Regarding the comments earlier in this thread suggesting that long Covid is largely misattributed depression, the symptom profile doesn’t seem to bear this out. “At five weeks post-infection among Coronavirus Infection Survey respondents testing positive for COVID-19”, quite a few are still experiencing symptoms that don’t sound much like depression: 11% of individuals are still experiencing cough, 8% loss of taste, 8% loss of smell, 8% muscle pain. It also seems fairly clear from Figure 1a of the first(?) ZOE App long Covid study that a substantially higher proportion of those testing positive, vs. symptom-matched negative controls, have long symptom timecourses. You might take some comfort from the fact that the same figure shows that the proportion still experiencing symptoms continues to drop off markedly as additional time passes, though admittedly part of this might be down to some people eventually tiring of logging symptoms into the app.
That said: Speaking for myself, as someone who has been very cautious throughout the pandemic, after my second vaccination I suspect I will mostly go “back to normal”, with some exceptions like continued mask-wearing in certain indoor public spaces subject to case rates. If Covid is going to be endemic at this point, as appears likely, the fact that I am as young as I will ever be, and will be recently fully vaccinated, gives me the best protection I will ever have. So after full vaccination, I suspect that when my immune system eventually gets to practice on “the real thing”—while there would be a small risk of a breakthrough infection (and a small risk of long COVID if one occurs), it seems there might be an equivalently small chance that the experience would increase my adaptive immunity such that I am in a better position if I catch a variant when I am older.
Yeah, I think it doesn’t reflect that well on Lesswrong that the other comment wasn’t challenged more earlier. (E.g., since when do depressed people frequently lose their sense of smell??) It seems like the pendulum has swung so much from “we should be extremely cautious” to “people are overreacting” that it’s starting to get unreasonable again.
Also, the other answer here mentions this:
“My model is that risk of getting seriously ill from COVID for someone in my demographic, after full vaccination, is zero for all practical purposes.”
It really depends if we count Long Covid as “serious.” Certainly seems serious if people’s sense of self-worth is related to being able to do deep work, which you can mostly forget about with Long Covid for >12 months. Doubly vaccinated reduces risks of getting infected by 85%, and a 30% further reduction in Long Covid risk conditional on getting sick. That’s a 10x reduction. But case numbers will be up more than 10x compared to large periods of 2020 (e.g., last summer). Therefore, it’s not unreasonable to still be concerned and keep an eye on case numbers.
Regarding the comments earlier in this thread suggesting that long Covid is largely misattributed depression, the symptom profile doesn’t seem to bear this out. “At five weeks post-infection among Coronavirus Infection Survey respondents testing positive for COVID-19”, quite a few are still experiencing symptoms that don’t sound much like depression: 11% of individuals are still experiencing cough, 8% loss of taste, 8% loss of smell, 8% muscle pain. It also seems fairly clear from Figure 1a of the first(?) ZOE App long Covid study that a substantially higher proportion of those testing positive, vs. symptom-matched negative controls, have long symptom timecourses. You might take some comfort from the fact that the same figure shows that the proportion still experiencing symptoms continues to drop off markedly as additional time passes, though admittedly part of this might be down to some people eventually tiring of logging symptoms into the app.
That said: Speaking for myself, as someone who has been very cautious throughout the pandemic, after my second vaccination I suspect I will mostly go “back to normal”, with some exceptions like continued mask-wearing in certain indoor public spaces subject to case rates. If Covid is going to be endemic at this point, as appears likely, the fact that I am as young as I will ever be, and will be recently fully vaccinated, gives me the best protection I will ever have. So after full vaccination, I suspect that when my immune system eventually gets to practice on “the real thing”—while there would be a small risk of a breakthrough infection (and a small risk of long COVID if one occurs), it seems there might be an equivalently small chance that the experience would increase my adaptive immunity such that I am in a better position if I catch a variant when I am older.
Yeah, I think it doesn’t reflect that well on Lesswrong that the other comment wasn’t challenged more earlier. (E.g., since when do depressed people frequently lose their sense of smell??) It seems like the pendulum has swung so much from “we should be extremely cautious” to “people are overreacting” that it’s starting to get unreasonable again.
Also, the other answer here mentions this:
“My model is that risk of getting seriously ill from COVID for someone in my demographic, after full vaccination, is zero for all practical purposes.”
It really depends if we count Long Covid as “serious.” Certainly seems serious if people’s sense of self-worth is related to being able to do deep work, which you can mostly forget about with Long Covid for >12 months. Doubly vaccinated reduces risks of getting infected by 85%, and a 30% further reduction in Long Covid risk conditional on getting sick. That’s a 10x reduction. But case numbers will be up more than 10x compared to large periods of 2020 (e.g., last summer). Therefore, it’s not unreasonable to still be concerned and keep an eye on case numbers.