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Lung damage in recovered Covid sufferers apparently permanent, research finds

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Re: Lung damage in recovered Covid sufferers apparently permanent, research finds

#41

Post by orra »

zwischenzug wrote: post #22
leonixyz wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

State-run doesn't mean anything... BBC is also state-run. It goes to the reputation of the single journalist. In this case the journalist is just citing Frank Hartig, "Oberarzt der Universitätsklinik Innsbruck" I don't have the knowledge to judge his papers and have an opinion about his credibility, but someone else might: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Hartig

The BBC is not state-run. It's an independent corporation funded by a specific tax. Governments have always complained about BBC bias against them since its inception.

Eh, the UK Government directly appoints some of the board members, and broadly dictates the terms of the Royal Charter and Licence Fee.

Yes, the BBC has some operational independence. But it is fiction to pretend the government has no influence over it.

Government complaints against the BBC are largely rhetoric. The reality is the BBC's most senior political correspondent, and many of their pundits, clearly support the ruling party.

Re: Lung damage in recovered Covid sufferers apparently permanent, research finds

#42

Post by rpiguy »

mcbits wrote: post #24
robbiep wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The virus is causing the pneumonia (which literally means lung inflammation). Although it is possible to get a superimposed bacterial infection over the top of this (to be mildly flippant, double pneumonia) because the lungs aren’t clearing debris and another infection can take hold. But the damage is specifically from the effects of the virus

I think the question was whether the virus causes permanent damage in patients without pneumonia. Edit: From the translated article, apparently yes: > All of them were not severe cases, their illnesses were five to six weeks ago and they are considered to have recovered. But they can no longer dive. "The damage to the lungs is irreversible"

Pneumonia can scar the lungs, but COVID appears to be able to scar the lungs without causing Pneumonia. It interferes with hematic function (the ability of your blood to exchange oxygen) leading to the formation of ground glass bodies in the lungs. However, with most people now thought to get COVID asymptomatically, it is likely only a small percentage of the infected leave with permanent damage.

Re: Lung damage in recovered Covid sufferers apparently permanent, research finds

#43

Post by moogleii »

s9w wrote: post #10
Funes- wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>we are still at the "those people were going to die within a year anyway" phase. No, we are not. Young and healthy people are dying too. And that's with global confinement taking place. Just imagine in what kind of hell we would be if people were still roaming around freely; heaps of people would die just because they wouldn't have access to sanitary devices (ventilators, for instance) nor medicine. In any case, if…

> Young and healthy people are dying too A datapoint against that: We have a renowned pathologist in Hamburg (Prof Püschel) who examines every corona death in the city - about 60 so far. He was quoted multiple times that every single victim had severe preexisting conditions. And that none of them would have lived another year. He also challenged the idea that healthy/young people are in danger and gave the example of…

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/05/magazine/first-coronaviru...

He’s 33. You can find plenty more young and younger cases if you look. They are rarer than older cases but the idea that young people in general are not in danger is ridiculous.

Hell, I’m 37, maybe on the border of young, and had to be hospitalized due to COVID and I had no preexisting conditions.

Consider looking at a larger sample size than 60.

Re: Lung damage in recovered Covid sufferers apparently permanent, research finds

#44

Post by detaro »

DangerousPie wrote: post #40
squiggleblaz wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shame this piece was downvoted so hard. Downvoters may agree with pm_me_ur_fullzz that people who dispute the seriousness of covid-19 are wrong, but downvoting the person who says "there are people out there who are wrong" will not cause those people who are wrong to disappear. If you want to make a problem go away, the first step is to talk about the problem.

Downvoting makes it obvious to any casual reader that the comment is heavily disputed and should not be relied upon.

That there are still people thinking its not as big a deal is heavily disputed?

Re: Lung damage in recovered Covid sufferers apparently permanent, research finds

#45

Post by jfim »

rpiguy wrote: post #33
Funes- wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>we are still at the "those people were going to die within a year anyway" phase. No, we are not. Young and healthy people are dying too. And that's with global confinement taking place. Just imagine in what kind of hell we would be if people were still roaming around freely; heaps of people would die just because they wouldn't have access to sanitary devices (ventilators, for instance) nor medicine. In any case, if…

Sweden doesn't look like hell. 99% of deaths in Italy were over 65. Study after study, LA, Massachusetts, Chicago, etc. show that many, many more people have gotten COVID asymptomatically and the actual mortality rate thus far is miniscule. Death projections continue to be revised down in the US and almost everywhere outside of NYC is far behind expected deaths and hospitalizations. NYC is sharing their ventilators w…

> 99% of deaths in Italy were over 65.

Do you have a source for that? Publicly available information [0] points at approximately 80% of deaths being 70 and over, not 99.

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1105061/coronavirus-deat...

Re: Lung damage in recovered Covid sufferers apparently permanent, research finds

#46

Post by [deleted] »

detaro wrote: post #28
wbronitsky wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is incredibly difficult to read posts like this in good faith. More and more people come here to tell us not to believe facts, to disregard what our eyes and ears tell us. It is not hard to connect the dots

You do realize that the commenter does not hold those opinions, but gives them as examples of opinions other people voice? And then people started arguing with the content of the examples, which is a bit pointless when nobody even claims their content is true.

