be skeptical of vaccines (note:
| everyone is skeptical, but the domain of skepticism is different
| for people depending on political leanings).
| guerrilla wrote:
| Could also do the opposite as anti-medicine people are killed
| off. We'll see.
| ryandrake wrote:
| You're getting downvoted for snark, and it's a morbid
| thought, but it might be true. In places where the vaccine is
| readily available and statistically only the unvaccinated are
| dying, you'd expect the population's average intelligence to
| increase as people die of the disease.
| [deleted]
| mythrwy wrote:
| Assuming they are wrong about their reasons for refusing the
| vax. Otherwise the reverse.
|
| But really so few people of reproductive age die of the
| disease anyway it's unlikely to produce much effect.
| [deleted]
| irrational wrote:
| Has anyone heard of weight related COVID issues? I know of 2
| people who's weight ballooned immediately post COVID despite not
| changing eating or exercise habits and despite a year passing
| they haven't been able to lose any weight and doctors haven't
| been able to figure out why.
| blindmute wrote:
| I would hazard a guess that it's because their calories
| consumed is exceeding their calories used. I would recommend
| for them to eat fewer calories
| Aachen wrote:
| _That 's_ the secret that GP says doctors haven't been able
| to figure out..?
| calsy wrote:
| Are there ever any hopeful reports published about Covid-19. It's
| just one constant miserable study after another in the news. Yeah
| we get it we need to be hiding under our beds in fear of the
| invisible entity that could strike. It is relentless, obviously
| people just cant get enough of it cause it has been front page
| news for 1 1/2 years now.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| In the UK were almost 70% vaccinated (adults, 2 jabs). So it's
| getting back to BAU here.
| dmix wrote:
| Canada had 47 million vaccinations (so ~23M if we're assume 2
| doses) with a total population of 37M. Google says "at least
| one dose" is 70% while "2 doses" is 54.4% of the population.
|
| People are definitely taking the vaccination program
| seriously. The big question now is getting the final long
| tail vaccinated. While obviously there will be a subset which
| will always resist it.
|
| The numbers coming out of the US show 99% of the deaths are
| unvaccinated people along with 97% of people hospitalized.
| makomk wrote:
| The numbers coming out of the US are not representative of
| what other countries have been seeing. Apparently it's more
| like 60% of people who're hospitalized that are
| unvaccinated in the UK, for example, and that's pretty in
| line with other countries with reasonably successful
| vaccination campaigns.
| calsy wrote:
| In Australia I believe its around 13.6% vaccinated at this
| stage. If we were able to match the UK vaccination numbers at
| this moment, we would be a shining example of managing CovID.
| But we screwed up, we dropped the ball on vaccinations and
| pretended we could continue to keep Covid at bay
| indefinitely, and failed.
| blindmute wrote:
| This study is honestly quite hopeful. For the last year we've
| been bombarded with propaganda that long covid is going to
| cause brain damage and turn you into a fogged up idiot. This
| study which is not even controlled or pre-post tested at all,
| and which is primed to show worse effects than the truth due to
| placebo effects, shows less than 1 IQ point loss for people who
| don't need hospitalization. Compared to what doomers want us to
| believe, this is great news.
| [deleted]
| gccs wrote:
| Hahahaa. The media sells you fear because they know it will
| keep you tuned in. It doesn't matter what thr current 'issue'
| is. They will always sell whatever will most likely keep you
| coming back.
|
| News is pure entertainment. Its like a horror movie.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| It's more than the media. The politicians (at least in my
| country, France) are using it to take much more power than a
| democracy should ever allow.
| bsaul wrote:
| the most alarming thing in france is that almost everyone
| in the middle/upper social groups is completely convinced
| the government is right and that it's worth it (aka : it'll
| get us rid of covid).
|
| The only people worried about constitution at the moment
| are weirdos, extremists, and a very small number of people
| genuinly concerned about human rights in their own country.
|
| I'm more and more seing this covid period as a perfect
| example on how this country could turn into a totalitarian
| regime as long as it's for the good cause(tm). It also
| another example on how china is definitely becoming a major
| cultural influence over the world.
| Method-X wrote:
| Same for Canada.
| calsy wrote:
| I believe it is much larger number of people who have
| reasoned concerns about the governments approach.
|
| The narrative being pushed to us is anyone who might have
| a different opinion to that of the authorities is a
| 'weirdo' or 'conspiracy theorist'. At any protest, the
| media will always show that 'anti-vax, bill gates
| conspiracy' guy holding up his sign and lumping everyone
| into that group. The majority of those protesting are
| rational people worried about their jobs, their
| businesses closing, their children's education and what
| the economic fallout will do to basic services like
| health, education, infrastructure.
| [deleted]
| bequanna wrote:
| In the US we have seen unelected people in previously
| ignored roles relish the new found attention and power they
| have received.
|
| Pointless lockdowns with arbitrary milestones that they are
| able to prescribe, daily zoom briefings where all eyes are
| on them as they explain "the science".
|
| For many, this is their 15 minutes of fame. Don't expect
| them to give up that power and pseudo-celebrity easily. The
| attempts to scare and bully people will get more desperate
| as these people see their time in the spotlight coming to
| an end.
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| Yes, there are regular hopeful reports published about
| vaccination and other measures reducing deaths and illness.
| calsy wrote:
| The majority of reports regarding vaccination are those
| chastising anyone who hasn't dared got their shot yet along
| with continued threats of restrictions to our lives until an
| almost impossible target is met in the near future. Those
| 'other measures' that include lockdowns, limited social
| interaction and financial hardship are not positive at all.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| Why is the target impossible? We have had successful
| nationwide vaccine programs in the past. Polio is a distant
| memory because of this.
| calsy wrote:
| How long did it take for polio vaccinations to reach the
| target set for the Covid thresholds and are we willing to
| accept the threat of restrictions to our lives until
| then?
|
| To meet these targets the majority of children must be
| vaccinated. Between the low risk posed to children and
| the governments (that's Australia btw) horrible mixed
| messaging regarding age groups and vaccination, a large
| portion of parents will be reluctant to vaccinate their
| children.
|
| So whats the current approach to getting those
| vaccination numbers up? Just keep ramming home the fear
| of covid and restrictions while naming and shaming all
| who are ruining life for everybody. I wonder how that
| will go?
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| I only asked why the target is impossible.
| calsy wrote:
| Never said the target was impossible, I said it was
| impossible 'in the near future'.
| rob_c wrote:
| Yes but the magical news stats from "experts" say I could die
| if I crossed the road without looking so I'll stay at home and
| order off amazon... </wishingiwasjoking>
| rsynnott wrote:
| > Are there ever any hopeful reports published about Covid-19
|
| Vaccine administration data (about 31 million doses are
| currently being administered per day, and production continues
| to ramp).
|
| Like, I'm not sure what you're looking for. No-one is going to
| publish a (credible) report saying "actually, covid is nice".
| The main avenue for hope is vaccination, and while that's not
| going perfectly, if you told someone in May 2020 that by July
| 2021 we'd have administered 3.8 billion vaccines, they would
| probably have been very sceptical, to say the least. It is the
| most rapid vaccine programme in history.
| detaro wrote:
| Just what I've seen _today_ in the news:
|
| - positive study results validating stretched vaccine schedules
|
| - more and easier vaccine availability locally
|
| - infection rate in the region trending slightly downwards
|
| - some new theories/results (didn't read the full article)
| regarding immunity in children
|
| - some signs vaccine scepticism in some US states is decreasing
| graeme wrote:
| Certainly. There was a study on low long term impacts on
| children for example.
|
| Bad news spreads easier than good. The news is mostly bad but
| some good news is what I mentioned above + high vaccine
| efficacy against severe disease.
|
| How vaccines affect long covid type stuff is a big open
| question, but early doctor anecdotes suggest they lower it.
| That would be great news.
| zug_zug wrote:
| I want to believe this, however, as far as I can tell, the design
| finds a correlation between severity of covid and IQ. One other
| possible explanation is that healthy immune system correlates
| both with lesser covid symptoms and higher IQ (less
| inflammation/whatever).
|
| As another comment has mentioned, the best way to try to measure
| for this would be to have a pre-post, which could only be done on
| those who hadn't had it yet at the time of the first test but
| then later got at. Since vaccines are now a factor, and may
| correlate to intelligence, the study may not be possible in an
| ethical manner.
| roenxi wrote:
| The question I'm interested in: What are the general cognitive
| deficits in the population caused by disease?
|
| The evidence I've been reading the last decade+ suggests that
| disease is much more damaging than is generally acknowledged.
| But, as shown by the coronavirus, the costs of stopping (or, more
| realistically, delaying) them are huge. I'm wondering if, in my
| lifetime, we're going to see a plan for dealing with Herpes.
| murgindrag wrote:
| > But, as shown by the coronavirus, the costs of stopping (or,
| more realistically, delaying) them are huge
|
| If we all wore $2 N95-equivalent masks, spread out 6 feet
| whenever convenient, did outside whatever can be done outside,
| and received a vaccine at (roughly) the same time, COVID19
| would be gone.
|
| The costs are huge because we made them huge.
|
| We ignore COVID19 when case counts are low, giving it a chance
| to mutate and spread. We take extreme measures when hospitals
| start filling up, shutting down schools and businesses.
|
| See Korea, China, Taiwan, etc. for examples of reasonable-cost
| ways to control COVID19.
