Speaking for myself, there was a long scary moment (: the year 2020) where I based my long covid estimates off SARS-1, which was way worse (30-40% multimorbid disability rate, usually incapacitating, often lasting many years). So using that high a bar was my overestimate.
I’ve tried to keep up with the long covid literature, but I find that every paper uses a totally different estimand. Martin et al used ARDS as the reference disutility for long covid (-32% QALY), kinda arbitarily. When you say that 1-15% of cases get long covid, what % utility loss are you imagining?
Yes, long COVID is currently badly defined. This is because it’s a heterogenous multisystem disease; different patients have different pathologies, and it’s a continuum. In addition, it’s hard to include/exclude long COVID, because not every case is noticed, and antibodies are not a reliable indicator.
Fwiw, I think the data of SARS-1 is consistent with SARS COV 2: we generally see 20-30% with persistent symptoms and/or organ dysfunction in smaller studies, and lower numbers in controlled cohort studies.
In that 1-15%, this includes different severities. I’d say a big portion is simply more fatigued than usual, so that’s like 0.1 or 0.2 DALY per year?
However, I think 1-3% develops the ME/CFS sub type, which has, according to one study,
“When the YLL of 0.226M is combined with the YLD of 0.488M, we get a DALY of 0.714M.”
I think the quality of life loss is accurate. I have severe long COVID and would gladly trade it for losing both my legs, HIV (not full blown AIDS maybe), and probably severe burns (don’t know the details of that though).
I haven’t evaluated the rigor of the years of life lost, but it does fit a multisystem disease.
Also just to note, I think this all looks even worse if you take into account that subjective wellbeing is actually unbounded, not a 0 to 1 scale, as well as the potential altruistic loss due to loss of productivity.
What makes you believe people are overestimating the risk of long covid? Or does this only apply to 2021?
I believe EAs are currently underestimating it, and the cost of getting covid. I try to correct some misconceptions here: https://www.facebook.com/1220718092/posts/10221201147517854/?app=fbl
(I’m not saying all EAs have these misconceptions; it’s aimed at a wide audience)
Thanks for this, it looks thorough.
Speaking for myself, there was a long scary moment (: the year 2020) where I based my long covid estimates off SARS-1, which was way worse (30-40% multimorbid disability rate, usually incapacitating, often lasting many years). So using that high a bar was my overestimate.
I’ve tried to keep up with the long covid literature, but I find that every paper uses a totally different estimand. Martin et al used ARDS as the reference disutility for long covid (-32% QALY), kinda arbitarily. When you say that 1-15% of cases get long covid, what % utility loss are you imagining?
Yes, long COVID is currently badly defined. This is because it’s a heterogenous multisystem disease; different patients have different pathologies, and it’s a continuum. In addition, it’s hard to include/exclude long COVID, because not every case is noticed, and antibodies are not a reliable indicator.
Fwiw, I think the data of SARS-1 is consistent with SARS COV 2: we generally see 20-30% with persistent symptoms and/or organ dysfunction in smaller studies, and lower numbers in controlled cohort studies.
In that 1-15%, this includes different severities. I’d say a big portion is simply more fatigued than usual, so that’s like 0.1 or 0.2 DALY per year?
However, I think 1-3% develops the ME/CFS sub type, which has, according to one study, “When the YLL of 0.226M is combined with the YLD of 0.488M, we get a DALY of 0.714M.”
(https://oatext.com/Estimating-the-disease-burden-of-MECFS-in-the-United-States-and-its-relation-to-research-funding.php) ,
I think the quality of life loss is accurate. I have severe long COVID and would gladly trade it for losing both my legs, HIV (not full blown AIDS maybe), and probably severe burns (don’t know the details of that though).
I haven’t evaluated the rigor of the years of life lost, but it does fit a multisystem disease.
Also just to note, I think this all looks even worse if you take into account that subjective wellbeing is actually unbounded, not a 0 to 1 scale, as well as the potential altruistic loss due to loss of productivity.