I also worry that it could become basically chronic and lifelong. It’s surprising that we still presumably see effects 6 months after, and if 6 months isn’t long enough to get better, that’s reason for me to believe that these people won’t get better. And it’s possible to catch COVID multiple times (although you become more immune each time), so each time you may face a risk of long COVID.
If they do longer studies, maybe we’ll see more people getting better, and with future studies, we’ll have more reliable statistics. For now, I plan to continue being somewhat cautious and avoid large indoor crowds and high-traffric indoor areas.
When you say that each consecutive time you catch covid you become more immune, do you implicitly estimate that each consecutive infections comes with lower risk of long covid?
This is what I was thinking, yes. The vaccines themselves reduce your risk of long COVID conditional on catching COVID, and more vaccines seem to be better (even after 2).
On the other hand, maybe there could be cumulative damage from repeated infections and there’s some kind of threshold effect.
I also worry that it could become basically chronic and lifelong. It’s surprising that we still presumably see effects 6 months after, and if 6 months isn’t long enough to get better, that’s reason for me to believe that these people won’t get better. And it’s possible to catch COVID multiple times (although you become more immune each time), so each time you may face a risk of long COVID.
If they do longer studies, maybe we’ll see more people getting better, and with future studies, we’ll have more reliable statistics. For now, I plan to continue being somewhat cautious and avoid large indoor crowds and high-traffric indoor areas.
Given that the SARS side-effects were still there years later there’s nothing surprising about still seeing effects 6 months later.
But the IFR for SARS is order of magnitudes higher and we know that severe illness is more likely to cause long-term effects.
An order of magnitude less then SARS would still be a lot.
How do we know that? We did have some long-COVID studies that suggest this isn’t the case.
If the long-term effects are due to the immune system “learning” to attack native cells that can happen without severe illness.
When you say that each consecutive time you catch covid you become more immune, do you implicitly estimate that each consecutive infections comes with lower risk of long covid?
This is what I was thinking, yes. The vaccines themselves reduce your risk of long COVID conditional on catching COVID, and more vaccines seem to be better (even after 2).
On the other hand, maybe there could be cumulative damage from repeated infections and there’s some kind of threshold effect.