| roenxi wrote:
| Well, yeah. Pretty much all problems humans face are caused
| by humans. And death, which is still forced on us by the laws
| of entropy.
|
| You'll find that the systems that can force the unwilling to
| buy $2 masks, spread out 6 feet and get vaccinated are worse
| than the disease. If you recognise that the government can
| compel people to be healthy it opens up some terrifying cans
| of worms.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| It's not about compelling others to be healthy, it's about
| preventing you from infecting others.
| murgindrag wrote:
| I think it depends on how it's done.
|
| I'd like to see this implemented with roughly the same
| systems which make me wear a bicycle helmet, a seatbelt, or
| have turn signals, which I don't find so scary.
|
| In these systems, you have a law. You have law enforcement.
| Law enforcement doesn't catch everyone, and doesn't have
| particularly aggressive police powers.
|
| I'm fearful it will be implemented with the same systems
| which make us register guns and have background checks,
| track bank transfers over $10,000, check IDs when buying
| cold medicine, or track us as we travel.
|
| In these systems, you have law enforcement. Enforcement is
| given tools to track and monitor what people do just in
| case someone might be a criminal.
| roenxi wrote:
| > I'd like to see this implemented with roughly the same
| systems which make me wear a bicycle helmet, a seatbelt,
| or have turn signals, which I don't find so scary.
|
| There is a big difference between those and mandatory
| vaccinations. If you're going to vaccinate everyone then
| it isn't like people can choose to opt out. Plus the
| logistical issues of how to vaccinate foreigners.
|
| In Australia, Sydney is currently in lockdown because it
| turns out that masks & social distancing can't be
| enforced enough to contain a COVID outbreak.
| murgindrag wrote:
| I'm not quite sure I see the difference.
|
| You pass a law:
|
| - Requiring vaccinations, or a $800 fine
|
| - Permitting private venues to verify vaccination status
| by looking at vaccine cards (e.g. employers, concerts,
| etc.)
|
| - Make it a crime to forge vaccine cards
|
| - International travel already has yellow vaccine books,
| and it's well-established to check vaccines upon entry
| to/from high-risk countries
|
| You don't implement any infrastructure to track
| vaccinations. I show my vaccine card when I enter a
| concert, same as I do when ordering alcohol. No one
| records anything.
|
| The bar for intentionally breaking laws is much higher
| than not getting a vaccine. I think most people will
| follow laws voluntarily. Most of the ones who don't
| follow the law won't get caught, but a few will.
| Tarsul wrote:
| the results hint at your question:
|
| "The scale of the observed deficit [of people who had covid]
| was not insubstantial; the 0.47 SD global composite score
| reduction for the hospitalized with ventilator sub-group was
| greater than the average 10-year decline in global performance
| between the ages of 20 to 70 within this dataset. _It was
| larger than the mean deficit of 480 people who indicated they
| had previously suffered a stroke (-0.24SDs)_ and the 998 who
| reported learning disabilities (-0.38SDs). For comparison, in a
| classic intelligence test, 0.47 SDs equates to a 7-point
| difference in IQ. " edit: well, on further thought, a stroke is
| not the same as a disease but still there's insight here.
| zaroth wrote:
| It's not 7 points reduction for anyone who had COVID, I think
| that's specific to cases which had to be on a ventilator.
| etherio wrote:
| Another selfish question: do we know if this cognitive deficit is
| also found in teenagers who contracted the virus?
| murgindrag wrote:
| Preliminary evidence: Yes.
|
| https://s3.amazonaws.com/media2.fairhealth.org/whitepaper/as...
| slickrick216 wrote:
| Regrettably cynical view but I've seen first hand 3 people use
| long covid symptoms to extend pandemic related benefits which are
| paying at a rate approximate to their past/current jobs.
|
| At both the micro and macro level there are perverse incentives
| beginning to form that will make this thing roll on longer than
| it has too
| OliverM wrote:
| Incidental bad actors don't invalidate the entire approach of
| safeguarding people's livelihoods. The 3 people you describe
| would likely try to exploit any system unfairly. The perfect is
| the enemy of the good here as in most other places.
| slickrick216 wrote:
| Yeah agreed they would and do. I'm not saying it invalidates
| anything but what this may indicate is inflated numbers which
| in the current situation causes overreaction.
| resoluteteeth wrote:
| None of the pandemic benefits in the US required people to
| claim to have long covid symptoms.
| slickrick216 wrote:
| Not everyone using HN lives in the US.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| Where did anyone mention the US?
|
| Or is this just the classic assumption that all people on the
| internet are American?
|
| Funny how no other nation does that.
| isaacremuant wrote:
| There's growing concern from the pro lockdown lancet that people
| will try and move past them.
|
| There's never concern about consequences from lockdowns,
| virtually mandatory vaccines on trial until 2023 (through
| coercion and segregation), delays in any other health ailment,
| etc.
|
| In many places around Europe we no longer have freedom nor the
| constitutions matter. We're looking at this type of hygiene
| theater for years to come and people keep bringing up the likes
| of the Lancet and Sage to keep the fear mongering and pretend a
| zero covid at any cost is possible while increasing dystopian
| measures.
|
| Compare the hailed Australia/Israel/New Zealand dystopian futures
| with many states in the US (like Florida/Texas) that didn't
| succumb to the dystopia through fearmongering.
|
| 2 weeks passed many times. It's now time to stop the damage
| that's being done in the name of "protecting people". It's not
| that different from the security theater after 9/11. Just because
| you DO something doesn't mean it's a good thing.
|
| Edit: I know this will get downvoted as it's par for the course
| of anything in HN that doesn't toe the line of more LDs and
| hygiene theater (and US based partisanship) but this is for those
| who are disenfranchised and are not interested in petty
| left/right divisions and more to stand up against increasing
| authoritarianism and apartheid. Specially in some European
| countries.
| wesleywt wrote:
| I never understood why the right decided to be against logical
| public health measures and decided to tie their ideaology to
| it. It never use to be like this. Care to explain?
| orangecat wrote:
| Lockdowns are massive restrictions of individual freedom,
| which is something the right claims to care about and
| sometimes actually does.
| isaacremuant wrote:
| Actually, the aligned with "US democrats" (not the left,
| necessarily) made the whole thing political by going against
| anything Trump did (like banning travel From China being
| racist or the ties with the lab leak theory).
|
| It used to be the left would stand against authoritarianism.
| Skepticism. Now it's seen as a duty to support corporate
| interestes, gov excuses, not question anything (or you'll
| help the right).
|
| There's nothing logical about Lockdowns. It was never done
| before and has done nothing in terms of excess deaths while
| There's ample examples of the damage and inequality
|
| But again, HN types from the laptop class are fine at home,
| advancing in life, not caring that much about others but
| pretending they do with the approved virtue signalling. It's
| disgusting.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| Banning travel from China was a nonsense response because
| US got exposed via Europe. Similarly, prioritizing
| investigating the lab leak theory without real evidence at
| the same time as tons of people were dying seemed messed
| up.
| jhgb wrote:
| > There's never concern about consequences from lockdowns,
| virtually mandatory vaccines on trial until 2023 (through
| coercion and segregation), delays in any other health ailment,
| etc.
|
| Is this some kind of a "who can build the biggest straw man"
| competition?
| isaacremuant wrote:
| No. It's a "enough is enough" comment.
|
| I know that hackernews types who have largely not been
| affected that much, specially US based, will be fine
| downvoting and promoting more propaganda, segregation and
| fearmongering but those that do are morally corrupt to the
| core and I'm tired at pretending otherwise.
| 100011 wrote:
| HN is populated by the very liberal types. This study had
| access to racial data (see Q5) yet it chose to not control
| for it. The result might have shown that contracting the
| disease acts as an IQ test itself. But Lancet was behind
| other trash releases too earlier.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| So all the anti-maskers are what race now? You might want
| to bring body armor when you tell them the verdict, if
| you're going South.
| wesleywt wrote:
| Why are you so convinced that there is a link between
| race and intelligence? There is a link between biased
| measure of intelligence such as IQ tests and race. But no
| actual link has been proven.
| jhgb wrote:
| > biased measure of intelligence such as IQ tests
|
| Where's the evidence that IQ tests are biased? They're
| supposed to estimate the g-factor. I'm sure that if they
| were biased estimates of the g-factor they'd be
| recalibrated ASAP to estimate it in an unbiased way.
| blindmute wrote:
| Every possible test of intelligence, and everything that
| correlates with intelligence, all points toward the same
| conclusion that there is a link between race and
| intelligence.
|
| IQ, income, education, crime rate, school achievement,
| quite literally every possible measure that you would
| expect to correlate with intelligence also correlates
| with race. This occurs even when you control for factors
| like income. The myth and the lie that there is no link
| is often said and never shown. The evidence is
| overwhelming and the burden of rejection is on the
| deniers at this point.
| 100011 wrote:
| The Crowd only "Believes the Science" when it aligns with
| their political goals, simple as.
| unlikelymordant wrote:
| I disagree with you on most of this. Looking at the all cause
| mortality graphs for the US is pretty sobering, and comparing
| to the relatively much more flat all cause mortality graph for
| australia is all the reason i need to be pro lockdown. It seems
| pretty clear that lockdowns work, and also that governments
| dont want to be locked down any longer than necessary- because
| it _is_ bad for the economy. But hospitals being over capacity
| like in the UK or india is also pretty bad, and i see
| healthcare as being one of the pillars of civilisation.
