The only thing I see anyone talking about the comparison between SSPE and long-covid is this popular-level article from Peter Doherty, and he seems to be unaware of any evidences suggesting whether it’s likely or not (only, “hopefully unlikely”).
I used to believe that pandemics in themselves are not enough to be an extinction level event. Now I’m not quite sure...IF something attains the prevalency of Covid but leads to serious illness with a high mortality rate (eg. SSPE) in a large proportion of people (instead of the measles/SSPE relationship) several years down the line, the result is going to be catastropic (and I don’t see why there will be any evolutionary pressure that prevents a virus from behaving like this).
Information about viral persistence has been on the popular press for a while, but it didn’t impact the public perception of covid (at least, not enough to affect the trajectory of our pandemic policies).
I wonder if there are more follow-up autopsy studies on covid persistence (that would allow us to look really closely, and in all the organs including the brain). The logical next step is to check if the presence of persistent covid is different in people who recovered from covid, compared to those who died during hospitalisation.
I think it is justifiable to make “testing for presence of persistent covid virus” a standard procedure for all autopsies. It’ll make autopsies more expensive and resource consuming but I think it would likely still be a negligible proportion of societal resources...and might give us a quick answer on long covid and its associated risks (eg: it would sound like big trouble if ~80% of healthy people who died from drowning/vehicle accidents/homicide had viable covid reservoirs in their major organs...)
Of course, that requires a lot of influences on the policy makers. But maybe current long-covid research groups can do some follow up autopsy studies? That might be a start as well, at least in gauging how bad the situation can be.
The only thing I see anyone talking about the comparison between SSPE and long-covid is this popular-level article from Peter Doherty, and he seems to be unaware of any evidences suggesting whether it’s likely or not (only, “hopefully unlikely”).
https://www.doherty.edu.au/news-events/setting-it-straight/issue-114-persistence-of-sars-cov-2-and-long-covid-2-defective-virus-privil
I used to believe that pandemics in themselves are not enough to be an extinction level event. Now I’m not quite sure...IF something attains the prevalency of Covid but leads to serious illness with a high mortality rate (eg. SSPE) in a large proportion of people (instead of the measles/SSPE relationship) several years down the line, the result is going to be catastropic (and I don’t see why there will be any evolutionary pressure that prevents a virus from behaving like this).
On the other hand, some animal species seem to have handled their equivalent of HIVs...https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0700471104
Information about viral persistence has been on the popular press for a while, but it didn’t impact the public perception of covid (at least, not enough to affect the trajectory of our pandemic policies).
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-26/coronavirus-can-persist-for-months-after-traversing-entire-body
I wonder if there are more follow-up autopsy studies on covid persistence (that would allow us to look really closely, and in all the organs including the brain). The logical next step is to check if the presence of persistent covid is different in people who recovered from covid, compared to those who died during hospitalisation.
I think it is justifiable to make “testing for presence of persistent covid virus” a standard procedure for all autopsies. It’ll make autopsies more expensive and resource consuming but I think it would likely still be a negligible proportion of societal resources...and might give us a quick answer on long covid and its associated risks (eg: it would sound like big trouble if ~80% of healthy people who died from drowning/vehicle accidents/homicide had viable covid reservoirs in their major organs...)
Of course, that requires a lot of influences on the policy makers. But maybe current long-covid research groups can do some follow up autopsy studies? That might be a start as well, at least in gauging how bad the situation can be.