Covid-19

[trapper700]

This isn't really going to cut it. Where in the study you quoted does it state it's following these guidelines? Who is making the determination in that study that "cannot be explained by an alternative diagnosis." If you are going to say things like 30% of people who have contracted COVID, which is about 120 million people, have long COVID . You need to be exact here in your methodology.

It might surprise you to learn that doctors know how to diagnose long covid, even if you personally have no idea. Do you think doctors are just calling things long covid after seeing the symptoms without looking for any other causes? It's a diagnosis of exclusion, which means that for a doctor to call something long covid, it's the last option because of process of elimination.

[jlw1980]

Interesting.

[jlw1980]

You are both right that the typical symptoms of long covid are very broad and can be caused by more common diseases/disorders. But, the textbook definition of long covid according to the WHO includes the line "cannot be explained by an alternative diagnosis." Differentials are obviously checked for beforehand and it's not considered to be long covid unless it doesn't seem to be explained by anything else.

To add to that, we more or less know about some of these typical symptoms already because of the other coronaviruses of the recent past. SARS and MERS both also caused very similar presentations in a patient long term as someone who has long covid.

I always appreciate your informative posts. Just wanted to tell you that.

[ClownPickle]

You are both right that the typical symptoms of long covid are very broad and can be caused by more common diseases/disorders. But, the textbook definition of long covid according to the WHO includes the line "cannot be explained by an alternative diagnosis." Differentials are obviously checked for beforehand and it's not considered to be long covid unless it doesn't seem to be explained by anything else.

To add to that, we more or less know about some of these typical symptoms already because of the other coronaviruses of the recent past. SARS and MERS both also caused very similar presentations in a patient long term as someone who has long covid.

This isn't really going to cut it. Where in the study you quoted does it state it's following these guidelines? Who is making the determination in that study that "cannot be explained by an alternative diagnosis." If you are going to say things like 30% of people who have contracted COVID, which is about 120 million people, have long COVID . You need to be exact here in your methodology.

[trapper700]

Oh OK. That makes more sense. So how are they tying something as common as sore throat, nausea, low back pain-joint pain, and headache directly to having a COVID infection 60+ days prior, and not many other medical ailments/conditions?

And to CP's points above, some people are attributing things like fatigue after COVID definitively to long COVID. For example, fatigue post-COVID may have nothing to do with prior infection.

You are both right that the typical symptoms of long covid are very broad and can be caused by more common diseases/disorders. But, the textbook definition of long covid according to the WHO includes the line "cannot be explained by an alternative diagnosis." Differentials are obviously checked for beforehand and it's not considered to be long covid unless it doesn't seem to be explained by anything else.

To add to that, we more or less know about some of these typical symptoms already because of the other coronaviruses of the recent past. SARS and MERS both also caused very similar presentations in a patient long term as someone who has long covid.

[False1]

Here is a similar study with a larger international population. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/e...299-6/fulltext

I believe Stanford got a grant to a 4 year study on long COVID so I'm sure there will be emerging research in the field as time goes on.

At any rate it seems like long COVID is not something that should just lightly be brushed off.

I agree on your last point, I just want to get to the facts from the emerging research without credibility issues. Even this one seems sketchy. It's aggravating af to me, I'm sure you and everyone else that we get sound bites that make people jump to conclusions and that contribute to inconsistency and indecisiveness when it comes to global/domestic strategy.

• "The survey was created by a team of patients with COVID-19 who are members of the Body Politic online COVID-19 support group and formed the Patient-Led Research Collaborative." Not sure that's a great normalized population to create and execute this survey. https://www.wearebodypolitic.com/about-body-politic
• "For the majority of respondents (>91%), the time to recovery exceeded 35 weeks. During their illness, participants experienced an average of 55.9+/- 25.5 (mean+/-STD) symptoms, across an average of 9.1 organ systems."

Does that second bullet pass the sniff test for you, at all? Do 9 out of 10 people you talk to in real life indicate it took them 9 months to recover from COVID? And to CP's points above, some people are attributing things like fatigue after COVID definitively to long COVID. For example, fatigue post-COVID may have nothing to do with prior infection.

[YankeePride1967]

Here is a similar study with a larger international population. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/e...299-6/fulltext

I believe Stanford got a grant to a 4 year study on long COVID so I'm sure there will be emerging research in the field as time goes on.

At any rate it seems like long COVID is not something that should just lightly be brushed off.

I can tell you I have never altered my lifestyle because of the flu. I know it can still be dangerous but not even close as that covid is

[Yankee Tripper]

Here is a similar study with a larger international population. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/e...299-6/fulltext

I believe Stanford got a grant to a 4 year study on long COVID so I'm sure there will be emerging research in the field as time goes on.

At any rate it seems like long COVID is not something that should just lightly be brushed off.

[False1]

I have no idea how they control for asymptomatic COVID patients. But if you experience mild symptoms, you are not asymptomatic.

But you are also not tested, which they seem to slip in as a subtle qualifer for calculating that the "majority of individuals" experience long COVID. It should say "the majority of individuals who test positive after experiencing mild or moderate COVID-19 infection..." In fact, looking at the study it should probably have many more caveats.