[deleted]

Re: Lung damage in recovered Covid sufferers apparently permanent, research finds

#47

Post by Aeolun »

ramblerman wrote: post #25
Funes- wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>we are still at the "those people were going to die within a year anyway" phase. No, we are not. Young and healthy people are dying too. And that's with global confinement taking place. Just imagine in what kind of hell we would be if people were still roaming around freely; heaps of people would die just because they wouldn't have access to sanitary devices (ventilators, for instance) nor medicine. In any case, if…

Young and healthy people are dying, but I think it's important to have some numbers for context. Italy publishes bi weekly full reports on it's deaths, here is April 20ths: https://www.epicentro.iss.it/en/coronavirus/bollettino/Repor... It's not unfair to state that this disease, is much, much more dangerous for the 65+ age group. That being said I don't agree with the grandparent OP.

> As of April 20 , 238 out of the 21,551 (1.1%) positive SARS-CoV-2 patients under the age of 50 died. In particular, 54 of these were less than 40 years (34 men and 20 women), age range between 0 and 39 years. For 6 patients under the age of 40 years no clinical information is available; the remaining 38 had serious pre-existing pathologies (cardiovascular, renal, psychiatric pathologies, diabetes, obesity) and 10 had no major pathologies.

So, out of the 54 people under 40 that died (~0.25%), 38 had significant other issues. And only 10 (~0.05%) were otherwise healthy people.

I’m tempted to agree with OP that it seems like it’s more of a bad flu for younger people.

Of course, it would be interesting to know how many of those younger people actually needed medical intervention to save their lives. Maybe the death rate amongst older people is so much higher because doctors prefer to treat/save those that have a chance when hospitals are overwhelmed.

Re: Lung damage in recovered Covid sufferers apparently permanent, research finds

#48

Post by moogleii »

vmception wrote: post #2

> It is now undisputed that Covid-19 should be taken seriously as a serious illness. This is heavily disputed. I wonder what the threshold really is for changing that idea. Now that the death numbers are greater than the flu, we are still at the "those people were going to die within a year anyway" phase, and the "I am okay and have a BMI less than 30 so therefore people like me are okay" phase. Been watching the stu…

The downvotes are unfortunate, and sure people should read more carefully, but your wording and prose could be improved. I know it takes time to craft a well-written comment, but it’s usually worth it for contentious subject matters.

For what it’s worth, I agree with what you’re saying, at least with regards to right wing elements in the States.

Re: Lung damage in recovered Covid sufferers apparently permanent, research finds

#49

Post by lbeltrame »

leonixyz wrote: post #13
nkkollaw wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RAI is Italy's state-owned TV channel(s). It's controlled by the party that is governing, and has all the problems of anything that is state-run, including a huge potential for inefficiencies, bureaucracy, and at times corruption. Given the quality level of the "experts" used by the government in this pandemic, I wouldn't give it any credit.

State-run doesn't mean anything... BBC is also state-run. It goes to the reputation of the single journalist. In this case the journalist is just citing Frank Hartig, "Oberarzt der Universitätsklinik Innsbruck" I don't have the knowledge to judge his papers and have an opinion about his credibility, but someone else might: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Hartig

Just to contextualize the OP statement for those that aren't Italian, without going into the validity of the quote itself: aside a few exceptions and scandalistic newspapers, the press in Italy is markedly aligned with the views in the government at this point in time (it wasn't like that before the crisis).

Re: Lung damage in recovered Covid sufferers apparently permanent, research finds

#50

Post by nil-sec »

DanBC wrote: post #36
nil-sec wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a trend here on HN to react very cautiously and critically to studies showing “positive” results, I.e. lower apparent death rate, preliminary evidence for drug efficacy etc. This is a good thing but it should be applied in equal measure to everything. This doesn’t happen as this post shows. Where does your believe that healthy people die come from? Why is it okay to make this statement in such vigor as you d…

Have a look at the ICNARC reports. These show that lower BMI and no comorbidities is low risk, but not no risk. https://www.icnarc.org/Our-Audit/Audits/Cmp/Reports

Thank you for the link. It's great that we get these numbers now. The relevant table for this discussion seems to be table 10. From this it does become clear that a majority of all people who died did not have any severe comorbidities.

However, playing devils advocate I would argue that 1) not all comorbidities are known. In this study they write: "Very severe comorbidities must have been evident within the six months prior to critical care and documented at or prior to critical care".

This is why I think pathology studies are needed. There are healthy young people who suddenly die while playing football because they have undiagnosed heart problems. Given the relatively low number of young people who die, I am not sure we can exclude this right now.

2) I could not find a breakdown of age for those people who were classified as having severe comorbidities. Even though this number is likely low, I wonder what the overlap is between severe comorbidities and those who died young.

Having said all this. I also believe that current behaviour should be conservative if there is uncertain data. Discussion should be allowed though.

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