Point stands, I think. Once you’re fully vaccinated the risk—including risk of post-viral fatigue—is in the range we normally consider tolerable.
More generally, you need to balance risk reduction against actually enjoying your life. I would rather live a rich life than extend a grey and joyless existence, even if it means tolerating a small risk that said life will end early. That calculus shifts in the presence of large risks, but we aren’t talking about large risks now. I would encourage the OP, and everyone else who is vaccinated and still panicking worrying excessively about now-small risks, to look at the big picture and ask if they need a sense of perspective.
I’d find it helpful if folks had evidence to share about the level of risks other than death. (E.g. the risk of post-viral fatigue.) I agree that you need to balance risk reduction against actually enjoying your life, but I’ve been able to do that to my satisfaction and am interested in assessing the marginal risk of the items I noted in my post. I didn’t go much into the benefit side in the post, because that varies by individual, and I feel pretty capable of assessing the marginal benefit for myself. (I can assure you that my life is quite rich, and nothing close to grey and joyless, even though I haven’t leapt into indoor activities with unvaccinated people).
Once you’re fully vaccinated the risk—including risk of post-viral fatigue—is in the range we normally consider tolerable.
Do you have a source for this? I’ve seen good data about hospitalization and risk of death, but nothing about long COVID. They probably correlate, but I’ve seen suggestive data that they correlate less than I’d intuitively expect.
It definitely doesn’t feel like there’s enough data to be confident in saying ‘this is now a silly thing to care about or spend mental energy on’. Though I’d mostly agree if you live in an area with very low case counts.
Sorry, no source—but given the vaccines massively (>90%) reduce risk of other harms ie death & hospitalisation, I think the null hypothesis has to be that vaccines also massively reduce risk of long COVID.
I also start with a prior that a lot of discussion about long-COVID is low quality and I think it’s an example of post-viral fatigue rather than some brand-new thing. It gets lots of media hype, like anything vaguely scary and covid-related, but hard data seems to be hard to come by and often very low quality.
The [best source I’ve found] (https://institute.global/policy/hidden-pandemic-long-covid) finds a 30% reduction in P(Long COVID | infection after 2 vaccine doses). Infection reduction is about 85%, so total risk reduction is about 90%, MUCH less than the risk reduction for hospitalisation.
The study is based on 3,000 infected patients, all over 60, unclear how it generalises to younger people.
In general, there is SOME good quality research on long COVID, and it seems obvious to me that it is a legitimate thing and respects a good fraction of the harm of the pandemic. Even if overall research is much less high quality than I want.
Thanks for the source, I hadn’t seen it before. 90% risk reduction is still an order of magnitude, seems like a big deal to me.
One point to be aware of: I notice they don’t distinguish between the different vaccines, they just give a population-wide figure. The UK has used a combination of Pfizer and AstraZeneca, and on other metrics eg efficacy against symptomatic infection or hospitalisation, AZ is slightly to moderately worse than Pfizer. Assuming the same pattern holds for long covid, I would assume a >90% risk reduction for Pfizer (and Moderna with similar mRNA technology), which is the read-across relevant to American readers.
Point stands, I think. Once you’re fully vaccinated the risk—including risk of post-viral fatigue—is in the range we normally consider tolerable.
More generally, you need to balance risk reduction against actually enjoying your life. I would rather live a rich life than extend a grey and joyless existence, even if it means tolerating a small risk that said life will end early. That calculus shifts in the presence of large risks, but we aren’t talking about large risks now. I would encourage the OP, and everyone else who is vaccinated and still
panickingworrying excessively about now-small risks, to look at the big picture and ask if they need a sense of perspective.I’d find it helpful if folks had evidence to share about the level of risks other than death. (E.g. the risk of post-viral fatigue.) I agree that you need to balance risk reduction against actually enjoying your life, but I’ve been able to do that to my satisfaction and am interested in assessing the marginal risk of the items I noted in my post. I didn’t go much into the benefit side in the post, because that varies by individual, and I feel pretty capable of assessing the marginal benefit for myself. (I can assure you that my life is quite rich, and nothing close to grey and joyless, even though I haven’t leapt into indoor activities with unvaccinated people).
Panicking isn’t useful. Having discussions about how to effectively deal with risk isn’t panicking, talking about panicking is strawmanning.
Ok, reworded to something else.
Do you have a source for this? I’ve seen good data about hospitalization and risk of death, but nothing about long COVID. They probably correlate, but I’ve seen suggestive data that they correlate less than I’d intuitively expect.
It definitely doesn’t feel like there’s enough data to be confident in saying ‘this is now a silly thing to care about or spend mental energy on’. Though I’d mostly agree if you live in an area with very low case counts.
Sorry, no source—but given the vaccines massively (>90%) reduce risk of other harms ie death & hospitalisation, I think the null hypothesis has to be that vaccines also massively reduce risk of long COVID.
I also start with a prior that a lot of discussion about long-COVID is low quality and I think it’s an example of post-viral fatigue rather than some brand-new thing. It gets lots of media hype, like anything vaguely scary and covid-related, but hard data seems to be hard to come by and often very low quality.
The [best source I’ve found] (https://institute.global/policy/hidden-pandemic-long-covid) finds a 30% reduction in P(Long COVID | infection after 2 vaccine doses). Infection reduction is about 85%, so total risk reduction is about 90%, MUCH less than the risk reduction for hospitalisation.
The study is based on 3,000 infected patients, all over 60, unclear how it generalises to younger people.
In general, there is SOME good quality research on long COVID, and it seems obvious to me that it is a legitimate thing and respects a good fraction of the harm of the pandemic. Even if overall research is much less high quality than I want.
Thanks for the source, I hadn’t seen it before. 90% risk reduction is still an order of magnitude, seems like a big deal to me.
One point to be aware of: I notice they don’t distinguish between the different vaccines, they just give a population-wide figure. The UK has used a combination of Pfizer and AstraZeneca, and on other metrics eg efficacy against symptomatic infection or hospitalisation, AZ is slightly to moderately worse than Pfizer. Assuming the same pattern holds for long covid, I would assume a >90% risk reduction for Pfizer (and Moderna with similar mRNA technology), which is the read-across relevant to American readers.