"In addition, the COVID-19 group did not include those with severe breathing problems during the acute phase of the infection."
This seems to contradict the sampling statement the announcement makes, as it indicates a source of bias. I would add preliminary in the article title if I was the writer, but I guess that is not something that sells.
What I got from the article is that it seems so far to have the same impact as other acute respiratory infections, but we had to exclude some people with serious issues during sampling -- which makes sense -- and we have still work to do and gather more samples that are non local etc.
Life is tragic. A tiny fraction of kids die of covid. A tiny fraction of kids die of flu. A tiny fraction of kids die of RSV. A tiny fraction of kids die of bacterial pneumonia. While the effects of covid can be severe, we need to recover our perspective: how prevalent is the worst cause scenario, death or significant long term lung impairment?
There are 2 studies the article comments about.
* One study from Sweden was based on a pre-existing long-term study and found no measurable lung impairment. Possibly simply because nobody in their sample developed severe respiratory symptoms. Given that 27% did have covid IG, seems that the risk for measurable long covid in kids is on the tiny side of things. Note that their sample, while small (661), was deemed statistically significant for the purposes of the long-term study, which started long before covid.
* One study from Germany where they focused on kids with covid. They excluded those with 'severe acute respiratory covid infection', true, but their method says nothing about how prevalent 'severe acute respiratory covid infection' is in kids. That could be as small as 1:100k or lower, we wouldn't know without additional data (see e.g. first study). Edit: After reading the full text, I have to say this study is too technical / too small of a sample size and not sure what the layman takeaways are. Their qualitative assessment: 'our study is the first to compare pulmonary function in symptomatic and asymptomatic children and adolescents with and without evidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection; no difference between these two groups was observed. Even most patients with persistent respiratory symptoms did not show impaired lung capacity. Severity of infection proved to be the only predictor for mild pulmonary function changes. To conclude, our findings suggest that children and adolescents after SARS-CoV-2 infection do not suffer from persistent deterioration of respiratory function, including body plethysmography, multiple-breath washout and diffusion capacity testing.'
In short: Study #1, statistically significant sample of young population, no long term lung impairment. Study #2, perhaps too technical for a layman conversation.
It punches a pretty big hole in that ‘half of the people that get infected get Long Covid’ scare though.
And the new argument will probably be that, as Long Covid is not really defined anyway, the goal posts have now moved from lung damage to heart damage or something.
That’s fine, as long as you agree that ‘Long Covid’ is an undefined condition so it has no place in any scientific discussion, and at least part of the symptoms it is popularly claimed to include, specifically some debilitating form of lung damage, does not occur in the large majority of cases. It doesn’t occur in the short term and subsequently it doesn’t occur in the long term.
>as long as you agree that ‘Long Covid’ is an undefined condition so it has no place in any scientific discussion.
'Long covid' being the effects on a human subsequent to having covid. You are saying that there is no place in scientific discussion for 'the effects, be they some or none of X'. So PTSD - no place in a scientific discussion? Secondary cancer - no place in a scientific discussion? Effects of release of radiaion at Chernobyl - no place in scientific discussion? Effects of hobbling around after stubbing my toe on a bedpost - no place in a scientifci discussion?
> specifically some debilitating form of lung damage, does not occur in the large majority of cases.
So you mean, the results from the scientific discussion, which you believe is illegitamte, because 'it has no place in any scientific discussion' support this statement? Which one is it, its science or it cant possibly be science? If I am not allowed to explore a hypotheseis, then I can not say it does or does not occur.
Although you are of course correct that it is defined as post-covid exposure, I guess their more general point is that we don't talk about things like 'Long Flu', 'Long Cancer' or 'Long Diarrhoea' as a particular 'illness'.
Instead we generally talk about specific symptoms after recovery from these things (e.g. We would say there are long-term effects of cancer and that specific person has Post Cancer Fatigue, rather than just saying someone has 'long cancer'), or specific effects that the illness has (e.g. impact of severe childhood diohreah on growth) which seems more useful than bundling it all together into one 'thing' which covers completely different impacts (e.g. long term taste loss, tinnitus and fatigue).
Just calling it long covid seems to make it seem like something special/different, while in reality plenty of illnesses have long term health impacts and ongoing symptoms. It doesn't mean that there isn't cause for concern - but I don't necessarily see why we should make the language of Covid different to other illnesses (other than for PR purposes).
We talk about cancer not as cured but as in remission when we can't detect it and we view it as a big deal. We probably do talk about long flu because any attempt to separate fibromyalgia causes in frequently occuring life events is a debate and we certainly argue about long Lyme aka chronic Lyme. The reason this is a big deal is because we know roughly what percentage of people at any given time have all of those other long problems while the future of pandemic recovery is unknown.
So your problem is branding related. You dont like the logo or theme music?
We dont call it 'Long Cancer' meme is a really fascinating one. You are right, we don't call it exactly that. The long term effects of cancer, which really would span such an enormous range of things collectively are known, to use the technical term, as 'The long term effects of cancer'.
When you get diagnosed with cancer, you 'have Cancer'. When you are 100% free from cancer you are still a cancer patient but its said to be 'in remission', and would likely not be considered 'Cured' of your cancer for many years. But why do we use that language, when I have the sniffles and they go away I am 'cured'. It is almost like the english language has room for more than one adjective,
What other language is in use - conditions can be called 'Chronic illnesses'. It turns out sometimes it is useful to bundle things together into 'Syndromes', a bit like that Gulf War Syndrome.
Now personally I believe that how 'scary' or 'special' a sequence of words are, which is your main argument against the word 'Long', is subjective. Personally 'long' doesnt instill me with fear in particular, but lets try on some alternative brandings that are more in line with other illnesses are you helpfully suggest size shall we.
