I’m glad I found this post, even if late. Thanks for writing this!
There’s a new preprint, pre-vaccine and pre-Omicron, with what seem to be good controls, although based on self-report and the participation rate was low, about 1⁄3, but around that for both cases and controls. This could mean health problems are overreported in both cases and controls or especially cases (if the questionnaire is clearly about COVID), and so possibly overestimate the risk differences. The risk differences between cases and controls for new health problems were pretty big, even larger than Scott’s:
Furthermore:
A risk difference of 2.5%=4%-1.5% for self-reported new medical diagnosis of chronic fatigue syndrome, from figure 2.
A risk difference of 3.2%=9.4%-6.5% for full-time sick leave. (I’m aware 9.4-6.5=2.9, not 3.2. Seems like the authors made a mistake.)
Figure 4 has “Risk differences of symptoms after 6-12 months, comparing SARS-CoV-2 test-positive and test-negative participants, stratified by sex and age group”. I don’t think these are all necessarily new symptoms since catching COVID.
A pessimistic upper bound based on full-time sick leave or CFS could be:
3.2% for full-time sick leave (or CFS).
50% reduction from vaccination
50% initial chance of being symptomatic pre-Omicron pre-vaccine (assuming only symptomatic people get tested)
50% reduction from Omicron
25%? reduction for chance it doesn’t stick around for long-term
I think if you’ve already been diagnosed with CFS, it’s already fairly likely to be long-term.
This gives 0.3%.
If I went with conservative numbers as a precautionary principle estimate:
3.2% for full-time sick leave (or CFS).
66% reduction from vaccination plus booster (but requires booster)
50% reduction from being asymptomatic early on and then this went up later, combined with asymptomatic cases not being quite totally safe
50% reduction from Omicron only, on precautionary principle
33% reduction for sticking around
0% reduction from the second sticking around reduction because I’m worried about accidentally double-counting somewhere and want to be safe
25% reduction for misattribution to give benefit of the doubt
0% impact of good health
This gives 0.134%. Maybe you’d also want to discount more for participation bias, and you could probably make some age and gender adjustments based on Figure 4.
These are both somewhat lower risks than yours, but pretty similar.
I’m glad I found this post, even if late. Thanks for writing this!
There’s a new preprint, pre-vaccine and pre-Omicron, with what seem to be good controls, although based on self-report and the participation rate was low, about 1⁄3, but around that for both cases and controls. This could mean health problems are overreported in both cases and controls or especially cases (if the questionnaire is clearly about COVID), and so possibly overestimate the risk differences. The risk differences between cases and controls for new health problems were pretty big, even larger than Scott’s:
Furthermore:
A risk difference of 2.5%=4%-1.5% for self-reported new medical diagnosis of chronic fatigue syndrome, from figure 2.
A risk difference of 3.2%=9.4%-6.5% for full-time sick leave. (I’m aware 9.4-6.5=2.9, not 3.2. Seems like the authors made a mistake.)
Figure 4 has “Risk differences of symptoms after 6-12 months, comparing SARS-CoV-2 test-positive and test-negative participants, stratified by sex and age group”. I don’t think these are all necessarily new symptoms since catching COVID.
A pessimistic upper bound based on full-time sick leave or CFS could be:
3.2% for full-time sick leave (or CFS).
50% reduction from vaccination
50% initial chance of being symptomatic pre-Omicron pre-vaccine (assuming only symptomatic people get tested)
50% reduction from Omicron
25%? reduction for chance it doesn’t stick around for long-term
I think if you’ve already been diagnosed with CFS, it’s already fairly likely to be long-term.
This gives 0.3%.
If I went with conservative numbers as a precautionary principle estimate:
3.2% for full-time sick leave (or CFS).
66% reduction from vaccination plus booster (but requires booster)
50% reduction from being asymptomatic early on and then this went up later, combined with asymptomatic cases not being quite totally safe
50% reduction from Omicron only, on precautionary principle
33% reduction for sticking around
0% reduction from the second sticking around reduction because I’m worried about accidentally double-counting somewhere and want to be safe
25% reduction for misattribution to give benefit of the doubt
0% impact of good health
This gives 0.134%. Maybe you’d also want to discount more for participation bias, and you could probably make some age and gender adjustments based on Figure 4.
These are both somewhat lower risks than yours, but pretty similar.