Thanks!
Sameerishere
Karma: 359
Thanks! I have not, but defer to Elizabeth’s comment below on this.
Thanks very much for looking into this, and sharing all those details about the conclusion you came to!
I have the PM-type skills for this, but if the consensus of smart people far more numerate than I is that the risk of debilitating long COVID is low enough that it’s comparable to other risks normal people routinely tolerate, it doesn’t seem worth it.
Some follow-up questions for you:
1) Is this still your assessment (i.e. how your assessment evolved since the post you wrote 8 months ago, if at all)?
My assessment that, post-vaccination, covid was in the range of other health concerns, and most people had lower hanging fruit to pick on their health.
2) How likely do you think it is that this would change with further variants? Do you think it is likely enough that this is worth keeping tabs on? (My guess is that this is covered in your overall comment above, but thought I’d check, in case your overall conclusion was about updating risk assessment to reflect new studies, rather than new variants).
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/selfreportedlongcovidafterinfectionwiththeomicronvariant/6may2022 which a couple other commenters shared seems to indicate that Omicron certainly hasn’t been more likely to cause long COVID than Delta (based on a quick read of the summary at the beginning)
Thanks for this!
Question: It seems possible that long COVID prevalence / impact falls short of the level that would qualify a significant proportion of the American workforce for disability, but would still be very concerning for folks with cognitively intensive professions (i.e., the majority of LW readers). How likely do you think this is?
[I removed the other question I’d included here earlier, quoting the insurer Unum from the last article you cited, because I only saw the part where “it has approved “hundreds of thousands” of additional disability claims since the beginning of the pandemic, with an increase from pre-pandemic levels of 35 percent” but missed the part where they said “In general, disability and leave claims connected to covid-19 have been primarily short-term events with the majority of claimants recovering before completing the normal qualification period for long term disability insurance.” Incidentally, per https://caveylaw.com/practice-areas/long-term-disability-erisa-lawyer/medical-conditions/ it seems like the threshold for LTD is to be out of work for more than 3-6 months.]
Other comments:
The stats you cited regarding disability claims seem compelling in assessing this question. (I wonder if there are countervailing (non COVID-related) forces that would drive down the aggregate rates of disability claims, but the stats on COVID-related disability specifically would seem to avoid that concern.)
I tend to be wary of arguments which say “the press is just lying” (perhaps because it’s really hard for me to assess that, and seems like a convenient way to dismiss evidence that doesn’t fit your favored model), but I could believe that the press’s assertions are driven by the desire for a dramatic headline, and full of sloppy thinking (and subject to the same sorts of issues that you and Zvi have noted). Regardless, if you have stats on disability claims, and the press does not have better stats, then that seems to settle the issue.
Thanks! I’m curious what you think of his argument that if debilitating long COVID were common, that would be obvious anecdotally and in aggregate statistics:
Every week someone comes in and says things like 30% chance of brain fog, but think about that for a second. Half the country has had Covid. So this is saying 15% or more of the population is suffering from crippling brain fog? Wouldn’t we know? I mean come on.
Thanks! I find that compelling.
Thanks—I find that (“Half the country has had Covid. So this is saying 15% or more of the population is suffering from crippling brain fog? Wouldn’t we know?”) compelling, and it usefully cuts through the new claims / studies that continue to pop up without needing to examine every one.
Thanks for chiming in! If I’m interpreting your response correctly, it seems you’ve stopped closely analyzing evidence on long COVID not because you necessarily think your original analysis is highly likely to be robust against further findings; rather, you think that the cost of avoiding COVID is high enough that even a significantly higher risk of long COVID wouldn’t change your behavior.
This suggests to me that for folks who weigh the cost of avoiding COVID differently, it would be worthwhile continuing to assess the risk of long COVID. (Not saying you should be the one assessing it further, given your relative priorities—just that this is useful information for other interested parties who may be thinking, “well, Zvi doesn’t think any of the new stuff refutes his analysis, so must be fine.”)
As tslarm’s comment suggests, I think there are a bunch of personal options that significantly COVID risk without having to “never live your life and hide in your apartment forever.” (For me personally, that looks like avoiding public indoor dining, bars, and large events, and avoiding even smaller indoor events when transmission risk is very high). That wouldn’t be ideal, but if the alternative is, say, a 30% chance of years of fatigue / brain fog, for me it would be very much be a price worth paying. (For the many reasons you articulate, I think the alternative is much less dire—just illustrating that at a certain risk of debilitating long-term symptoms, the cost-benefit analysis weighs towards avoiding COVID, so “live your life or never live your life and hide in your apartment forever” doesn’t seem like the right frame to analyze this from.).There are also a ton of societal investments that could be made to shift that cost-benefit analysis (e.g. broad deployment of better ventilation/filtration, UV light, continuing investment in vaccines, treatments, etc), some of which you cover in your posts.)
It would be helpful to hear more specific thoughts on whether / why this data is “garbage”.
An initial thought on that (since I don’t have time to dive deeper on this today) is that the first source linked in this post says most of the studies did not use a control group:
For the assessment of the quality of the included studies, we used the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale for observational studies.(22) Not every item from this scale was relevant for the included studies as most included studies did not use a control group. Therefore, we used two items from Selection (representativeness and ascertainment of outcome) and the three items from Outcome (assessment of outcome, follow-up long enough, adequacy of follow-up; see Supplementary Material).
Thanks for this. Prompted by this and other recent posts, I’m trying to mobilize more of a systematic effort to maintain an updated assessment of Long COVID risk—if you’re interested, please chime in here! https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4z3FBfmEHmqnz3NEY/long-covid-risk-how-to-maintain-an-up-to-date-risk
Thanks for this. Prompted by this and other recent posts, I’m trying to mobilize more of a systematic effort to maintain an updated assessment of Long COVID risk—if you’re interested, please chime in here! https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4z3FBfmEHmqnz3NEY/long-covid-risk-how-to-maintain-an-up-to-date-risk
[Question] Long COVID risk: How to maintain an up to date risk assessment so we can go back to normal life?
I meant time in bed… My Fitbit does claim I get about an hour less than that in terms of actual sleep, despite not feeling like I have problems sleeping.
Ah interesting point. That is helpful, maybe I’ll play with that.
I do find the effects I observed despite drinking tea until and even past 4pm.
Interesting! So when you did this, did you find that you were able to avoid the afternoon crash?
Yeah there is definitely a lot of variation in how good / crappy decaf tastes!
I don’t remember, unfortunately, since it’s now been a few months. But less than a week, probably a few days.
The glorious energy boost I’ve gotten by abstaining from coffee
Have you read anything lately on whether throat swabs are a reliable procedure for antigen tests that aren’t officially indicated for throat swabs? Back when I looked into this in December it seemed like there were concerns about false positives (though the only study I found from a quick search was one which literally used drinks—soda, if I recall correctly—as buffer—https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1201971221006548), and public health authorities / experts are still not officially recommending that (for whatever that is worth...).
And...sorry to hear you might (probably?) have COVID!
FYI, Alyssa Vance provided additional disability statistics https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4z3FBfmEHmqnz3NEY/long-covid-risk-how-to-maintain-an-up-to-date-risk?commentId=GKmqE9PKXfRSKb5PC which suggest “serious, long-term illness from COVID is pretty unlikely.”
Siebe, I would be interested to hear your take on that, since you seem to have a substantially more pessimistic view of this.