In areas with a lot of vaccine penetration, case counts mostly are just going to be very low anyway; combined with the vaccine effectiveness against infection (~80-90% for mRNA vaccines) the probability of being infected will be negligible. For example, in my local area and given my demographics, my current best estimate is that I incur around 10 microcovids if I spend an hour indoors breathing right on another random person. (And I am using conservative numbers.) If that’s not true in your area, it may well be true in a month or two.
The only way this is going to change is if a new variant comes around and mucks everything up (in which case the current studies won’t be very informative.)
So for myself, I don’t really care very much about answering this question right now.
As for “long covid” itself, my sense from talking with GPs is that it’s mostly misattributed. There’s the notorious study which showed that 2⁄3 of “long covid sufferers” had never been infected with C19 to begin with. It seems like it’s just somewhat stronger-than-usual depression? All the risk factors for “long covid” seem to just be risk factors for depression.
On the matter of vaccine effectiveness, do we know what the numbers are for obese vs non-obese? Vaccines commonly don’t work (well) for the obese, and given how overweight America is I wonder if this is depressing our numbers. Maybe it’s like 98% for thin, 70% for overweight, 40% for morbidly obese or something like that?
I’m having trouble finding it. It was a survey done by David Putrino, it’s mentioned here: ”By contrast, Putrino told me that in his survey of 1,400 long-haulers, two-thirds of those who have had antibody tests got negative results, even though their symptoms were consistent with COVID-19.”
Here is a more vague claim that seems to corroborate:
“Whereas some “long haulers” were found to be positive for SARS-CoV-2 RNA by RT-PCR at symptom onset, many did not fulfill the criteria for testing at the beginning of the pandemic, or tested negative at a time when respiratory symptoms had subsided. In addition, some “long haulers” did not have detectable antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 when the first serological test (Abbott) became available commercially.
If you look at the demographics of the sufferers, it’s also somewhat suspect. Middle-aged well-to-do white women are massively over-represented. If it were a matter of over-active immunity you’d expect young women, and if it were a matter of a weak immunity getting overrun, you’d expect men. So, I’m not sure there’s a good reason to suspect this population really would be the main sufferers of some legitimate long-term syndrome. OTOH, middle-aged white women have sky-high rates of depression.
In areas with a lot of vaccine penetration, case counts mostly are just going to be very low anyway; combined with the vaccine effectiveness against infection (~80-90% for mRNA vaccines) the probability of being infected will be negligible. For example, in my local area and given my demographics, my current best estimate is that I incur around 10 microcovids if I spend an hour indoors breathing right on another random person. (And I am using conservative numbers.) If that’s not true in your area, it may well be true in a month or two.
The only way this is going to change is if a new variant comes around and mucks everything up (in which case the current studies won’t be very informative.)
So for myself, I don’t really care very much about answering this question right now.
As for “long covid” itself, my sense from talking with GPs is that it’s mostly misattributed. There’s the notorious study which showed that 2⁄3 of “long covid sufferers” had never been infected with C19 to begin with. It seems like it’s just somewhat stronger-than-usual depression? All the risk factors for “long covid” seem to just be risk factors for depression.
On the matter of vaccine effectiveness, do we know what the numbers are for obese vs non-obese? Vaccines commonly don’t work (well) for the obese, and given how overweight America is I wonder if this is depressing our numbers. Maybe it’s like 98% for thin, 70% for overweight, 40% for morbidly obese or something like that?
Do you happen to have a link on hand?
I’m having trouble finding it. It was a survey done by David Putrino, it’s mentioned here:
”By contrast, Putrino told me that in his survey of 1,400 long-haulers, two-thirds of those who have had antibody tests got negative results, even though their symptoms were consistent with COVID-19.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/08/long-haulers-covid-19-recognition-support-groups-symptoms/615382/
Here is a more vague claim that seems to corroborate:
“Whereas some “long haulers” were found to be positive for SARS-CoV-2 RNA by RT-PCR at symptom onset, many did not fulfill the criteria for testing at the beginning of the pandemic, or tested negative at a time when respiratory symptoms had subsided. In addition, some “long haulers” did not have detectable antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 when the first serological test (Abbott) became available commercially.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/acn3.51350
If you look at the demographics of the sufferers, it’s also somewhat suspect. Middle-aged well-to-do white women are massively over-represented. If it were a matter of over-active immunity you’d expect young women, and if it were a matter of a weak immunity getting overrun, you’d expect men. So, I’m not sure there’s a good reason to suspect this population really would be the main sufferers of some legitimate long-term syndrome. OTOH, middle-aged white women have sky-high rates of depression.
I expect symptoms-consistent-with is broad enough to interact with a whole lot of stuff that is going on medically and culturally.