long covid risk and uncertainty

[redbird]

!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.)

Comments

[adrian_turtle]

Talking about risk is hard. Consider (using numbers pulled out of the air), a situation where the first infection has a 10% chance of causing long covid, and future infections have only a 5% chance of causing it. First infection, you roll the 20-sided die and either 00 or 01 is long covid. Infections 2-10, just 00 is long covid. So, each infection is less risky...except in the sense that you keep rolling the dice again

[voidampersand]

Plus the risk of repeat infections is high. The virus is mutating too fast for anyone to develop effective immunity. People are getting Covid multiple times a year. It is not seasonal.

[dewline]

We keep learning new stuff about the virus, and that will render the messaging to look inconsistent, even if we didn't have rich and evil lunatics plotting to leverage the Pandemic to keep themselves at the top of the financial/political heap forever.

[otter]

Yes. This ^.

[sabotabby]

I continue with my strategy to try to not get covid.