|
| I do see some 'cleanliness theatre', but the thing about r
| values is that little things help a lot. Washing hands
| regularly, wearing a mask. I havnt a cold in 18 months, which
| is pretty unheard of for me, because everyone is taking a bit
| more care. If only covid were 'only' as contagious as the cold,
| we probably would have beaten it already.
| isaacremuant wrote:
| > I disagree with you on most of this. Looking at the all
| cause mortality graphs for the US is pretty sobering, and
| comparing to the relatively much more flat all cause
| mortality graph for australia is all the reason i need to be
| pro lockdown.
|
| You're literally doing what I said. You're using the one
| metric to justify never ending lockdowns. Because lockdowns
| Haven't worked or we wouldn't be having them again in
| Australia. Unless life needs to be continuously cycled
| lockdowns. Which is preposterous and something many of us
| warned against. There's no exit strategy out of hygiene
| theater. Only the blame game.
|
| As for your comment about govs having the best intentions.
| That's clearly false. They've shown they care about
| prolonging their political positions so that trumps anything.
| Which is why protests that are politically convenient can go
| ahead while those that go against lockdowns are attacked in
| many ways.
|
| Healthcare in Ireland, for example, has always been bad and
| "over capacity". Every flu season. That hasn't changed. They
| haven't invested in healthcare really. Your lockdown proposal
| will only mean forever lockdowns and, now, a 2 tier society
| where those who don't comply with every rule get blamed while
| their businesses and lives get destroyed and politicians are
| exempt from those rules.
|
| Your anecdotes about colds are ridiculous. I haven't either
| and I haven't been a germophobe like you seem to now. I've
| travelled and I've exercised with people and met people
| against the fascist regulations and will keep doing so. The
| problem is that, even if I manage to "save myself by moving
| around" from this insane apartheid and fascist state of
| things, in the name of the greater good, millions will suffer
| while the laptop hackernews socially awkward class stays at
| home with their back yards and their online yoga.
|
| You've had 16 months of screwing people out of choice to live
| how they see fit. Now you'll attack anyone who doesn't yield
| Every bit of the way including medical procedures. Now 100%
| vaccination rate seems to be the goal as to why you can't
| have freedoms back. It's insane. It's wrong. It's wrong in
| 1930 levels of wrong. Enough is enough. /Rant
| unlikelymordant wrote:
| > Because lockdowns Haven't worked or we wouldn't be having
| them again in Australia.
|
| But australia has beat many flare ups by locking down,
| right back to 0. The fact it keeps coming back from
| countries that dont lock down is hardly proof lockdowns
| never work.
|
| The thing about r values is it doesnt need everybody to be
| washing their hands, just enough to break the chain. If the
| person who would have infected you never caught it, then
| you wont get it, and so on.
|
| >You're literally doing what I said. You're using the one
| metric to justify never ending lockdowns
|
| Total deaths? Yeah im using that metric. A lot of people
| have died, australias response shows they died
| unnecessarily.
| murgindrag wrote:
| > If only covid were 'only' as contagious as the cold, we
| probably would have beaten it already
|
| Nope. When numbers go down, we relax. When hospitals fill up,
| we lock down. It doesn't matter how contagious COVID is. It
| will remain at endemic levels forever, on the path we're on.
|
| We've turned a billion dollar problem into a multi-trillion
| dollar one in February 2020. Now, we're turning it into a
| tens-of-trillions-of-dollars problem.
|
| 100% N95-equivalent masks. 100% vaccination. 6 foot
| distancing whenever possible. Outdoors whenever possible.
| That would still get COVID today, but it might not in a year.
| Delta and Gamma are concerning, and we'll only see more
| mutations, and ones better able to jump our mitigation
| measures.
| unlikelymordant wrote:
| We beat sars-1 just fine, and mers, mainly by quarantining
| infected. Sars-1 literally no longer exists. This is very
| strong proof that we would have beat covid too, if it were
| less contagious.
| murgindrag wrote:
| I think it's a better example of random chance. We had a
| series of diseases. We didn't heed that as a warning. One
| eventually (and predictably) slipped out.
| jpmoral wrote:
| >Compare the hailed Australia/Israel/New Zealand dystopian
| futures with many states in the US (like Florida/Texas) that
| didn't succumb to the dystopia through fearmongering.
|
| Texas (29M) and Florida (21M) have a somewhat comparable
| population to Oz (25M). I think I'll take our (Oz) numbers over
| theirs in a heartbeat. Whatever we're doing it's clearly not
| theater.
| bijant wrote:
| This Study suffers from at least one significant methodological
| flaw. They did not evaluate the same individuals pre- and post
| Covid infection but instead evaluated people as a group who were
| either previously infected or not. While they did try to correct
| for some socio-economic factors such as age their data did not
| allow them to factor in the socio-economic discrepancies in the
| distribution of early Covid cases which overwhelmingly hit
| service industry workers with direct customer exposure. People
| with Graduate Degrees were much more frequently able to self
| isolate and work from home than people without a high school
| equivalent degree. What I find to be quite sad, is the fact that
| these researchers were actually in a position to retest a subset
| of the original test takers as more than 10% completed a follow
| up survey in December 2020 which surfaced 275 individuals who had
| contracted Covid after their first participation in the study.
| Retesting those, as well as the >8000 individuals who had no
| change in Covid status to control for increase in age, increase
| in points due to getting better at the test with repeated
| exposure etc, would have been a sufficiently large dataset to
| actually confirm or rule out at least large effect sizes.
| CraigJPerry wrote:
| >> suffers from at least one significant methodological flaw
|
| Is this not a randomised control trial? As I understand it, RCT
| is usually referred to as the "gold standard" - why would the
| gold standard be a flaw in this case?
|
| What you describe sounds to me, a layman, as an improvement
| over and above but if RCT is good enough normally, why discount
| it entirely in this case because there's some other improvement
| could be made?
| nanis wrote:
| > Is this not a randomised control trial?
|
| No. I am not quite sure how one might even think the words
| apply here.
|
| If it were, participants would be randomly assigned to the
| the "control" group where they do not get Covid, but would be
| told they had Covid (to control for the negative placebo of
| being told they are now afflicted with a horrible long term
| malady) and the "treatment" group which would actually be
| given a Covid infection. Assuming such a study were doable,
| one can then use a "within participant" comparison which is
| much more powerful than comparing statistics across groups.
|
| >> We sought to confirm whether there was an association
| between cross-sectional cognitive performance data from
| 81,337 participants who between January and December 2020
| undertook a clinically validated web-optimized assessment as
| part of the Great British Intelligence Test, and
| questionnaire items capturing self-report of suspected and
| confirmed COVID-19 infection and respiratory symptoms.
|
| There is no randomized assignment here. Susceptibility to
| report a Covid infection without positive proof is a
| confounding variable. I suspect that susceptibility is
| correlated with other cognitive issues.
|
| A "within participant" comparison as the GP brought up would
| avoid these kinds of issues.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| How can it be a randomized controlled trial? Did they
| randomize a group from the general population in advance and
| then randomly and blindly, but in a controlled fashion,
| infect part of the subjects and did they then consider the
| effects without looking at whether they were the infected
| people or the control group, until the conclusion of the
| study?
|
| That's what's require for the gold standard.
| bdauvergne wrote:
| RCT is not referred as "gold standard" by serious people, htt
| ps://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
| that's marketing.
| agnosticmantis wrote:
| If about 10% of participants followed up, wouldn't there be a
| possibility of non-response/self-selection bias in the pre-post
| study? If I suffered cognitive deficit, I'd be more/less (I'd
| think less) likely to follow up.
| usaar333 wrote:
| They note though that the follow up population that had caught
| covid after testing didn't differ significantly from those that
| didn't.
|
| That seems to add credibility here to a causal mechanism as
| opposed to a background correlation of risk of infection they
| are missing.
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| Also those symptoms look very similar to stress, anxiety and
| depression. Which I think are to be expected after contracting
| a pandemic level virus and being forced to isolate. I would
| like to see results after treating or controlling for those
| conditions.
| treeman79 wrote:
| I have an autoimmune decease and factor 5. Very similar
| symptoms as long term covid. Lots of inflammation, brain fog,
| cognitive defects.
|
| I spent years being dismissed as depressed Or having anxiety.
| When I finally was diagnosed and started treating condition
| with medications I could handle my cognitive problems and
| depression lifted.
|
| Support groups for autoimmune conditions are full of people
| who routinely are dismissed by doctors.
| MikeLumos wrote:
| Can you share a bit more about your autoimmune disease?
|
| What disease was it? What kind of medications have helped
| you?
|
| I'm suffering from some kind of autoimmune-like disease
| with similar symptoms and trying to figure out what's wrong
| with me.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Sjogrens. Second most common after lupus. Lots of
| neurological complications.
|
| Plaqunial helped a lot, but I can't tolerate it. Shame,
| it works well. Steroids are good for ending a flare but
| it's hard to get prescribed, also side effects.
|
| What really worked for me me was * blood thinners for
| cognitive defects * Avoid triggers, direct sun, sugar,
| caffeine, spice * autoimmune protocol diet * magnesium,
| vit d, e, b complex, fish oil
|
| Get blood work done for each kind. ANA test as a starting
| point.
|
| For me Early Sjo test confined diagnosis.
|
| Make a list of ALL symptoms and take it with you to all
| doctors. A Neuro-ophthalmologist was the first to say
| Sjogrens based only off my sheet.
|
| An elimination diet is probably the best place to start.