Chronic Covid, In remission Covid, Covid Syndrome, Post Covid Lung Failure.
Covid Syndrome seems the obvious choice really. It is the most consistent with medical language used to date, as such could not possibly be described as being thrown around for PR purpopses or just out right fear mongering.
> So your problem is branding related. You dont like the logo or theme music?
That's one of my issues, I think the words we use are important.
> When you are 100% free from cancer you are still a cancer patient but its said to be 'in remission'.
Actually, the term "in remission" is used because the signs and symptoms might have disappeared, but cancer may still be in the body. It means cancer has not been found, and that there is no evidence of disease, however due to the nature of the disease you can't be sure that the cancer has been 'cured' (i.e. gone) because it still might be in the body even though there is no sign of disease. When you are 100% free of cancer you are said to be cured, however as this can not be known, some doctors say you are "cured" after 5 years of complete remission, because that gives a sufficient degree of certainty that the cancer is gone.
> It is the most consistent with medical language used to date, as such could not possibly be described as being thrown around for PR purpopses or just out right fear mongering.
It might be an improvement, although personally I think the main issue is bundling it all together is misleading, as you bundle the extreme cases with the less-severe ones. If 1% of people have 'long covid' there is a big difference between 0.9% of people having a slightly reduced sense of taste after 12 weeks which recovers after 6 months and 0.1% of people having chronic fatigue forever, and visa-versa. The bundling together as a singular 'Long Covid' I personally think is an intentional language tactic increase compliance to rules IMO.
Covid Syndrome on one hand would be great because a syndrome specifically means a set of symptoms appearing. So that would by definition at least require an agreed upon list of conditions that comprise it.
On the other hand it would not be great because it doesn’t specify the cause so Covid would be a specific virus, but Covid Syndrome would just be a bunch of conditions that are not necessarily related to that virus. People get shortness of breath all the time.
You are confusing the fabled and undefined Long Covid that depending on what you want to argue can be made out to encompass just about anything, and the specific issue of lung damage this article is about.
Talking about narrowly defined specific things is scientific. Musing about something that has no useful definition and drawing conclusions from that is pseudoscience.
> 'the effects, be they some or none of X'
Whether there are effects or not and what they are is science. But not defining the effects and then stating they appear in half of the cases is useless and not science.
Just to keep it practical, people say ‘I know this one guy and he got covid and it was terrible for a long time’. So that’s the image that’s conjured up for Long Covid. And then on the other side there’s what you describe, Long Covid is just any complaint people have after contracting covid, from lung damage to occasional slight headaches, you know, the things that are in the list of side effects for every type of medicine on the planet. Next is the claim that a large amount of people get these extremely slight side effects.
Now because there is no scientifically useful definition of Long Covid, this large amount of people that get slight side effects is confused with the original image of the terrible Long Covid. Ultimately it seems like a very large proportion of the people that get covid will develop debilitating lung problems. But the reality is that that is just not the case because a very large amount of people have already been infected and while yes there are a lot of people with serious problems, they are still a small minority.
It does fit the narrative quite nicely of scaring a lot of people into taking the vaccinations, wearing the masks, whatever measure you want to sell. But it’s not science and in the long run it just devalues real science and fosters skepticism and conspiracy theories. Because ultimately everyone can just clearly see that not half of the people they know has developed these terrible symptoms.
I am not at all confused. I am well aware of the contents of the article, and that the article never mentions specifically the combination of characters known as 'Long Covid'. I responded specifically to your unreferenced statement of a supposed fact (that there is a claim) 'half of the people that get infected get Long Covid'.
Your claim that this is either the case or being claimed to be the case is entirely baseless.
> people say ‘I know this one guy and he got covid and it was terrible for a long time’. So that’s the image that’s conjured up for Long Covid.
I have never once heard that, and my reaction to that scenario, is that the guy had covid. Long covid did not enter my thoughts, the image you have conjured here is of someone fighting an active infection. It sounds like they were in hospital for a long time. Hopefully that friend is better now.
> Long Covid is just any complaint people have after contracting covid, from lung damage to occasional slight headaches, you know, the things that are in the list of side effects for every type of medicine on the planet
You know how if you get shot, you often bleed. Well its not like that is unique to being shot, if you cut yourself you will also bleed.
> Now because there is no scientifically useful definition of Long Covid
The Long term Effects of infection with COVID.
> Whether there are effects or not and what they are is science.
> But it’s not science.
For a while I thought we had come to an agreement on what science was.
Sounds like a pretty broad statement to make for such a low number.
The only data point I have - a 21 year old runner friend of mine was hit with COVID pretty hard at the start of the pandemic and to this day can't run anymore. Breathing problems. Constantly out of breath.
Not saying this is typical but it's a pretty devastating result to just be dismissed by the conclusion of this study.
The study excludes the minority of young people who get severe breathing problems in the acute phase of the disease so your friend would not be included. The result just shows that the large majority that does not get severe breathing problems in the acute phase (in fact most young people do not get any symptoms at all) does not get long term lung damage.
and the qualification that there was no effect on lung function "apart from those who experienced a severe infection", which pokes a hole in the headline as well
This seems to contradict the sampling statement the announcement makes, as it indicates a source of bias. I would add preliminary in the article title if I was the writer, but I guess that is not something that sells.
What I got from the article is that it seems so far to have the same impact as other acute respiratory infections, but we had to exclude some people with serious issues during sampling -- which makes sense -- and we have still work to do and gather more samples that are non local etc.
Titles are traps.