Long Covid is overblown and often something else, says Oxford professor • Hacker News Board

Re: Long Covid is overblown and often something else, says Oxford professor

#91

Post by CryptoPunk » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 10:54 AM UTC

nuerow wrote: post #77

CryptoPunk wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Feeling fatigued alone does not pass off as long Covid, That is not true. Here is a typical study purportedly showing evidence for long COVID: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/28/covid-37-of-pe... >>One in three people infected with coronavirus will experience at least one symptom of long Covid, a new study suggests. The most common symptom associated with "long-COVID" is anxiety..

> That is not true. Here is a typical study purportedly showing evidence for long COVID: You've said "study" but you're quoting an article from The Guardian. Also, it seems you even failed to read your source. Your article does not refer to the incidence of long COVID-19. Your source only refers to a statistical study of the prevalence of any of the symptoms that are attributed to long COVID-19, whose goal is clearly…

>>You've said "study" but you're quoting an article from The Guardian.

An article which describes the results of a study..

>>Also, I feel you are either misquoting or being disingenuous. The article you quoted quite clearly states that "The most common symptoms were breathing problems, abdominal symptoms, fatigue, pain and anxiety or depression."

I'm referring to the graph in that article, which shows that anxiety/depression is the most commonly cited symptom, at 15% of survey respondents:

https://i.ibb.co/27yyhGG/long-covid-symptoms.png

>>Your article does not refer to the incidence of long COVID-19.

Yes it does. Long-COVID typically refers to any expression of any of the symptoms listed, following a COVID infection.

Re: Long Covid is overblown and often something else, says Oxford professor

#92

Post by nuerow » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 10:55 AM UTC

kergonath wrote: post #78

nuerow wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some guy says it's overblown and this is ranking on HN? The guy quoted for said statement is a professor of medicine of a reputable university, so he does have the authority thing sorted out. Also, I feel the quote means something different than the original interpretation. After reading the article, it seems that John Bell simply states that a) long Covid is "more complicated than people assume", and b) it's incid…

> The guy quoted for said statement is a professor of medicine of a reputable university, so he does have the authority thing sorted out. That’s fallacious. There are loads of professors spewing bullshit, including about their field, including at Oxford. It says nothing about the validity of the point they are making. Particularly after the point has been filtered through journalists with a questionable understanding…

> That’s fallacious. There are loads of professors spewing bullshit,

No, not really. The fallacious bit is blindly and outright dismissing any statement, along with attacking and accusing anything a researcher says as being "spewing bullshit", just because you didn't liked hearing it.

Eve though I agree that appeals to authority are no way to get close to the truth, what we are seeing here is pure denialism and a primal anti-intellectual attitude directed towards a researcher from a reputable university just because he dared point out that initial conservative estimates might have been conservative.

To be quite clear, John Bell does not dictate the truth just because he is a professor of medicine at Oxford. But that is not the problem. The problem is actually trying to attack him just because he had the audacity to quote statistics on the real-world incidence of long Covid and state that initial estimates were off.

Re: Long Covid is overblown and often something else, says Oxford professor

#93

Post by jzellis » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 10:56 AM UTC

So one professor of medicine at Oxford says that long Covid is idiopathic. As Bell is an academic professor and not a clinician in the field handling patients, or a virologist tasked with studying this particular situation, his opinions are educated but not necessarily informed enough to be authoritative. And, of course, no amount of theorizing negates the fact that a great number of people with Covid seem to be suffering from prolonged and in many cases debilitating symptoms from, well, something that didn't cause them before these people had Covid. And a great many other doctors very clearly don't share his opinion, including actual practicing doctors in hospitals and surgeries and virologists.

So as a "gotcha" political point against all these "sky is falling" liberals, it's not actually very useful. What it sounds like is right-wing contrarians looking for any authoritative figure to bolster their claims that all the sick people and dead people didn't really die or get sick and stay sick, or if they did they were already sick, so they can simply return the economy - which is the only thing they give a shit about - to making them money.

It's not actually very convincing or compelling if you're not, y'know, a free market loony or a sociopath.

Re: Long Covid is overblown and often something else, says Oxford professor

#94

Post by charbonneau » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 10:56 AM UTC

stuaxo wrote: post #22

rob_c wrote: post #19

Nothing new here. 90%+ of people don't understand that either they're suffering depression from isolating from other humans, or in cases of healthcare, symptoms don't suddenly appear months after a disease or vaccine for hundreds of people like some episode of House. The 1% of legit cases are being let down because were being dragged down by the same mass hysteria that linked vaccines and autism. Chances are this isn…

Covid itself creates an auto immune response. It's estimated one in seven kids will suffer long Covid. The symptoms aren't the symptoms of depression.

Not peer-reviewed. Only 13.5% of the children completed the 3-month online questionnaire. After 3 months, 30.3% of test-positives and 16.2% of test-negatives had 3+ symptoms. Possible response & recall bias. No control group for other respiratory infections. Did not assess whether symptoms were continuous for the entire 3 months.