| I ate nothing but sweet potatoes for a month, my symptoms
| all cleared up. Stated coming back when I introduced
| random foods.
|
| That's how I started following AIP diet
| ImaCake wrote:
| A few years ago I suffered from an autoimmune issue for
| about 3 months. It took most of that time just to convince
| a doctor to give me meloxicam, which is just strong
| panadol/aspirin really. Having a chronic fever for a few
| months really made it hard to do anything more substantial
| than play video games.
|
| I don't know how we teach general practitioners, but we are
| doing something horribly wrong. A lot of long covid people
| must be finding this out too, and it is just super sad.
| dTal wrote:
| >I don't know how we teach general practitioners
|
| We send them to a school which emphasizes cramming vast
| amounts of established knowledge into their heads, at the
| expense of critical thinking skills, social skills, and
| for that matter sleep. In a world where doctors use
| Google and WebMD the same as everyone else (because of
| course they do, no one retains an encyclopaedic knowledge
| of every medical condition), it's basically a hazing
| ritual.
| dmix wrote:
| A big part is people are typically afraid, or don't have
| the opportunity, to get a second opinion.
|
| One of my biggest lessons early in life was that not all
| doctors are the same (by a long shot). This is why it's
| so important to see specialists related to your
| condition. And ultimately you're going to be most
| responsible for getting proper care as often only you
| know what you're experiencing.
|
| Medicine and pathology are far to wide of subjects for
| generalists to operate efficiently across every field and
| niche. Which is why specialization is so important and
| connecting the patients to the right specialists.
|
| There's a lot of analogies to technology, where people
| tend to expect the experts to do and know everything and
| completely defer to them. I think we all have experienced
| this with our parents or people who didn't grow up with
| computers. When ultimately the individual is always going
| to be a huge part of the puzzle and must accept that
| fact.
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| If COVID causes stress, anxiety, and depression, why wouldn't
| that count as a legitimate effect of the disease?
| adflux wrote:
| I agree. I suspect many "long covid" cases are probably not
| caused by covid, but by the lockdown and psychological impact
| of this phenomenon.
|
| People complaining of fatigue or having difficulty
| concentrating or having brain fog are in some studies already
| counted as suffering from long covid. No causual relationship
| required.
| CraigJPerry wrote:
| That suspicion goes against what the people who are dealing
| with this every day are saying. What makes you suspect
| this?
|
| A friend of mine is a doctor and we were chatting about
| long covid 2 days ago, his description of it seemed pretty
| cut and dried to me - e.g. a swimmer here in Glasgow with
| hopes of getting to the 2024 olympics is currently unable
| to train due to breathing issues post-covid. They're
| supposed to be fully immersed in training right now but
| can't since covid in December 2020.
| murgindrag wrote:
| One person I know is suffering from serious balance
| problems post-COVID.
|
| It's just not consistent with the "It's all in their
| minds theory," or "it's the same as stress from
| isolation" theory.
|
| There's clearly something neurological going on, and we
| don't understand it yet.
| treeman79 wrote:
| In my case it was a mix of information, increased cranial
| pressure, and minor clots.
|
| Was a nightmare getting those under control but my
| symptoms eased up. Then I got covid and it all started up
| again. Took months to get back to a baseline, but
| symptoms were identical, aside from loss of smell.
| adflux wrote:
| Have you read the diagnosis criteria and studies
| regarding long covid? I have read a few, and I see that
| many are using the widest net possible to define long
| covid, counting people who self diagnose symptoms such as
| brain fog and having trouble concentrating.
|
| Ofcourse long covid is real. I am just a bit skeptical
| about the diagnosis criteria.
| toss1 wrote:
| That conclusion raises skepticism based on the appearance
| of motivated reasoning and confirmation bias, but there's
| insufficient data for a firm conclusion.
| derbOac wrote:
| I agree it's curious they didn't retest individuals at
| followup, although it's much easier to ask if they contracted
| COVID than to have them retest.
|
| However, they did determine those individuals who contracted
| COVID were not different in their premorbid test performance
| from those who did not later contract COVID. This is a big part
| of what a "complete" longitudinal design would get you.
|
| Let's say you _did_ get that test data on follow-up. If post-
| COVID people who were infected were different cognitively, and
| not different premorbidly, that would suggest COVID was
| involved. If they weren 't different cognitively, you'd have to
| explain why the first wave of individuals were different based
| on COVID history but not the later wave. Still important to
| show but maybe a different set of explanatory challenges.
| yosito wrote:
| Not to mention that many people just aren't smart enough to
| evaluate risk and understand how to protect themselves in a
| pandemic. Just today I saw a guy on the metro wearing
| disposable latex gloves but no mask on the metro. He was
| obviously concerned about covid but had no concept of how it's
| transmitted. Some of the other PPE mishaps I've seen would be
| hilarious of they weren't so sad.
| DominikPeters wrote:
| I find it pretty concerning that they don't mention this issue
| in their discussion section, which was also the first thing
| that came to mind when reading the abstract: people who've
| caught COVID may differ significantly from those who didn't.
| Did none of the authors nor the reviewers think of this?
| viraptor wrote:
| Have you seen "2.4. Statistical methods" and "Table 1" which
| discuss this? The whole paper is available below the
| abstract.
| DominikPeters wrote:
| Yes, they control for various variables that they know
| about. I'm not convinced this gets rid of the bias (e.g.
| they don't control for working from home, many others). It
| is not true that they discuss this obvious objection in
| either 2.4 or Table 1. They only discuss methods they've
| used that very partially mitigate the issue, without
| mentioning the problem.
| viraptor wrote:
| How/why do you think working from home would affect the
| results of the infected and not infected group? We can
| throw lots of possible ways to divide the samples of
| course, but I'd like to understand why you chose that
| example. (and what's the threshold for "they should've
| mentioned criteria X")
| glangdale wrote:
| There's a UK brain imaging study - small, due to the fact that
| one required the "lucky" confluence of having participated in
| the study before the COVID-19 epidemic, and having gotten COVID
| - showing the kind of longitudinal effects you are asking for.
| Alarmingly, it shows shrinkage of various brain structures even
| among the mildly ill.
|
| Note this is a not-yet-peer-reviewed preprint.
|
| https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.11.21258690v...
|
| IMO, while I'm not inclined to take either study at face value
| immediately, I think a serious person should be equally
| reluctant to join the "it's just a flu" camp either.
| saddlerustle wrote:
| Apart from the effect size in that study being pretty low,
| theres the obvious sampling problem in that sort of people
| regularly having their brain imaged are not normal!
| Aeolun wrote:
| I dunno, I just have anxiety and the docs only feel safe
| ruling certain stuff out after either a CT or MRI. If I
| ever contract COVID I can look back through multiple years
| of history.
| glangdale wrote:
| I'm not clear on what level of "pretty low" I'd have to see
| before being reassured here. I guess it's HN, where I'm the
| only dummy who doesn't know what acceptable changes in
| everyday metrics like "Parahippocampal gyrus thickness" and
| "Lateral orbitofrontal cortex volume" are.
|
| Your second remark is also peculiar: the "obvious sampling
| problem" to which you allude is either (1) a subtler-than-
| expected-point about the UK Biobank's program (designed to
| be a mass participation program to observe longitudinal
| effects in previous healthy or as yet undiagnosed people)
| or (2) evidence you are just making stuff up.
| yourenotsmart wrote:
| > I think a serious person should be equally reluctant to
| join the "it's just a flu" camp either.
|
| The long-term effects of flu are not studied that well, by
| the way. On the basis we're used to it from before such
| studies were possible.
|
| None of those symptoms we hear about, getting our breath,
| unable to smell, brain fog etc., none of them are new. And
| they imply internal damage that lasts.
| subroutine wrote:
| Looking at the scatter plot from their most statistically
| significant finding (parahippocampal gray matter change), the
| effect size is tiny, and the variance is large. Nearly half
| the case participants had _more_ gray matter after getting
| COVID.
|
| https://i.ibb.co/5YcxJHH/EDB20654-900-A-427-C-8063-B5-FA667-.
| ..
| glangdale wrote:
| As I've stated elsewhere, apparently everyone on HN
| understands what acceptable levels of "parahippocampal gray
| matter change" might be, which is reassuring.
|
| "Nearly half the case participants had more gray matter
| after getting COVID" - as did the controls. It's almost
| like there's variability in the readings. If only someone
| would invent a subspeciality of mathematics about how to
| interpret noisy data and attempt to draw conclusions about
| the results.
|
| I'm not totally sold on this study either, mind you. I'm
| just amazed at how many people are rushing to judgement in
| the other direction - the whole "just a flu" conclusion is
| wildly premature.
| subroutine wrote:
| > It's almost like there's variability in the readings.
| If only someone would invent a subspeciality of
| mathematics about how to interpret noisy data and attempt
| to draw conclusions about the results.
