The paper claims that 1/5 of people experience Long COVID after an infection. Given that approximately everyone has caught COVID by now, this does not track with how rarely I've heard of people with it.
Wikipedia lists much lower numbers on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_COVID (6–7% in adults, ~1% in children, less after vaccination.) and seems to use a more liberal definition than this paper, as it mentions "Most people with symptoms at 4 weeks recover by 12 weeks" (while the paper only considers it "long COIVD" if symptoms last past 3 months).
I've found studies (peer reviewed, as far as I can tell) claiming anything from well under 10% to well over 30%.
I won't make a claim to the accuracy of the numbers, but I can offer an example of how long COVID can be undercounted. My daughter was a competitive long distance runner. Months after recovering from the acute symptoms of COVID, her performance numbers were still about 10% down and no amount of training would allow her to reach her previous level of performance. After many visits to doctors and specialists, she was eventually diagnosed with long COVID due to lung damage. She's still very fast by most measures, but in track, the difference between being in the 99th percentile and the 89th percentile is the difference between a top 3 finish and a bottom 3 finish. This basically ended her track career. In our case, if we didn't have hard data tracking her before and after performance levels, we may not have ever noticed a difference. How many people who aren't competitive athletes are walking around with 10% degraded pulmonary function and just didn't notice?
It takes very severe disability for it not to be brushed off as depression, anxiety, burnout, or blamed on lifestyle.
Additionally, a lot of those numbers are based on earlier strains of COVID, which were much more severe.
I suspect the 1/5 figure is largely true for "has some degree of cardiovascular damage and worsened general health after COVID", but the number of people actually disabled by the condition is much lower.
That said, any loss of ability is a sad thing, and I am incredibly disappointed that we did not introduce any shared indoor space air quality legislation post-pandemic.
If you get a diagnosis at all, it's going to be a catchall for "idk" like fibromyalgia, CFS, allergies or it's filed away as psychosomatic.
There are probably a lot of syndromes caused by latent infections from virii like EBV, various herpes, HPV, etc that don't go properly diagnosed or treated if they can be treated at all.
Also, it's been found that some viral infections retreat to tissues where their detection might be difficult/impossible without biopsy. You saw this with, for example, Ebola, where survivors could test negative for the virus, but it would still survive and replicate in different isolated tissues like those in the eye.
After covid I suffered from intermittent brain fog for years and also felt like my heart was maybe struggling more than usual when I was training at the gym.
Never enough to warrant going to a doctor unless I was being super paranoid (and spend a long time convincing them I wasn't paranoid) but just enough to always wonder if there was something more to the story.
A lot of symptoms of long covid mirror the symptoms of unhealthy living, which may make it so people either dismiss their own symptoms and don't seek diagnosis, or their complaints are dismissed by others for needing to simply improve externalities.
Perhaps its a reflection of how hard it is to get the medical community to take Long COVID seriously ?
I would say there is more chance of them (sadly) telling you to go home, take a couple of paracetamol and get some rest. Or if you're lucky, they might mis-diagnose you with something else....
(No first-hand experience here, just going by one or two anecdotal stories I've heard on the grapevine)
The numbers in the range of 1/5 usually include in the definition things like "a cough that lasts six weeks after the acute phase of infection and then goes away," which is not what most people think of when they hear the term Long COVID (and is not even unique to SARS-CoV-2).
For a variety of reasons, hyping the threat of infection has been a pretty widespread practice among the medical and scientific community since COVID began. There's no way on earth 1 out of 5 kids are still experiencing symptoms 3 months out.
The paper says "One in five children." I wouldn't be surprised at all. Children are very dynamic, changing often as they grow and go through different developmental stages (which may include periods where they seem more tired or more cranky, etc)
. They also often lack the language and agency to explain what's going on with their bodies.
I don't see how you'd know the exact number without a solid diagnostic check.