This study seems somewhat sketchy. It was 303 people all in AZ, they stratified the population but didn't publicize the stratified results, 67% had a pre-existing chronic condition, the mean age rate was 44 years old, etc. And all of the results were based on self-reported symptoms.

Excluding participants who had incomplete COVID-19 testing information, 543 received a follow-up survey. Of these 543, 303 (55.8%) completed the follow-up surveys. Participants had a mean age of 44 years (range 12–82 years), were mostly female (70%), non-Hispanic white (68%), with college or greater education (38%), and with at least one pre-existing chronic condition (67%).

Plus, I never trust anything sponsored by UofA LOL.

[Yankee Tripper]

How does this account for all the people who had mild symptoms but never tested? Or the symptoms were so mild they never felt compelled to test in the first place? Those need to be in the denominator.

That seems to be missing from the headline of the article, and as such it gives the impression they are trying to mislead: "The majority of individuals who experience mild or moderate COVID-19 infection also experience long COVID, or persistent symptoms more than 30 days after they test positive, according to research data from the longitudinal CoVHORT study at the University of Arizona Health Sciences."

I have no idea how they control for asymptomatic COVID patients. But if you experience mild symptoms, you are not asymptomatic.

[ClownPickle]

You are misinterpreting what the quote means. Excluding previous symptoms does exactly what you are trying to prevent. Any of the symptoms that people had prior to covid infection were not included. So the post covid symptoms were all things they had not had prior to infection.

Oh OK. That makes more sense. So how are they tying something as common as sore throat, nausea, low back pain-joint pain, and headache directly to having a COVID infection 60+ days prior, and not many other medical ailments/conditions?

[False1]

I think Trapper probably has better info on it that I do but I don't believe your statement is correct.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/release...0804210117.htm

How does this account for all the people who had mild symptoms but never tested? Or the symptoms were so mild they never felt compelled to test in the first place? Those need to be in the denominator.

That seems to be missing from the headline of the article, and as such it gives the impression they are trying to mislead: "The majority of individuals who experience mild or moderate COVID-19 infection also experience long COVID, or persistent symptoms more than 30 days after they test positive, according to research data from the longitudinal CoVHORT study at the University of Arizona Health Sciences."

[trapper700]

This seems like an interesting omission in the study. Why would you exclude previous years symptoms before COVID?

You are misinterpreting what the quote means. Excluding previous symptoms does exactly what you are trying to prevent. Any of the symptoms that people had prior to covid infection were not included. So the post covid symptoms were all things they had not had prior to infection.

[ClownPickle]

"There has been conflicting information regarding whether asymptomatic individuals go on to become long-haulers, and roughly 32% of those reporting symptoms at day 61+ in our study were initially asymptomatic at the time of SARS-CoV-2 testing."
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1....03.21252086v1

"Post-COVID conditions were found to a greater extent in patients who had more severe cases of COVID-19, but also in a substantial share of patients whose cases lacked symptoms. Of patients who were hospitalized with COVID-19, the percentage that had a post-COVID condition was 50 percent; of patients who were symptomatic but not hospitalized, 27.5 percent; and of patients who were asymptomatic, 19 percent."
https://s3.amazonaws.com/media2.fair...te%20Paper.pdf

Thanks, I was going to reference this as well, but it said "mild or moderate" so I didn't want the response to be "this isn't just mild, it could have been moderate covid that leads to long covid"

Was this study peer reviewed? How are they guaranteeing the 60+ days symptoms are directly correlated to previous COVID infection?

This seems like an interesting omission in the study. Why would you exclude previous years symptoms before COVID?

Symptoms reported over the previous year prior to COVID-19 were excluded, using nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) followed by graph lasso to assess relationships between symptoms.

So I got pericarditis or myocarditis prior to COVID, then got COVID, then 60+ days after testing positive, I had pericarditis or myocarditis symptoms. They are then tying those symptoms to COVID. Correct?

Presenting symptoms included palpitations, chronic rhinitis, dysgeusia, chills, insomnia, hyperhidrosis, anxiety, sore throat, and headache among others. We identified 5 symptom clusters at day 61+: chest pain-cough, dyspnea-cough, anxiety-tachycardia, abdominal pain-nausea, and low back pain-joint pain. Long-haulers represent a very significant public health concern, and there are no guidelines to address their diagnosis and management.

Again, so lots of common symptoms from various ailments. How are they tying them directly to COVID?

[jlw1980]

Anywhere between 10% and 30% of people who get covid get long covid. Some studies even showing half of patients having at least one long covid symptom 6 months after the initial infection.




There are cases of long haul flu, but not nearly as frequently and not as severe. As the list of things show, long covid is more than just a respiratory disease as it affects different parts of your body/organs/systems. Flu, even long haul flu, is primarily a respiratory disease. Long covid also usually resulted in multiple symptoms instead of just one or two.

An old high school friend of mine had long haul COVID for like 18 months. She got COVID in early 2020, when Americans first started getting it. It was so bad. She has two young daughters, and she could do nothing with them for a long time.

One of my best friends had it a month ago. She missed two weeks of work despite being vaccine boosted. She also has RA, which likely had a lot to do with how sick she was in spite of her vaccines. She gets regular Humira injections, as well. The vaccines possibly kept her from hospitalization.