It is difficult to work out the effects of long covid, but the most reasonable estimates I have seen put the health cost of long covid as equivalent to 0.02 DALYs, or about a week.
Could you share these?
I think this is probably about right in terms of direct health costs and direct loss of productivity (due to brain fog and/or chronic fatigue), but after a few years of long COVID, I’d also worry about whether you’d still be an EA if/when you do recover and how much it would derail the rest of your career. And some people could end up with long COVID for decades; we don’t know how long it can last.
I put the risk of debilitating (1+ year?) long COVID conditional on catching COVID (Omicron, fully vaccinated and boosted, relatively young) at around 0.2% based on this post and my own comment using the same figures but a more direct estimate of severe risk. Maybe lower for young and healthy people and higher for older people or people with health conditions.
So 0.2% * 52 weeks = 0.1 weeks, and then multiply this by the number of expected years long COVID lasts + indirectly derails (maybe adjusting for how much it derails your life). This is also just for the severe tail risk of long COVID, so excludes shorter term risk, like days lost due to acute infection and long COVID resolving within (?) a year.
Note furthermore that differences in precautions will affect how often you get COVID and take on this long COVID risk, in expectation.
I’m actually pretty sceptical that long covid is real (see eg here)
There’s a thread here on this. I think it’s probably real, and the worst cases are unlikely to be psychosomatic, although some may be misattributed. Also, that something is psychosomatic isn’t very reassuring anyway.
There’s also the point that covid seems likely to be endemic so there is little value in a “wait and see” approach
You can still respond to risks, cases are relatively high now in particular, and we actually don’t have much data on the Omicron (or BA.2 specifically) and long COVID.
All this being said, my tentative views are
People should mostly do whatever they want at this point and take on their own risks. If you want to avoid COVID (get it less often; avoiding it forever seems pretty costly), get good masks (at least N95/KN95) and limit the number of people you interact with maskless (indoors), especially when cases are high. Feel free to attend EAG with a mask.
Wearing a mask seems very low cost in many settings, so I personally think it’s often worth doing.
However, cutting against 2, if you half-ass your precautions too much (and I don’t know where the line is), you’ll just get COVID about as often as people who don’t even bother with precautions and you may take on additional costs and miss opportunities in doing so. If you’re trying to reduce how often you get COVID, an important source of risk can be the people you live with.
There are probably better things to focus on for productivity than COVID for someone who is young, healthy and fully vaccinated + boosted. Exercise, diet, productivity coaching, etc.. There may be other infectious diseases to consider, too (e.g. Lyme).
It’s better to get COVID when your immunity is highest, e.g. 2 weeks-X months after your most recent shot. (I’m not sure what X is.)
Could you share these?
I think this is probably about right in terms of direct health costs and direct loss of productivity (due to brain fog and/or chronic fatigue), but after a few years of long COVID, I’d also worry about whether you’d still be an EA if/when you do recover and how much it would derail the rest of your career. And some people could end up with long COVID for decades; we don’t know how long it can last.
I put the risk of debilitating (1+ year?) long COVID conditional on catching COVID (Omicron, fully vaccinated and boosted, relatively young) at around 0.2% based on this post and my own comment using the same figures but a more direct estimate of severe risk. Maybe lower for young and healthy people and higher for older people or people with health conditions.
So 0.2% * 52 weeks = 0.1 weeks, and then multiply this by the number of expected years long COVID lasts + indirectly derails (maybe adjusting for how much it derails your life). This is also just for the severe tail risk of long COVID, so excludes shorter term risk, like days lost due to acute infection and long COVID resolving within (?) a year.
Note furthermore that differences in precautions will affect how often you get COVID and take on this long COVID risk, in expectation.
There’s a thread here on this. I think it’s probably real, and the worst cases are unlikely to be psychosomatic, although some may be misattributed. Also, that something is psychosomatic isn’t very reassuring anyway.
You can still respond to risks, cases are relatively high now in particular, and we actually don’t have much data on the Omicron (or BA.2 specifically) and long COVID.
All this being said, my tentative views are
People should mostly do whatever they want at this point and take on their own risks. If you want to avoid COVID (get it less often; avoiding it forever seems pretty costly), get good masks (at least N95/KN95) and limit the number of people you interact with maskless (indoors), especially when cases are high. Feel free to attend EAG with a mask.
Wearing a mask seems very low cost in many settings, so I personally think it’s often worth doing.
However, cutting against 2, if you half-ass your precautions too much (and I don’t know where the line is), you’ll just get COVID about as often as people who don’t even bother with precautions and you may take on additional costs and miss opportunities in doing so. If you’re trying to reduce how often you get COVID, an important source of risk can be the people you live with.
There are probably better things to focus on for productivity than COVID for someone who is young, healthy and fully vaccinated + boosted. Exercise, diet, productivity coaching, etc.. There may be other infectious diseases to consider, too (e.g. Lyme).
It’s better to get COVID when your immunity is highest, e.g. 2 weeks-X months after your most recent shot. (I’m not sure what X is.)