|
| Yes, I mention the high variance. And indeed there are
| standard ways to interpret the effect size magnitude,
| given noisy data. The authors chose not to report Cohen's
| d. They do provide an r value (.16), which we can use to
| compute the the coefficient of determination. Since you
| are an advocate for reliance on traditional statistical
| interpretations, you should appreciate the meaning of
| r^2=.025
|
| Furthermore the authors report a P=.01. They bootstrap
| this P, presumably because alpha significance level after
| multiple comparison adjustment renders cutoff well below
| .01. They also claim no a priori hypothesis wrt. gray
| matter increase or decrease. A 2-tailed alpha is
| typically shifted from p<.05 to p<.01 which their
| measured P value does not surpass. Nevertheless they
| claim statistical significance. Finally, after
| normalization, there is roughly an equal chance any given
| person will have more or less gray matter after getting
| covid - this doesn't require one to glean the importance
| of each ounce of gray matter to understand the effect
| size is small. I contend there is good reason this study
| has not yet passed peer review, if it ever will.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| That's not what I see in that plot. I see a distribution
| shift, with zero linkage between before and after cases
| that would suggest "Half had more gray matter"
|
| Figure 2 is the one you want https://els-jbs-prod-
| cdn.jbs.elsevierhealth.com/cms/attachme...
|
| Which _does_ show effect increasing with severity of the
| case. I 've seen plots like that before in similar
| articles.
|
| See also table 2.
| NoblePublius wrote:
| we are up to 2 billion+ covid infections globally, so if 1%
| have Long Haul...where the hell are they?
| mmmmmbop wrote:
| Where did you read that number (2B+ Covid infections)?
| renaudg wrote:
| A large number of these infections are simply too recent
| for "long haul" Covid to have settled in.
|
| There's also not a globally accepted definition of the
| syndrome yet, so it won't show up in stats.
|
| If you go by "still experiencing at least one symptom after
| 3 months", it's closer to 10-20% than 1% : https://twitter.
| com/Dr2NisreenAlwan/status/13775492575703162...
|
| Another study found that around a third of these 10-20%
| consider it debilitating (significantly affects their daily
| lives)
| amcoastal wrote:
| In most countries they are probably dead.
| renonce wrote:
| It's 200 million or 0.2 billion
| caseysoftware wrote:
| According to the CDC, the US has had an (estimated) 100M+
| infections as of mid-April[0] and Europe had 50M+ as of
| last week.[1]
|
| I don't know the appropriate way to extrapolate out but
| we're well past 200M globally.
|
| 0: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-
| updates/burd...
|
| 1: https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-
| tracker-and-m...
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Wait, what about this:
|
| "A common challenge in studies of COVID-19 is that differences
| between people who have vs. have not been ill could relate to
| premorbid differences. To address this issue, a linear model
| was trained on the broader independent GBIT dataset (N =
| 269,264) to predict general cognitive performance based on age
| (to the third order), sex, handedness, ethnicity, first
| language, country of residence, occupational status and
| earnings. "
| dash2 wrote:
| That's ridiculously bad. In effect their logic is:
|
| "We controlled for various things in the original regression,
| but hey, there still could be unmeasured confounders that
| make people who got COVID score less on IQ tests, even before
| they got COVID! (Like coming from a poorer background, other
| health vulnerabilities etc. etc. etc.) Unfortunately, we
| don't have a measure of IQ from before they got COVID. So, we
| estimated one using a set of variables that we do have
| measures for!"
|
| Erm... if those extra variables predict IQ, then why not just
| add them as controls? And of course, if you do so, then
| you'll still hit the problem that there are plenty of
| potential unmeasured confounders out there. This is just a
| silly way to pretend you've controlled for something, when in
| fact you can't.
|
| The quality of statistics in medicine is so bad.
| Disgracefully bad. In particular, the Lancet seems to be a
| serial offender.
| viraptor wrote:
| Why do you think adjusting the model for: "Nuisance variables
| were age, sex, racial-ethnicity, gender, handedness, first
| language (English vs other), country of residence (UK vs
| other), education level, vocational status and annual earning."
| doesn't cover what you ask for here? (including graduate
| degrees) With the described adjustments and enough data points,
| the distribution of infection cases shouldn't matter.
|
| Or are you making some other point I'm missing?
| bijant wrote:
| Correcting a model is always a somewhat subjective process
| that can introduce bias, especially when it is done after the
| study is completed pre-publication. I am not at all opposed
| to such adjustments and I was actually involved in a research
| project that improved on pure chance based randomized
| selection of trial participants into different buckets
| (substance/placebo) by weighing in the necessary adjustments
| in the selection phase. That is why I'm intimately familiar
| with the state of the art in academia. Novel approaches, such
| as the one I worked on, are unpopular with reviewers which
| makes them unpopular with researchers even though they would
| allow, for faster trials, with smaller cohorts or
| alternatively to find smaller effect sizes. My criticism of
| the OP Study however is not the adjustments per se, which as
| you point out seem reasonable (although we don't know what
| alternative corrections they could have made with the
| available data and what impact that would have had on their
| findings)but the fact that they had what was needed to
| conduct one of the rare properly executed longitudinal
| studies on this question and wasted that opportunity.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Statistical adjustments at a population level will be much
| less useful than the pre post design above.
|
| Getting estimates from the same people will provide a much
| lower variance estimaion of any potential effect.
|
| Also, adding hospital records to this study would potentially
| provide a better estimation.
|
| All studies have flaws, but this one does look pretty
| reasonable (the principal components method used should have
| been better described, for instance, and confidence bounds on
| the effect sizes would have been super useful).
| yourenotsmart wrote:
| The "pre post" is not much of a design, unless we've had a
| long-term practice to force random healthy people into
| scanning their brains, or we have a time machine.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Nonetheless, it would be a better design. Horribly
| impractical, but really useful.
| nradov wrote:
| There are always medical studies running for other
| purposes that involve doing brain scans on otherwise
| healthy people. One of my relatives participated in such
| a study. Presumably those same subjects could be enrolled
| in a "pre post" study for COVID-19 effects.
| nradov wrote:
| With so many variables to adjust for the error bars should be
| huge.
| viraptor wrote:
| The paper discusses how the variables were handled and
| lists the error for estimates. Is your objection that they
| calculated it wrong? Or that/how they used a linear model
| for adjustments? What's the range for "huge"?
| nradov wrote:
| I'm saying that there's no reliable data to establish how
| those variables impacted the final results. The
| correction factors are mostly just guesswork. Signal to
| noise ratio is low.
|
| Basically this is junk science. The only proper way to do
| such a study would be to compare the same subjects before
| and after infection. With so many cases such a study
| should be feasible.
| viraptor wrote:
| We don't know what the SNR is. It would be great if the
| paper included the linear regression values and fit
| analysis. It could be rubbish or not - but we don't have
| the data to confirm or deny that.
|
| I get the objection, but I'm getting annoyed at comments
| that state what's invalid with the study where we don't
| have the data available for that claim. What's wrong with
| "we don't know if the study is valid since we don't have
| details on X"?
| nradov wrote:
| That's not how real science works. The burden is on the
| paper authors to prove they have adequately controlled.
| From what I can see they haven't done so.
|
| Overall the majority of COVID-19 clinical research has
| been rushed and very low quality.
| victor106 wrote:
| > Cognitive problems in those who have required a lengthy
| hospital stay or intubation are expected [[19]]. What is less
| clear is whether milder cases who have not been hospitalized also
| can suffer objectively measurable cognitive deficits. Measuring
| such associations is challenging.
|
| I think most of these deficits are for the hospitalized. It will
| be interesting to see the why. Is it the virus itself? Is it the
| treatment? Combination? Or is it the extreme long term anxiety.
| mrcartmenez wrote:
| Most likely the lack of oxygen to the brain
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| Lengthy hospital stays, particularly intubation, is associated
| with cognitive decline. https://pulmccm.org/critical-care-
| review/cognitive-impairmen...
| ekianjo wrote:
| Not sure what is the current state of the research but I seem
| to recall that some researchers mentioned that COVID19 could
| break through the brain blood barrier and therefore could also
| affect the brain in unknown ways:
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-020-00771-8
| codesections wrote:
| Results: The study shows ~1 IQ point decline for non-hospitalized
| Covid patients.
|
| Full table: Covid, no respiratory difficulty: 0.4
| IQ point loss Covid, respiratory difficulty, no home
| assistance: 1 IQ point loss Covid, respiratory difficulty,
| with home assistance: 2 IQ point loss Covid, hospitalized,
| without ventilation: 4 IQ point loss Covid, hospitalized,
| with ventilation: 7 IQ point loss
| mrfusion wrote:
| Not so bad for the worst disease in history I guess?
| ignoranceprior wrote:
| COVID might be the worst infectious disease in recent memory,
| but it is far from the worst disease in history.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| Note that ventilation for more than a week alone damages organs
| - no corona needed.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I wonder if you can even reliably measure a 0.4 IQ point loss.
| Factors such as aging, changes in environment, perhaps even
| work from home will act as confounding influences.
|
| On the other hand, 7 IQ point loss on ventilation does not
| surprise me as much. Being in a half-suffocated state for weeks
| must have some adverse effect on oxygen-hungry brain.
| Aachen wrote:
| > I wonder if you can even reliably measure a 0.4 IQ point
| loss.
|
| Which is why one never ever trusts an article or paper with a
| bare number as claim. Confidence intervals, p-values,
| standard deviation, whatever it is, there are ways to tell
| whether it's significant or what the odds are that it's
| noise.
|
| I haven't read the article btw so I don't know if it does,
| but since we're talking about a bare number, the answer to
| your question is that it indeed by itself doesn't tell us
| anything about measurability even if it had been five points.
| murgindrag wrote:
| My follow-up question is how damage accumulates. We're on-
| track for COVID19 becoming a thing, where we'll catch
| mutations over and over and over.
| Filligree wrote:
| We'll know afterwards.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Or, if the cumulative effects are bad enough, we won't
| know.
