I dug into this a little, and right now I think serious, long-term illness from COVID is pretty unlikely. There are lots of studies on this, but in addition to all the usual reasons why studies are unreliable, it’s hard to avoid reporting bias when you’re analyzing subjective symptoms. (If you catch COVID, you might be more primed to notice fatigue, asthma, muscle pain, etc., that you already had or would have gotten anyway. Random, unexplainable minor medical problems are ridiculously common.)
Some worry that COVID will permanently disable millions of people, leaving them unable to work. This doesn’t seem to be happening, disability claims are down from 2019 and haven’t tracked infection rates:
Disability insurance rates (per $ of coverage) went down in 2021; this makes me think that odds of serious long-term COVID disability must be <1%. Insurers would raise rates if there were a flood of new claims, especially given adverse selection:
I think the press is just lying about how common long COVID is. Eg. this article describes a “flood” of COVID disability claims. But it admits there are only 23,000 claims—that’s a tiny fraction! That’s ~fewer people than have ever been hit by lightning:
This article says “large numbers” of people are filing claims. This isn’t true! Filing for COVID-related disability is <1% of all claims, and <0.01% of US adults. Overall claim numbers are down vs. 2019:
Question: It seems possible that long COVID prevalence / impact falls short of the level that would qualify a significant proportion of the American workforce for disability, but would still be very concerning for folks with cognitively intensive professions (i.e., the majority of LW readers). How likely do you think this is?
[I removed the other question I’d included here earlier, quoting the insurer Unum from the last article you cited, because I only saw the part where “it has approved “hundreds of thousands” of additional disability claims since the beginning of the pandemic, with an increase from pre-pandemic levels of 35 percent” but missed the part where they said “In general, disability and leave claims connected to covid-19 have been primarily short-term events with the majority of claimants recovering before completing the normal qualification period for long term disability insurance.” Incidentally, per https://caveylaw.com/practice-areas/long-term-disability-erisa-lawyer/medical-conditions/ it seems like the threshold for LTD is to be out of work for more than 3-6 months.]
Other comments:
The stats you cited regarding disability claims seem compelling in assessing this question. (I wonder if there are countervailing (non COVID-related) forces that would drive down the aggregate rates of disability claims, but the stats on COVID-related disability specifically would seem to avoid that concern.)
I tend to be wary of arguments which say “the press is just lying” (perhaps because it’s really hard for me to assess that, and seems like a convenient way to dismiss evidence that doesn’t fit your favored model), but I could believe that the press’s assertions are driven by the desire for a dramatic headline, and full of sloppy thinking (and subject to the same sorts of issues that you and Zvi have noted). Regardless, if you have stats on disability claims, and the press does not have better stats, then that seems to settle the issue.
I dug into this a little, and right now I think serious, long-term illness from COVID is pretty unlikely. There are lots of studies on this, but in addition to all the usual reasons why studies are unreliable, it’s hard to avoid reporting bias when you’re analyzing subjective symptoms. (If you catch COVID, you might be more primed to notice fatigue, asthma, muscle pain, etc., that you already had or would have gotten anyway. Random, unexplainable minor medical problems are ridiculously common.)
Some worry that COVID will permanently disable millions of people, leaving them unable to work. This doesn’t seem to be happening, disability claims are down from 2019 and haven’t tracked infection rates:
https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/dibStat.html
Disability insurance rates (per $ of coverage) went down in 2021; this makes me think that odds of serious long-term COVID disability must be <1%. Insurers would raise rates if there were a flood of new claims, especially given adverse selection:
https://www.meetbreeze.com/disability-insurance/cost-of-long-term-disability-insurance-report/
I think the press is just lying about how common long COVID is. Eg. this article describes a “flood” of COVID disability claims. But it admits there are only 23,000 claims—that’s a tiny fraction! That’s ~fewer people than have ever been hit by lightning:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/03/08/long-covid-disability-benefits/
This article says “large numbers” of people are filing claims. This isn’t true! Filing for COVID-related disability is <1% of all claims, and <0.01% of US adults. Overall claim numbers are down vs. 2019:
https://www.nbcnews.com/investigations/got-long-covid-cost-dearly-rcna17942
Thanks for this!
Question: It seems possible that long COVID prevalence / impact falls short of the level that would qualify a significant proportion of the American workforce for disability, but would still be very concerning for folks with cognitively intensive professions (i.e., the majority of LW readers). How likely do you think this is?
[I removed the other question I’d included here earlier, quoting the insurer Unum from the last article you cited, because I only saw the part where “it has approved “hundreds of thousands” of additional disability claims since the beginning of the pandemic, with an increase from pre-pandemic levels of 35 percent” but missed the part where they said “In general, disability and leave claims connected to covid-19 have been primarily short-term events with the majority of claimants recovering before completing the normal qualification period for long term disability insurance.” Incidentally, per https://caveylaw.com/practice-areas/long-term-disability-erisa-lawyer/medical-conditions/ it seems like the threshold for LTD is to be out of work for more than 3-6 months.]
Other comments:
The stats you cited regarding disability claims seem compelling in assessing this question. (I wonder if there are countervailing (non COVID-related) forces that would drive down the aggregate rates of disability claims, but the stats on COVID-related disability specifically would seem to avoid that concern.)
I tend to be wary of arguments which say “the press is just lying” (perhaps because it’s really hard for me to assess that, and seems like a convenient way to dismiss evidence that doesn’t fit your favored model), but I could believe that the press’s assertions are driven by the desire for a dramatic headline, and full of sloppy thinking (and subject to the same sorts of issues that you and Zvi have noted). Regardless, if you have stats on disability claims, and the press does not have better stats, then that seems to settle the issue.