(I’m actually pretty sceptical that long covid is real (see eg here))
That’s an interesting paper. But unless I’m missing something, Table 2 shows that fatigue was more common in the group with positive serology result than in the group with negative serology result: 7.7% vs. 2.7%. Also, among the people with a negative serology result, only ~0.2% thought they had covid-19 and also reported fatigue, and it may be the case that many of those people actually did have covid-19 (and their serology result was false negative).
(BTW it’s weird that they did not include loss of smell or taste in the study...)
The strongest piece of evidence I’m aware of for the risk of long-term brain-related damage from covid-19 is this Nature paper.
It’s table 3 I think you want to look at. For fatigue and other long covid symptoms, belief that you had covid has a higher odds ratio than does confirmed covid (but no belief that you had covid).
I think there is good reason to be sceptical of long covid. It groups together multiple different symptoms that are strongly psychologically influenced and already prevalent in the population, such as brain fog and fatigue. In a pandemic where anxiety about disease is high and social interaction low, we should expect people to attribute these symptoms to covid.
Another point I find useful when thinking about this is that if some of the more dire predictions of the effect of long covid, such as 1% chance of having your life ruined, that would be visible in plain sight—lots of sports stars and celebs would have to retire. I have checked and I know of zero cases of professional English footballers retiring due to covid, but we would expect several to have done so if long covid risk were really that high.
It’s table 3 I think you want to look at. For fatigue and other long covid symptoms, belief that you had covid has a higher odds ratio than does confirmed covid
That’s exactly what we should expect if long covid is caused by symptomatic covid, and belief-in-covid is a better predictor of symptomatic covid than positive-covid-test. (The latter also picks up asymptomatic covid, so it’s a worse predictor of symptomatic covid.)
That’s an interesting paper. But unless I’m missing something, Table 2 shows that fatigue was more common in the group with positive serology result than in the group with negative serology result: 7.7% vs. 2.7%. Also, among the people with a negative serology result, only ~0.2% thought they had covid-19 and also reported fatigue, and it may be the case that many of those people actually did have covid-19 (and their serology result was false negative).
(BTW it’s weird that they did not include loss of smell or taste in the study...)
The strongest piece of evidence I’m aware of for the risk of long-term brain-related damage from covid-19 is this Nature paper.
It’s table 3 I think you want to look at. For fatigue and other long covid symptoms, belief that you had covid has a higher odds ratio than does confirmed covid (but no belief that you had covid).
I think there is good reason to be sceptical of long covid. It groups together multiple different symptoms that are strongly psychologically influenced and already prevalent in the population, such as brain fog and fatigue. In a pandemic where anxiety about disease is high and social interaction low, we should expect people to attribute these symptoms to covid.
Another point I find useful when thinking about this is that if some of the more dire predictions of the effect of long covid, such as 1% chance of having your life ruined, that would be visible in plain sight—lots of sports stars and celebs would have to retire. I have checked and I know of zero cases of professional English footballers retiring due to covid, but we would expect several to have done so if long covid risk were really that high.
That’s exactly what we should expect if long covid is caused by symptomatic covid, and belief-in-covid is a better predictor of symptomatic covid than positive-covid-test. (The latter also picks up asymptomatic covid, so it’s a worse predictor of symptomatic covid.)