| blindmute wrote:
| I'll take the 1IQ loss if it means society can stop this health
| theater farce. I've probably lost more than that already from
| the lockdowns.
| vletal wrote:
| Well, the important question is whether the number of deaths
| and total number of IQ points lost in case of "stopping this
| theater" would be better or worse compare to the points and
| lives lost caused by the "theater".
| guerrilla wrote:
| Did the control for being an anti-vaxxer and anti-lockdown?
| mrfusion wrote:
| Would this have been published if they found no cognitive
| deficit?
| NoblePublius wrote:
| They did not have a control group for "being locked inside for a
| year" which I bet also has a pretty bog effect on cognition.
| caddemon wrote:
| Given that most people were locked inside for a year, and those
| who didn't get COVID are even more likely to have followed
| lockdown rules, any control group measured right now would be
| reflecting the "locked inside" condition.
| viraptor wrote:
| What would be the goal? If the bog effect exists , the possible
| extremes are "being locked inside makes infections more common"
| which should not impact the result (adding people to both
| pools), or "being locked inside prevents all infections" which
| would make the deficit larger than reported. (but as noted,
| it's a call for further study rather than a precise result)
| nanis wrote:
| Looking at Figure one in the PDF[1], I don't think I do well on
| this test at all. I mean "lion is to feline as close is to
| distant, true/false"? Or, "Emotional Discrimination"? What is the
| "correct" answer there?
|
| I can deduce that "Patronymic" is "a name derived from the name
| of a father or ancestor", but I do not believe many native
| speakers I cross paths with can.
|
| In any case, studies like this mention the total number of people
| who took the test (81,337 participants), but then, by definition,
| the effects come from small subgroups. E.g.,
|
| > People who had been hospitalised showed substantial scaled
| global performance deficits dependent on whether they were (-0.47
| standard deviations (SDs) N = 44) vs. were not (-0.26 SDs N =
| 148) put onto a ventilator. Those who remained at home (i.e.,
| without inpatient support) showed small statistically significant
| global performance deficits (assisted at home for respiratory
| difficulty -0.13 SD N = 173; no medical assistance but
| respiratory difficulty -0.07 SDs N = 3,386; ill without
| respiratory difficulty -0.04 SDs N = 8,938).
|
| The 44 people who were put on ventilators are different on other
| dimensions. It is hard to separate the effects of the news ("you
| have a horrible disease"), the medical treatment, and the
| psychological torment associated with being in a hospital during
| this time from the actual effects of the actual virus.
|
| [1]:
| https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S2589-5370%2821...
| herendin2 wrote:
| It's very hard to believe that you're able to make such a
| complex and erudite argument as this, and yet you're utterly
| unable to parse something as simple as "lion is to feline as
| close is to distant, true/false". Both tasks require the same
| basic skills.
| blindmute wrote:
| What's strange is that they didn't control for obesity or
| occupation. It's known that being more obese leads to worse
| symptoms. It's known that chance of infection is higher among
| retail workers and such, who have lower IQs than people working
| from home.
|
| The IQ correlation in this study is: Covid, no respiratory
| difficulty: 0.4 IQ point loss Covid, respiratory difficulty, no
| home assistance: 1 IQ point loss Covid, respiratory difficulty,
| with home assistance: 2 IQ point loss Covid, hospitalized,
| without ventilation: 4 IQ point loss Covid, hospitalized, with
| ventilation: 7 IQ point loss
|
| Let's ignore the respirator segment because lack of oxygen like
| that can surely cause problems and I don't think anyone is really
| arguing against it. Without a before test, the only thing this
| study can reasonably show (if you call 1IQ point showing
| anything) is that fat people or cashiers are ever so slightly
| less intelligent.
|
| Honesty people, I was expecting on the order of 5-10 IQ points
| from the popularity and activity of this article. An average of
| 1IQ in a study with no control group and no pre-post test? Come
| on.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Is the obvious "smarter people are better at avoiding covid"
| theory disproven?
| bserge wrote:
| Just like many other viral and bacterial infections, then. No
| surprise here.
| VortexDream wrote:
| I'm not aware of similarities with other infections. Care to
| cite sources?
| guruz wrote:
| Post Viral Fatigue Syndrome
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_fatigue_syndrome#Viral.
| ..
| orwin wrote:
| (Not OP) Viral infection can have this effect. The flu for
| sure, but also the varicella virus (i think this is the
| translation?) do too. West Nile virus also?
|
| Its definitly not the majority of viruses, and i'm not sure
| bacterial (benefit of the doubt here). Don't tell me you
| never exagerate a little :P
| _moof wrote:
| > varicella virus (i think this is the translation?)
|
| chickenpox.
|
| :)
| neilwilson wrote:
| Influenza can trigger numerous issues.
|
| My mother ended up on anti-seizure tablets after the last flu
| outbreak having spent five days in intensive care.
|
| The flu brought on a fit and hypo-natremia. It took months
| before she could walk properly again.
|
| Our success against infectious diseases has left a generation
| or two with insufficient fear of them.
|
| I've seen people catch a bad cold on Wednesday and be dead
| from pneumonia on Sunday.
|
| The impact from Covid isn't new. It's just a rediscovery of
| why we spent the twentieth century on an all out war against
| infectious diseases and septicaemia.
| VortexDream wrote:
| Maybe. However, the rates at which I'm seeing long Covid
| seem entirely novel. Something like 30% of all cases in a
| recent study show signs of it, including mild cases. I
| admit there are overlaps in fatigue syndrome (and should've
| phrased my original comment differently), but AFAIK we've
| usually only seen that in severe infections with other
| diseases while we're seeing abnormally high rates of (to
| varying degrees) cognitive impairment even in mild or
| asymptomatic Covid infections.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Many infections (viral or bacterial) can cause long term
| inflammation, and inflammation can have such effects. Now
| what would really need to be measured if the degree of change
| is really different with COVID vs other infections.
| orwin wrote:
| You mean some, it is not the majority. And often viral, not
| bacterial.
|
| The flu have this effect for sure.
|
| The issue is that those cognitive disfunctions hit young people
| who were not hospitalized, or hospitalized only for safety
| (monitoring them with oxy at the ready). I know of one
| professionnal classical dancer, 26, who cannot coordinate
| following Covid, and was luckily already near the end of her
| career. But still, for some trade, this might be an issue,
| especially if Covid become as endemic as the flu
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| > The flu have this effect for sure.
|
| Any references or background to this?
|
| It's weird because there are major media campaigns to
| encourage people to have a flu jab (UK) and "flu causes
| [irreversible] cognitive dysfunction" would be a major
| 'seller'.
|
| I can also see that governments could have been reluctant to
| spread such information - if it's true - as it would change
| attitudes to schooling; schools being known to be a major
| vector for spreading flu.
| orwin wrote:
| Well, sorry, i said "for sure" because i was hit by the flu
| october 2019, and my recovery left me weaker to other
| respiratory diseases (first time asthma) and caused me
| balances issue for a year. But ancdata is not data, so i'm
| sorry. Let's say chickenpox, West Nile?
|
| Btw, i did not say "irreversible". I did lost a summer of
| training, probably because of the flu, and this is
| irreversible, but i'm pretty sure my balance is OK now (i
| had asthma 3 weeks ago, so the respiratory sytsem damage is
| not repaired however)
| strangemonad wrote:
| In what scenario does it bot become endemic?
| unlikelymordant wrote:
| If everyone develops immunity, either by vaccine or
| infection, and it dies out on its own i assume would be the
| only way
| rsynnott wrote:
| Full vaccination. A few countries (developed countries with
| high levels of vaccine acceptance) will be able to
| vaccinate virtually everyone over 16 within the next month
| or so, maybe everyone over 12 (though there is likely to be
| way more hesitancy there almost everywhere). At that point,
| it's likely to be suppressed in those countries, and that
| may reduce hesitancy elsewhere, and so on.
|
| A number of diseases that were once globally endemic are
| now regionally endemic (eg polio, two countries), or
| eradicated (smallpox). Generally due to vaccination.
| pjc50 wrote:
| That's rather a surprise to me, given the lack of recognition
| of post-viral fatigue!
| trhway wrote:
| there are studies connecting chronic fatigue syndrome to
| increased B-cells numbers (like it happens after viral
| infections like flu for example, and i'd guess after covid
| too) https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/are-b-cells-to-
| blame...
| iloveyouocean wrote:
| My first, selfish question: When will the article that examines
| cognitive function in recovered people who were fully vaccinated
| before contracting COVID arrive?
| ypcx wrote:
| That may depend (or be influenced by) on whether the results
| are negative or positive versus unvaccinated and who advertises
| in said journal.
| Arnt wrote:
| That'll take a long time.
|
| Since the vaccines are excellent at preventing serious
| outcomes, a fairly large share of the infected won't even go to
| a physician, and therefore getting a representative sample of
| infected people will be all of difficult, expensive and time-
| consuming.
|
| Maybe there exists a set of people who a resembles the general
| population and b will be tested routinely and often for years
| to come, such that an accurate statistical picture can be
| found. But I can't think of any now.
| Aachen wrote:
| OT - how do you make those circled symbols? A tool or do you
| have a nice keyboard combo for it? It makes this in-line
| summing up of points much clearer, I like it at least at
| first sight.
| paulsutter wrote:
| Reading the results, the less severe the case the less severe
| the impact. Effects were severe for hospitalized patients, and
| mild for mild cases. Hospitalization is rare among vaccinated
| people.