Could it be that you can have different severity of long covid? Someone with very severe symptoms will notice it but someone with small symptoms might not realise it (and instead think they are just less fit)
I have a 87 year old uncle who says he has long covid because he gets tired and needs a nap in the afternoon. I'm half the age and felt the same even before 2020.
I haven't looked it up but often odd numbers like that are often due to the paper looking at people who were hospitalised for covid which is a small percentage of those who get it.
Long Covid is a spectrum. It's everything from silent damage to severe functional impairment. Each subsequent infection makes noticeable damage more likely.
With the math of reinfection, and percentages generally being lower than reality, long COVID is likely much more common and widespread in more people than not.
Not sure it's relevant at all, but a therapist who's working with kids in a large clinic in Berlin told me that anorexia cases in kids have doubled since COVID. He said they don't have the infrastructure to treat all those kids. It's pretty dramatic. That being said, I wouldn't be surprised if a large portion of those cases were really caused by long COVID.
That spread has been consistent in the literature for a long time. It depends on what symptoms you are looking for. Frankly, I trust the consistent message from the literature. Long covid is extremely prevalent but not always visible
Yeah the paper is just lying. “Long Covid” is just a typical response to a severe flu. Many people are just ignorant of the fact that flus can weaken the immune system past the initial infection. It’s well meaning attempt to understand common flu symptoms but they are just relating to COVID to get more clicks and funding.
Society is very stratified by intelligence, and the predispositions to long covid, like generalized joint hypermobility (GJH) strongly correlates positively with intelligence. See the work done by Dr Jessica Eccles on Bendy Brains Bendy Bodies and her published studies on long covid.
Anyway, because of the stratification many people don’t know anyone with long covid, while at the same time half of my friends have it. Both can be true observations of our surroundings.
On the actual numbers I would say that ~10% get some level of Long Covid while half of those recover in the first year. Of those who don’t recover around half have GJH which is a massive over representation suggesting a strong predisposition.
This is (probably) not a Long Covid story but I found that bloodletting (for which I even received money!) gave me back the energy that I was missing for the last few years (e.g. it was impossible to build stamina). I also read about a study about the positive effects of bloodletting[1] that somehow is not all the rage in mainstream news, which I find perplexing. If it might be so easy to improve your health (for some of us), why isn't this discussed or studied more broadly?
"the patients who gave blood had a significant reduction in systolic blood pressure (from 148 mmHg to 130 mmHg) as well as reduction in blood glucose levels and heart rate, and an improvement in cholesterol levels (LDL/HDL ratio)."
I live in an area with PFAS contaminated ground water (which I now aggressively filter.) To me giving blood just kind of makes sense, if there is a class of things that can enter your blood and never leave, and does not replicate on its own, why not perform a regular "oil change" and hopefully help some people at the same time. Some study has been done:
The study specifically does not look at the effect on recipients, though the donation centers do not disallow such donations. My presumption is that the donation is a net positive all around. If study comes to show the contrary, I'll certainly revise my approach.
I assume we are built to lose some blood. I imagine throughout most of our species development, injuries were somewhat common on a regular basis. Just looking at the scars on my own body, from a quite active childhood and young adult period outdoors, I am extrapolating. n = 1
The modern version of this is called Therapeutic Plasma Exchange (TPE) or Plasmapheresis and it is used to treat a variety of conditions including cancer and autoimmune:
The lower blood pressure I can explain by having a lower volume of blood. But the glucose and cholesterol have to go somewhere. Where do they go? Are they filtered in the process after blood letting?
Yeah sounds like you get your medical advice from the Kremlin. There no conspiracy to hide the medical benefits of leaching, can you imagine if that actually worked? Every doctor in the world would have to be a complete moron not to notice.
> I also read about a study about the positive effects of bloodletting[1] that somehow is not all the rage in mainstream news, which I find perplexing. If it might be so easy to improve your health (for some of us), why isn't this discussed or studied more broadly?
If this works, how is anyone going to make money off of it?
