long covid risk and uncertainty

!markdown

An interesting angle on discussions of long covid, from rezendi:

Relatedly I have come across a truly bizarre pair of articles about long COVID that kind of encapsulates the debate?

* April 2023: 'You're less likely to get long COVID after a second infection than a first' from NPR, cites a study from late 2022 and quotes its lead investigator saying: "Undeniably, we are seeing very, very clearly that for the second infection the risk is lower than the first infection."

* September 2023: 'Does the risk of getting long Covid increase each time you get reinfected?' from STAT news also cites a study and quotes its lead investigator saying: "What we found is really undeniable: It’s very clear in our data that reinfection contributes additional risk of long Covid."


The catch? It's the same study and the same lead investigator.

(Both of these things can be and are true at the same time, but people are obviously going to take very different things away from those two articles. Throughout this pandemic the public health communication has been just mindblowingly inconsistent.)