I strong-upvoted this comment from CheerfulWarrior, to bring it from the negatives to the positives. I think CellBioGuy’s comment was good, and a valuable contribution to the discussion. I think it’s also useful for CheerfulWarrior to ask for citations, and useful to remind us of the risk of anecdotes here: we should share data like this, but it’s true that there are meaningful risks of mis-reporting, of selection effects, and of over-updating-due-to-emotional-salience.
E.g., imagine 99⁄100 LessWrongers deciding not to comment because they haven’t heard of their friends suffering long-term effects, while the 1⁄100 LWer whose friends are seeing serious sequelae does decide to comment, since they have the more interesting story to tell.
(I’m making these points as a procedural point, not because I disagree with CellBioGuy’s conclusions. In this case, I do think long-term effects of COVID are not-super-rare in 30-50-year-olds, based on a variety of cobbled-together sources of varying quality, and based on first- and second-hand reports from my friends, people I follow on Twitter, etc.)
(Added: The tone is maybe not optimally friendly, but I think it’s better to focus on epistemic content in this context.)
ąnecdotes from a stranger on the Internet.
[citation needed]
I strong-upvoted this comment from CheerfulWarrior, to bring it from the negatives to the positives. I think CellBioGuy’s comment was good, and a valuable contribution to the discussion. I think it’s also useful for CheerfulWarrior to ask for citations, and useful to remind us of the risk of anecdotes here: we should share data like this, but it’s true that there are meaningful risks of mis-reporting, of selection effects, and of over-updating-due-to-emotional-salience.
E.g., imagine 99⁄100 LessWrongers deciding not to comment because they haven’t heard of their friends suffering long-term effects, while the 1⁄100 LWer whose friends are seeing serious sequelae does decide to comment, since they have the more interesting story to tell.
(I’m making these points as a procedural point, not because I disagree with CellBioGuy’s conclusions. In this case, I do think long-term effects of COVID are not-super-rare in 30-50-year-olds, based on a variety of cobbled-together sources of varying quality, and based on first- and second-hand reports from my friends, people I follow on Twitter, etc.)
(Added: The tone is maybe not optimally friendly, but I think it’s better to focus on epistemic content in this context.)