The title should be edited. It sounds as if the test is 94% accurate at detecting long covid, but in fact it's 94% accurate at counting microclots
> We estimated a 94% accuracy for the microclot count using the devices, significantly higher than the traditional counting of microclots on slides (66% accuracy)
> We evaluated the diagnostic power (...). We estimated a 94% accuracy for (our method), significantly higher than the (traditional method) (66% accuracy).
Both methods have counting in their name, but they are comparing the diagnostic power.
The sensitivity of such a test would be 0. This test had a sensitivity of 91% versus 61% for the glass slide count method, which is a large improvement.
The sample size is pretty small here and the control group even smaller. The paper concludes that a larger study is necessary to confirm the result.
If you read the actual link I don't think they're saying that using it as a covid test with some specific threshold of microclots has a 94% accuracy but just that the raw microclot count has a 94% accuracy.
The title on hn which implies that seems to be inaccurate and it's not the original title of the article.
Throwing out this random data point: I know several people who I believe have some sort of what could be called "long covid". Here's the weird thing though: all these people are some level of covid denier/vax skeptic type person. They themselves don't believe they have long covid (and in some cases don't even believe they had covid). But all of them conform to this pattern (as observed by me): 1. They had covid, 2. Immediately after they developed some weird long term symptoms that no doctor can explain.
Obviously there's some probability this is all coincidence but it does seem strange, especially considering the predisposition for these people to not think their issues were triggered by covid infection.
Can someone knowledgeable explain the current understanding of Covid’s long time effects? I thought it was still a big unknown and long COVID was still debated as to even having a clear definition.
The WHO [1] has a clinical definition of the disease and some basic data on chance of Covid infections turning into Long Covid. Then the meta study by Eric Topol and Zayad Ali-al from last year is probably a good primer into what is known about the disease that is well established science [2].
Its not a big unknown anymore, its very prevalent, it has a lot of symptoms, it has a clinical definition but its problematic and there are many diagnostic tests that can detect parts of the condition but none has yet reached sufficient prominence to be adopted by healthcare. Healthcare is largely ignoring that Long Covid exists so you can't get diagnosed with it but its very much a real thing and a lot of people have it.
Not sure why someone flagged my post, here it is again:
Excellent, a new way to test for the "fibrinaloid clots", a term that has only recently appeared in the literature since 2022, directly after the first experimental injections were administered worldwide and 2 years after the declared pandemic. It sounds like the authors are assuming "long Covid" comes from Covid rather than the experimental injections without ever having ruled out the latter, even though the onset correlates temporally with the experimental injections far more than the declared pandemic. Since this term never existed in the literature during the first 2 years of the declared pandemic, and only finally appeared in 2022 (and only in 1 article) before it started gaining traction, we must ask ourselves the following questions if we are truly interested in pursuing the scientific method:
1. Did the authors categorize the test subjects by those who had received the COVID-19 injection and those who had not? 2. If not, how do we rule out these effects being long-term effects from the experimental injections which cause people's bodies to continually produce the Spike protein the authors discuss in their paper as being the cause of the "fibrinaloid clots"? 3.Isn't this continual production of Spike induced by the injections something that should be controlled for to answer the question one way or another?
Suggestions: Test for "fibrinaloid clots" in subjects who have had confirmed COVID-19 and categorize them by how many experimental injections they received; include patients who received none. Then plot the number of experimental injections per patient on the x axis and the detected microclot size on the y axis.
tgsovlerkhgsel|4 months ago
Wikipedia lists much lower numbers on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_COVID (6–7% in adults, ~1% in children, less after vaccination.) and seems to use a more liberal definition than this paper, as it mentions "Most people with symptoms at 4 weeks recover by 12 weeks" (while the paper only considers it "long COIVD" if symptoms last past 3 months).
I've found studies (peer reviewed, as far as I can tell) claiming anything from well under 10% to well over 30%.
