This seems reasonable, but I wonder whether “long-term complications” might be a bit underrated. It seems like there are a lot of viruses that have long-term effects or other non-obvious consequences. (I should add that I’m not a biologist, so this is not an informed opinion.)
The example I’m most familiar with is chicken pox causing shingles, decades later from the initial sickness. In that case, shingles is (I think) typically more severe than the original sickness, and is quite common: 1 out of 3 people develop it in their lifetime, according to the CDC.
Other examples that come to mind are measles erasing immune memory (which IIRC wasn’t known until recently) and, though not a childhood illness, HPV causing cervical cancer.
Each of these examples has some big differences from SARS-CoV-2, but there isn’t much experience with severe coronaviruses, so I don’t know how to do better. Maybe the ideal would be to go through a list of reasonably well-understood viruses and check what proportion have known long-term effects or non-obvious consequences (and the rate).
We can get a lower bound from chicken pox and measles. If there are 10-20 common childhood illnesses (based on a quick search), then, using 2 as the numerator, at least 10%-20% of them have consequences that are not immediately obvious. If we go with the 1/3rd rate for shingles (since I don’t know for measles), that would translate into a 3%-7% lower bound for covid.
Would I go with a >3% estimate of serious long-term effect or non-obvious consequence from covid to a kid that catches it? A persuasive counterargument that comes to mind is that the immediate experience of covid is less severe to a kid than chicken pox or measles, which would suggest that non-immediate effects are also less severe.
All-in-all, my confidence is extremely low, but hopefully this gives some food for thought.
I guess was thinking that kids who don’t get bad cases at the time are unlikely to have long-term effects. I think polio is like that. In particular, I assume that only the bad COVID cases get into the nervous system, where I’m especially concerned. So that’s how I got a lower number. But I dunno either :-)
This seems reasonable, but I wonder whether “long-term complications” might be a bit underrated. It seems like there are a lot of viruses that have long-term effects or other non-obvious consequences. (I should add that I’m not a biologist, so this is not an informed opinion.)
The example I’m most familiar with is chicken pox causing shingles, decades later from the initial sickness. In that case, shingles is (I think) typically more severe than the original sickness, and is quite common: 1 out of 3 people develop it in their lifetime, according to the CDC.
Other examples that come to mind are measles erasing immune memory (which IIRC wasn’t known until recently) and, though not a childhood illness, HPV causing cervical cancer.
Each of these examples has some big differences from SARS-CoV-2, but there isn’t much experience with severe coronaviruses, so I don’t know how to do better. Maybe the ideal would be to go through a list of reasonably well-understood viruses and check what proportion have known long-term effects or non-obvious consequences (and the rate).
We can get a lower bound from chicken pox and measles. If there are 10-20 common childhood illnesses (based on a quick search), then, using 2 as the numerator, at least 10%-20% of them have consequences that are not immediately obvious. If we go with the 1/3rd rate for shingles (since I don’t know for measles), that would translate into a 3%-7% lower bound for covid.
Would I go with a >3% estimate of serious long-term effect or non-obvious consequence from covid to a kid that catches it? A persuasive counterargument that comes to mind is that the immediate experience of covid is less severe to a kid than chicken pox or measles, which would suggest that non-immediate effects are also less severe.
All-in-all, my confidence is extremely low, but hopefully this gives some food for thought.
Yeah thanks!
I guess was thinking that kids who don’t get bad cases at the time are unlikely to have long-term effects. I think polio is like that. In particular, I assume that only the bad COVID cases get into the nervous system, where I’m especially concerned. So that’s how I got a lower number. But I dunno either :-)