| tomp wrote:
| I wonder what the discussion would be if the same study was
| posted but "in people who were vaccinated against Covid-19".
| zwaps wrote:
| Does anyone know why these medicinal studies do not seem to use
| more modern statistical methods of observational causal
| inference?
|
| I mean yes you can not RCT and yes a linear model should be the
| baseline, but then why not go ahead and do some synth control or
| double ML, or heck, take the survey twice and do some matched
| diff and diff?
|
| Surely more can be done or not?
| notjes wrote:
| The Cognitive deficits in people can be clearly see in most
| health scientists.
| glangdale wrote:
| I think it's reasonable to be way more cautious about COVID than
| the "just a flu" and "it'll become endemic" (for some value of
| 'endemic') crowd seem to think.
|
| The UK brain imaging study is a (small, not-yet-peer-reviewed)
| data point in that direction also:
|
| https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.11.21258690v...
|
| There seems to be somewhat of suggestion that COVID may have
| serious long-term neurological effects. Given the massive numbers
| that it has affected already (and how many it would affect if it
| becomes endemic), even relatively small risk factors (i.e. single
| digit percentages) for things like Lewy body dementia and
| Parkinsons could have huge effect on public health.
|
| It's worth reminding ourselves that we don't have any data on the
| mid-to-long term effects of COVID beyond about a 2 year window.
| [deleted]
| irq11 wrote:
| It _is_ endemic. What you think of that fact is irrelevant.
| It's a contagious respiratory virus with multiple animal
| reservoirs. Even if you could somehow vaccinate every person on
| earth tomorrow, the virus would still be here.
|
| This virus is not going to be eliminated, and it's well past
| time to move on from that discussion.
| biztos wrote:
| I was just thinking about this today as I prepare for another
| transatlantic flight: we seem to all be planning for a time
| when mask mandates and lockdowns are over.
|
| But what if they're never over?
|
| The US and Western Europe have, by now, enough high-quality
| vaccine for everyone, and we're all stuck at, what, 60% of
| the population vaccinated?
|
| A bunch of people died, a bunch of people went broke, but
| during this pandemic the rich have mostly gotten a whole lot
| richer. Even the rich who don't think of themselves as rich:
| own a house in Silicon Valley, have a dozen years of 401K and
| some stock -- these people have done very well.
|
| We have to fight the virus; but we also have to fight the
| anti-vaxxers and the apathetic, and we have to do it in a
| world where the people with real power are actually gonna be
| just fine if everything locks down for four months out of
| every year.
|
| I've started trying to imagine life in that kind of future.
| Say two lockdowns every year, in a good year it's a month
| each time, in a bad year maybe you're locked in your
| apartment half the time, and that's for people who get their
| booster shot every year.
|
| Maybe forever. What does society look like in that scenario?
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Smallpox is gone and polio is almost gone.
|
| We have the technology to completely eradicate the 2019 novel
| coronavirus if we have the collective will to use it.
|
| Other coronaviruses will evolve to infect humans, yes. We'll
| never eradicate infectious disease in general. But we're
| talking about one specific distinctive virus here. One for
| which we already have multiple effective vaccines.
| Jeema101 wrote:
| That study is somewhat alarming, but I think they were only
| looking specifically at parts of the brain related to smell and
| taste, not the brain as a whole, as stated here:
|
| "Based on prior expectations based on animal models and post
| mortem findings, we chose to focus a priori our primary
| analyses on a subset of 332 regions-of-interest (297 of which
| passed the reproducibility thresholding) from the available
| IDPs that anatomically corresponds to the telencephalic primary
| and secondary connections of the olfactory and gustatory
| cortex"
| jmnicolas wrote:
| > I think it's reasonable to be way more cautious about COVID
| than the "just a flu" and "it'll become endemic" (for some
| value of 'endemic') crowd seem to think.
|
| But unless you want to live like a recluse in a bunker, what
| are your options?
|
| The way I see it, you're bound to catch it no matter how many
| precautions you take. Case in point: I know a guy with paranoid
| level of precautions that still got it and while he was
| confined with his family none of them caught it (this was
| before we had any vaccines in my country).
| glangdale wrote:
| Delta, so far, seems to infect whole households with ease in
| a way that we didn't see. Sydney, Australia is on severe
| lockdown at the moment thanks to a delta outbreak (it hasn't
| helped that, like many countries that handled the
| lockdown/test-and-trace methodology well, we fucked up the
| vaccination program).
|
| I would imagine that a combination of mass vaccination (which
| seems to reduce transmission, although not by as much as was
| hoped) - and continued reasonable measures (mask wearing in
| crowded indoor places, better ventilation) we could achieve
| eventual elimination.
|
| Alternately, on route to this less-than-comfortable-outcome,
| we could make strides in treating the long-term illness,
| improve short-term treatments and improve vaccines.
|
| The other option is that maybe we'll work our way through the
| entire Greek alphabet of variations (and beyond; perhaps the
| Omega variation is followed by double-Alpha) with a large
| pool of sick people and vaccine escape whack-a-mole because
| people decided there was no options between "live in a
| bunker" and "free for all".
| irq11 wrote:
| > Delta, so far, seems to infect whole households with ease
| in a way that we didn't see.
|
| According to the latest data out of the UK, Delta is
| approximately as contagious as Alpha:
|
| https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads
| /...
|
| There is simply no basis for these claims of dramatically
| increased contagion. It's a meme that was based on early
| speculation, and repeated mindlessly by the press.
| mortehu wrote:
| > According to the latest data out of the UK, Delta is
| approximately as contagious as Alpha
|
| Are you talking about page 34, which compares secondary
| attack rate week by week? Can you explain how you read
| that chart?
| AnthonBerg wrote:
| _> But unless you want to live like a recluse in a bunker,
| what are your options?_
|
| We can:
|
| * _Try_ not to get infected
|
| * If inevitable: Get as little of it as we can
|
| * Help the body clear the illness and after-effects
|
| * Contract the illness as late as possible, as medicine
| advances faster than mutations
|
| * Seek to support the science of figuring this thing out
|
| * Do this together
|
| * Seek to reduce the amount of contagious people in our local
| and global environment
|
| Practically, we can:
|
| * Wear masks. Better masks are better
|
| * Use air conditioning, advocate for air conditioning and
| fresh air
|
| * Exercise. Eat well. Go outside.
|
| * Get vaccinated
|
| * Read papers
|
| * Discuss the science
|
| * Participate in studies
|
| * Fund science
|
| * Explain to people what the scientific process is and how we
| know what we know
|
| * Should we arrive at the opinion that certain substances,
| drugs, or supplements may have a protective effect, we might
| take those
|
| * We can be the living scientific process: When we choose to
| experiment, seek to carefully note down the results and
| publish them
|
| * Help others
|
| * Fund healthcare for those who are less well off than we are
|
| * Establish robust social immunity by discussing the options
| we do have to reduce infection
| SquibblesRedux wrote:
| I think we need to put considerably more effort into
| discussing existing and new scientific endeavors before we
| consider funding. I am not saying we should pause or reduce
| funding, but rather the reach of our public coffers has
| increasingly exceeded our understanding of what we are or
| are not accomplishing with that funding.
|
| The amount of noise, publicity, and politicization of
| scientific research makes it very difficult to wisely set
| public policy at both the national and local levels.
| AnthonBerg wrote:
| I would agree, although not _completely_ - but will I
| also claim that this falls under discussing, studying,
| funding, and doing more science %D
|
| Ah, and, it didn't occur to me to make the distinction,
| but I was thinking of _personal and direct_ funding of
| science. As something each of us might arguably do. It's
| interesting to consider it because we arrive at the same
| question: What to fund?
| jmnicolas wrote:
| > Seek to support the science of figuring this thing out
|
| It's "funny" because a few months ago, I read that it was
| definitely an airborne virus, so hands contagion was
| absolutely not a concern.
|
| Then yesterday I read the complete opposite.
|
| In both case, they were reputable scientists.
|
| Thanks for the advises anyway.
| AnthonBerg wrote:
| Exactly! And which leads us to asking: How do we know???
| [deleted]
| machinehermiter wrote:
| There are no options obviously.
|
| I am fully vaccinated, if you offer me a booster I will take
| it. If you offer me whatever, I will take it.
|
| At that point I have done all I can do. If someone wants to
| stay in a bunker because things are beyond their risk
| preference then they should not be forced out of the bunker.
|
| Forcing me back in a bunker though being fully vaccinated is
| absolute bullshit if anyone can get vaccinated.
| graeme wrote:
| > But unless you want to live like a recluse in a bunker,
| what are your options?
|
| It depends on work and family circumstances. But, stuff that
| works:
|
| * Be outdoors, and socialize outdoors
|
| * If in indoor unventilated spaces, wear a mask. Ideally N95
| if lots of people and they aren't mask
|
| * Exercise more caution during local waves
|
| * If socializing with others indoors, open a window. This can
| be done even during heat waves or winter: the greater the
| temp differential the more the air circulation for a given
| amount of window opening. Doesn't raise costs too much, yet
| people treat it as impossible
|
| * Buy a hepa filter for your home. Humidifiers can also help
| in winter
|
| * Avoid indoor restaurants and bars and unmasked venues
|
| * In risky venues, choose glasses over contacts. Eye
| protection is another layer
|
| * Don't hang out with symptomatic or unvaccinated people
|
| * Get vaccinated
|
| Whether you _should_ choose to do this is another thing, but
| that's what to do if you don't want to catch a respiratory
| virus.