What's going on here?
longcovidthrowa|4 months ago
Llamamoe|4 months ago
Additionally, a lot of those numbers are based on earlier strains of COVID, which were much more severe.
I suspect the 1/5 figure is largely true for "has some degree of cardiovascular damage and worsened general health after COVID", but the number of people actually disabled by the condition is much lower.
That said, any loss of ability is a sad thing, and I am incredibly disappointed that we did not introduce any shared indoor space air quality legislation post-pandemic.
heavyset_go|4 months ago
There are probably a lot of syndromes caused by latent infections from virii like EBV, various herpes, HPV, etc that don't go properly diagnosed or treated if they can be treated at all.
Also, it's been found that some viral infections retreat to tissues where their detection might be difficult/impossible without biopsy. You saw this with, for example, Ebola, where survivors could test negative for the virus, but it would still survive and replicate in different isolated tissues like those in the eye.
djtango|4 months ago
Never enough to warrant going to a doctor unless I was being super paranoid (and spend a long time convincing them I wasn't paranoid) but just enough to always wonder if there was something more to the story.
cheschire|4 months ago
traceroute66|4 months ago
Perhaps its a reflection of how hard it is to get the medical community to take Long COVID seriously ?
I would say there is more chance of them (sadly) telling you to go home, take a couple of paracetamol and get some rest. Or if you're lucky, they might mis-diagnose you with something else....
(No first-hand experience here, just going by one or two anecdotal stories I've heard on the grapevine)
clanky|4 months ago
For a variety of reasons, hyping the threat of infection has been a pretty widespread practice among the medical and scientific community since COVID began. There's no way on earth 1 out of 5 kids are still experiencing symptoms 3 months out.
Ozzie_osman|4 months ago
I don't see how you'd know the exact number without a solid diagnostic check.
victorbjorklund|4 months ago
rr808|4 months ago
mzan|4 months ago
> Long COVID (LC) impacts one in five children after an acute SARS-CoV-2 infection
So, 20% of children that suffered of an acute SARS-CoV-2 infection, did not recovered immediately, but experienced also Long COVID.
tim333|4 months ago
Thorrez|4 months ago
Maybe not all infections are considered "acute".
Arete314159|4 months ago
sampo|4 months ago
Maybe you are not the type of person that people feel comfortable to share their health problems information with.
j45|4 months ago
Jean-Philipe|4 months ago
tehjoker|4 months ago
unknown|4 months ago
[deleted]
tiahura|4 months ago
itsme0000|4 months ago
cjbgkagh|4 months ago
Anyway, because of the stratification many people don’t know anyone with long covid, while at the same time half of my friends have it. Both can be true observations of our surroundings.
On the actual numbers I would say that ~10% get some level of Long Covid while half of those recover in the first year. Of those who don’t recover around half have GJH which is a massive over representation suggesting a strong predisposition.
Tarsul|4 months ago
[1]https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120529211645.h...
"the patients who gave blood had a significant reduction in systolic blood pressure (from 148 mmHg to 130 mmHg) as well as reduction in blood glucose levels and heart rate, and an improvement in cholesterol levels (LDL/HDL ratio)."
jeremy151|4 months ago
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8994130/
The study specifically does not look at the effect on recipients, though the donation centers do not disallow such donations. My presumption is that the donation is a net positive all around. If study comes to show the contrary, I'll certainly revise my approach.
withinboredom|4 months ago
anon84873628|4 months ago
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/24197-plasm...