Re: Long Covid is overblown and often something else, says Oxford professor

#95

Post by CryptoPunk » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 10:56 AM UTC

jinder wrote: post #87

CryptoPunk wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a scientific answer. Physical symptoms of stress include: Low energy Headaches Upset stomach, including diarrhea, constipation, and nausea Aches, pains, and tense muscles Chest pain and rapid heartbeat Insomnia Frequent colds and infections Loss of sexual desire and/or ability Nervousness and shaking, ringing in the ear, cold or sweaty hands and feet Dry mouth and difficulty swallowing Clenched jaw and gri…

How do you expect to control for the world-wide psychosocial impact of the pandemic? It's also pretty widely known that virtually all viruses can have a post-viral syndrome so if it would be MORE surprising if there wasn't a long covid. I've had long covid for the last 10 months, and finally seem to be coming out of it. At its worst, I would get "episodes" where my entire body would start buzzing, so extreme that it…

>>How do you expect to control for the world-wide psychosocial impact of the pandemic?

You use antibody tests to find undiagnosed prior cases, where the patient was unaware they had it during their infection. Then you can compare those who had COVID, without the associated psychosocial impact and two week isolation, to those who did not, to try to determine what long-term impact COVID has.

Re: Long Covid is overblown and often something else, says Oxford professor

#96

Post by rich_sasha » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 10:58 AM UTC

kergonath wrote: post #78

nuerow wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some guy says it's overblown and this is ranking on HN? The guy quoted for said statement is a professor of medicine of a reputable university, so he does have the authority thing sorted out. Also, I feel the quote means something different than the original interpretation. After reading the article, it seems that John Bell simply states that a) long Covid is "more complicated than people assume", and b) it's incid…

> The guy quoted for said statement is a professor of medicine of a reputable university, so he does have the authority thing sorted out. That’s fallacious. There are loads of professors spewing bullshit, including about their field, including at Oxford. It says nothing about the validity of the point they are making. Particularly after the point has been filtered through journalists with a questionable understanding…

Well, quoting him is not major-breakthrough-worthy but I reckon he deserves an article based on the quote. Toutes proportions gardees ofc.

Re: Long Covid is overblown and often something else, says Oxford professor

#97

Post by oliwarner » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 11:00 AM UTC

danjac wrote: post #25

stuaxo wrote: post #14

The Times and Telepgraph have been minimising Covid since day one, even providing a platform for groups such as "us for them". Right now there are no mitigations for Covid in UK schools. One of the things safer schools campaigners are pointing out is the risk of long Covid (as well as hospitalisations etc). Example of Covid in one area of the UK https://mobile.twitter.com/DmodosCutter/status/1445303921300...

The question is why the Times/Telegraph (and their low-IQ equivalents such as the Mail and Express) are so keen to downplay Covid. My hunch is that their owners are losing money on property investments and are desperate to get employees back in the office, who knows.

Definitely property.

Get back to normal, back to work peasants. Crowd onto trains and herd yourselves back into the super-expensive office blocks clustered in super-expensive cities.

Property underwrites a huge portion of investments and pensions. If we suddenly discovered that 80% of us could work from home, anywhere on the planet, why would anyone pay £1.5m for a house that would cost £400k if it were just an hour away?

Re: Long Covid is overblown and often something else, says Oxford professor

#98

Post by noduerme » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 11:01 AM UTC

antiSingularity wrote: post #73

noduerme wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like your immune system didn't handle that well, but again, imagine how much worse it would handle covid.

My immune system would definitely be better if I hadn't been confined to my house for months, and banned from seeing anyone for months after that.

True, and the social isolation has sucked. I've had the shots, and those sucked too. But I'm not concerned this is going to be a new permanent state of affairs. I think it was a one time emergency, and how one carries oneself in a crisis says a lot about a person. If or when it shows itself to be a permanent state of affairs - then the calculus of endless vaccinations and endless quarantine would change things. I have patience and a long term view of this whole situation.

Re: Long Covid is overblown and often something else, says Oxford professor

#99

Post by CryptoPunk » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 11:02 AM UTC

hactually wrote: post #86

CryptoPunk wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the Democrats are even more misinformed. But yes, the media in general is scaring the shit out of people. That Democrats are the worse afflicted is secondary to that point.

I don't know many democrats backing riots and snarfling horse paste so maybe just stop.

You're implying that Democrats shouldn't be criticized because Republicans are worse in some other respect. Every group should be open to criticism. One group's ignorance doesn't absolve another's.

Addressing your specific points, the BLM rioters were almost exclusively Democrats, and there were hundreds of BLM riots: https://acleddata.com/acleddatanew/wp-content/uploads/2020/0...

As for ivermectin, it has been used in hundreds of millions of humans, so characterizing it as "horse paste" is not accurate:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivermectin#History

If you wanted to point to some way in which Republicans in general are worse, you could point out how anti-vaccine conspiracy theories are more prevalent among Republicans. This form of ignorance has done considerable harm.

Re: Long Covid is overblown and often something else, says Oxford professor

#100

Post by noduerme » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 11:03 AM UTC

shoto_io wrote: post #89

noduerme wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a guy who played very loud music for many years, I can relate. Until you said this I was sitting here in silence out in the country listening to frogs and now all I hear is that high whine. I think like a lot of other shit I just learn to tune it out.

This is so crazy. Now that I have read your comment I can clearly hear a high pitch sound which won't stop.

sorry. Yeah, the parent poster did it to me. I didn't mean to pass it on. Don't worry. Put on Fugazi and smoke a joint... you won't remember this in a couple hours.