|
| This above is consistent with: seeing friends, small indoor
| gatherings, travel (wear n95 + glasses!), etc. It certainly
| isn't living in a bunker.
|
| It does present problems during winter though, and it is also
| quite inconvenient in places with frequent large waves. Small
| ventilated indoor gatherings with vaccinated friends should
| be ok in low prevalence, but are risky in a big wave, for
| example.
| blindmute wrote:
| I would quite literally rather contract covid than live
| like that for any period of time.
| graeme wrote:
| I should add, of course, that I mainly wrote that for
| those who 1. Really would like to avoid catching the
| virus for now, but 2. Think it requires ungodly levels of
| isolation to do
|
| What I wrote is less social than the average (one hopes)
| but more social than a lot of people lived the past year!
|
| But if you'd rather live less restricted and are
| vaccinated, go nuts. The vaccines protect quite well
| against severe disease and it doesn't strike me as a bad
| choice to not worry about it.
| graeme wrote:
| Apart from the masks, it's how much of Canada lives for
| four months of the year (summer). We hardly do any
| indoors socializing.
|
| It's what I based the above on. Both pandemic summers
| Canada has had collapsing cases even while there were
| surged in parts of the world with winter or that use AC
| more than us.
|
| Go to any restaurant with a patio and you'll hardly see
| anyone inside. Everyone goes to the patios in summertime.
| And people tend to open windows rather than use AC on
| anything but the hottest days. Backyard dinners or
| rooftop drinks are one of the main ways people socialize
| privately.
| sharken wrote:
| Difference being that Covid restrictions take away the
| free choice of the individual, remove restrictions and
| let each get on with their lives as they choose.
| sharken wrote:
| There is absolutely no way that we can implement the above,
| WITHOUT losing a lot of what makes us humans in the
| process.
|
| I'd rather keep our pre-Covid level of human interaction
| than limiting it forever.
|
| But to each their own, one thing is that we must remove all
| restrictions so that each can choose their own way freely.
|
| This last part is what politicians have a hard time to
| realize, but it's a necessity.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| There's no reason to believe catching COVID-19 is inevitable.
| Consider that the best estimates about the Spanish flu of
| 1918 are that about a third of the world caught it before
| that pandemic ended. Today we have much better knowledge and
| hygiene, and extremely effective vaccines.
|
| Most people in the world have not contracted COVID-19.
| Personal precautions are well understood and vaccine
| distribution is well underway.
|
| I'm sorry that your friend contracted it. In contrast I would
| characterize my family's precautions as normal, and none of
| us have contracted it. Two of us are now vaccinated as well.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| The Spanish Flu never went away, it just became "The
| Flu(tm)".
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| Exactly, at some point the cure will become worse than the
| disease. The fact this makes people uncomfortable is no
| reason to push it under the rug!
| treeman79 wrote:
| How many years of lockdown will people put up with?
|
| I could see some places where someone's entire childhood
| memory is being under lockdown.
| toss1 wrote:
| If an actual proper hard lockdown is done, it takes only
| a matter of weeks.
|
| COVID-19 has only existed as a problem for less than
| twenty months - what childhood is that short? And even if
| that statement had some relation to reality, anyone would
| take a childhood lockdown vs a lifetime of impairment (&,
| yes I get that lockdown itself can have some long-term
| effects, but these are much more easily counteracted vs
| biological deficits).
| ipython wrote:
| Yes, intellectually speaking, 20 months is not an entire
| childhood. But from a relative perspective- let's take a
| five year old- that's about 40% of his lifetime to date.
| That feels very significant to him/her.
|
| That said, having kids that age, I would say my kids
| handled this pandemic way better than most adults. They
| adapt quicker and don't have the emotional baggage
| ("masks are an evil plot to control the population" for
| example) to get through.
|
| We have been lucky that they were able to attend school
| in person though - very strict COVID protocols plus a
| small population ensured that we never had an outbreak.
| Things would have been different if we didn't have that
| ability.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| It's hard to confidently assert that the cure is worse than
| the disease if we don't know the long-term effects of the
| disease yet. (Which is why we're discussing the Lancet
| article.)
| LatteLazy wrote:
| On a personal level, get vaccinated. That seems to reduce
| risks by a factor of at least 1000.
|
| On a social level: use the Aus model. Actually lockdown, get
| case numbers down to the 10s per million. The UK, US etc
| model is the opposite, it relies on having as many people as
| possible infected and not really engaging in any full
| lockdowns. So far that's meant more and longer lockdowns.
| It's also meant more variants. And it means the maximum
| number of people with long term effects. It's the worst of
| all worlds, even the economic one.
| caeril wrote:
| > what are your options?
|
| We're a year and a half into it. We have the data. Aside from
| vaccination and some degree of proper ventilation, you need
| to:
|
| 1. Not be old. 2. Not be fat.
|
| We talk a lot about #1, but #2 is taboo. We, as a society,
| prefers that you die unnecessarily young from COVID than feel
| a little bit of shame. Not to mention #2 was already
| murdering nearly half a million Americans annually _on its
| own_ prior to COVID.
|
| This needs to be fixed. Sugar/corn industry lobbyists and
| fast food advertisers should have been publicly hanged
| decades ago. Now we have even more incentive to address the
| issue, but I suppose slowly dying at the age of 37, gasping
| for breath, is a small price to pay to avoid feeling slightly
| negative about being 300lbs or impact the dividends of the
| Coca Cola Corporation.
| sharken wrote:
| You are absolutely right.
|
| Number 2 is hard to fix as lobbyists and fast food
| companies have a lot of influence.
|
| But it is concerning that of US women from age 20 and up,
| 60% or more are considered overweight.
|
| A woman 50 years old has an average weight of 80 kg, using
| the Miller ideal weight formula and a height of 170 cm, the
| weight should be 62.5 kg.
|
| https://www.healthline.com/health/womens-health/average-
| weig...
|
| There should be some kind of reward or benefit for those
| that can keep to the ideal weight for a longer period of
| say 1 year.
| tester756 wrote:
| >but #2 is taboo.
|
| where?
| laurent92 wrote:
| > small, not-yet-peer-reviewed) datapoint in that direction
|
| Since we tend to mock such studies when done by antivax, we
| should also reserve all judgement here. Let's keep the bar high
| for good science, the last year has been a flourish of
| unverified correlated statistics.
|
| > Given massive numbers it has affected already
|
| I don't think people optimize for normal life either. For
| example, lockdowns do provoke effects which are at least as
| dangerous: We spend billions a year telling people to move more
| to fight obesity, so we are 100% sure that lockdowns have a
| negative effect on obesity and cardiovascular diseases, but
| also families breaking up, unemployment, loneliness, lack of
| sports (maybe close to weight gains of a 5-10 pounds in
| average, I'd be curious), and all those factors multiply
| further in the future and increase the risk of asthma, cancer,
| suicide, mental breakdowns (including knife attacks), we
| haven't see the real delayed effects.
|
| So, overreaction already killed more than even the (reasonable)
| estimated worst case scenario.
|
| Let's not focus just on Covid, and let's look at everything
| else we don't generally care about. My rule is, since they
| don't care for my suicide, which is about 2 orders of magnitude
| higher than my Covid risk, I won't vaccinate.
| jpmoral wrote:
| >So, overreaction already killed more than even the
| (reasonable) estimated worst case scenario.
|
| How did you come to this conclusion?
|
| >My rule is, since they don't care for my suicide, which is
| about 2 orders of magnitude higher than my Covid risk, I
| won't vaccinate.
|
| Not sure if I'm reading this correctly but basically not
| vaccinating out of spite?
| glangdale wrote:
| I love how you pivot from "demanding peer review" and a "high
| bar for science" to unleashing a great pile of anecdata about
| overreaction. Much of the science on depression and social
| ill effects of lockdowns is no more conclusive, but you're
| already 100% convinced of it, even making up numbers for
| average weight gain.
|
| I find it bizarre that all the stuff about depression,
| unemployment, etc is always neatly pigeonholed into "lockdown
| did it". Yeah, like if we were all just going about our
| business having Brazil-levels of disease and death , we'd all
| be really cheerful and gainfully employed.
|
| Anti-lockdown people somehow interpret the world entirely
| through this narrow lens - perhaps some people are
| depressed/suicidal thanks to dread of the disease or personal
| losses of friends/family members to the disease. There's an
| amazing rush to judgement to assume that all the risks are
| due to lockdown, especially in countries that have high rates
| - as yet I don't think we know what suicide and unemployment
| rates are for people with Long COVID.
|
| It's something of a right-wing bit of unpleasantry to say
| this, but "facts don't care about your feelings" (ugh). If
| there is a looming risk of - say - 2% of long COVID suffers
| getting Lewy Body Dementia or Parkinson's as a result of
| "mild COVID", that's a _lot_ of new horrible cases -
| potentially with years of suffering involved.
|
| If these ill effects are in fact looming, they will ensure
| that 'bad lockdown' stuff is lost in the noise.
|
| I'm not advocating 'lock everyone down hard forever'; I just
| think this is a counterpoint to the whole "freedom day"
| nonsense where it's assumed that once we have a goodly
| portion of people vaccinated we can just let the virus rage
| through the population unchecked.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| Since you also focus that you want to keep a high bar for
| good science, where are you studies that claim that "
| overreaction already killed more than even the (reasonable)
| estimated worst case scenario"?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-07-24 23:02 UTC)