There are also claims that it improves dementia / Alzheimer's symptoms and popular "longevity biomarkers".
unknown|4 months ago
[deleted]
comboy|4 months ago
I think you just need to reach for a literature that's a few hundred years older maybe.
spockz|4 months ago
tim333|4 months ago
mkoubaa|4 months ago
unknown|4 months ago
[deleted]
itsme0000|4 months ago
clanky|4 months ago
If this works, how is anyone going to make money off of it?
ipsento606|4 months ago
---
The title should be edited. It sounds as if the test is 94% accurate at detecting long covid, but in fact it's 94% accurate at counting microclots
> We estimated a 94% accuracy for the microclot count using the devices, significantly higher than the traditional counting of microclots on slides (66% accuracy)
diffeomorphism|4 months ago
> We evaluated the diagnostic power (...). We estimated a 94% accuracy for (our method), significantly higher than the (traditional method) (66% accuracy).
Both methods have counting in their name, but they are comparing the diagnostic power.
diffeomorphism|4 months ago
https://www.ssph-journal.org/journals/public-health-reviews/...
> Prevalence estimated (...) 2%–3.5% in primarily non-hospitalized children.
So a fake test always saying "No" would be more accurate at 96.5% accuracy.
Zak|4 months ago
The sample size is pretty small here and the control group even smaller. The paper concludes that a larger study is necessary to confirm the result.
resoluteteeth|4 months ago
The title on hn which implies that seems to be inaccurate and it's not the original title of the article.
shawabawa3|4 months ago
Tests have a sensitivity (1 - percentage of false negatives) and specificity (1 - percentage of false positives)
"Accuracy" usually refers to sensitivity. If specificity is near 100% and the test is cheap/fast even low sensitivity can be good
On the other hand you could have sensitivity of 100% but the test could be useless if specificity is low and the condition is rare
mouse_|4 months ago
Junk science?
dboreham|4 months ago
Obviously there's some probability this is all coincidence but it does seem strange, especially considering the predisposition for these people to not think their issues were triggered by covid infection.
kace91|4 months ago
PaulKeeble|4 months ago
Its not a big unknown anymore, its very prevalent, it has a lot of symptoms, it has a clinical definition but its problematic and there are many diagnostic tests that can detect parts of the condition but none has yet reached sufficient prominence to be adopted by healthcare. Healthcare is largely ignoring that Long Covid exists so you can't get diagnosed with it but its very much a real thing and a lot of people have it.
[1]https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/post-covid-...
[2] https://erictopol.substack.com/p/long-covid-at-3-years
wisemang|4 months ago
https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/long-covid-re...
dmd|4 months ago
clashncruz|4 months ago
Excellent, a new way to test for the "fibrinaloid clots", a term that has only recently appeared in the literature since 2022, directly after the first experimental injections were administered worldwide and 2 years after the declared pandemic. It sounds like the authors are assuming "long Covid" comes from Covid rather than the experimental injections without ever having ruled out the latter, even though the onset correlates temporally with the experimental injections far more than the declared pandemic. Since this term never existed in the literature during the first 2 years of the declared pandemic, and only finally appeared in 2022 (and only in 1 article) before it started gaining traction, we must ask ourselves the following questions if we are truly interested in pursuing the scientific method: 1. Did the authors categorize the test subjects by those who had received the COVID-19 injection and those who had not? 2. If not, how do we rule out these effects being long-term effects from the experimental injections which cause people's bodies to continually produce the Spike protein the authors discuss in their paper as being the cause of the "fibrinaloid clots"? 3.Isn't this continual production of Spike induced by the injections something that should be controlled for to answer the question one way or another?
Suggestions: Test for "fibrinaloid clots" in subjects who have had confirmed COVID-19 and categorize them by how many experimental injections they received; include patients who received none. Then plot the number of experimental injections per patient on the x axis and the detected microclot size on the y axis.
Best regards to all.
slater|4 months ago
Likely because you're attempting to spread some form of anti-vax nonsense.
Wintamute|4 months ago
base698|4 months ago
They are looking into that.
notrealyme123|4 months ago
catchcatchcatch|4 months ago
[deleted]
catchcatchcatch|4 months ago
[deleted]
jasonvorhe|4 months ago
[deleted]
clashncruz|4 months ago
[deleted]
analog8374|4 months ago
boxerab|4 months ago