Coronamonomania Lives Forever, Part 226

Maybe I am just too inclined to an old-style “tough it out” attitude about life, so I naturally have a very jaundiced view of “long” CV-19.   I think a lot of it is just another excuse for the many malingerers among us who take pleasure in having one excuse after another for why they do nothing productive with their lives and leech off those who work and pay taxes.  But I am sure, as with any serious disease, that some people do suffer more significant lasting impacts from an infection.  This paper addresses the methodological issues with long CV-19 studies.  It is somewhat technical and much of what the authors say could be addressed to any study.  They basically point out that the case definitions of long CV-19 are overbroad and there are no control groups.  The first point is accurate and overlaps with the second.  A lot of people report the symptoms included in long CV-19 all the time and a lot of people report the same long CV-19 symptoms after other disease episodes.  The second point isn’t valid, I have seen a number of studies which make the point I just made by comparing a group of people who didn’t have a serious infection.  The authors also appropriately point out that the current fetish about long CV-19 risks mis-diagnoses and diverting resources from other truly more serious health problems.  (BMJ Paper)

And here are a couple of those long CV-19 studies.  In the first, the authors examined association with variants and other factors.  There was far less risk of long CV-19 following an Omicron infection, in fact the risk dropped with each variant by time.  There was less risk of long CV-19 following any infection after a prior infection.  Symptoms appeared to be similar across variants and regardless of vax status.  The weaknesses of this study are some of the same items addressed by the authors in the prior summary.  First, the symptoms were self-reported.  Second, there is no definitive attribution to CV-19, and the definition of a symptom is overbroard.  (JID Study)

And the second one, published in Nature Medicine, used the VA population to assess presence of supposed long CV-19 two years after infection.  For those not hospitalized, there was no increased risk of death by six months after infection, but for those hospitalized for CV-19, the higher death risk remained through two years.  An absurd list of 80 supposed symptoms was reviewed, and 70% were not found at a significant level with two years in non-hospitalized infectees and 35% in hospitalized patients.  A big problem with this study is that it claims to have a control group of almost 6 million uninfected persons, but that is highly unlikely and there determination of “no evidence” of a CV-19 infection in the control group was just lack of a positive test, which is inadequate, and there is no description of how the control group was constructed and if it was matched.   (Nat. Med. Article)

This review from an agency of the UK government was designed to lay the framework for an evaluation of the euphemistic “non-pharmaceutical interventions” during the epidemic.  It identified a number of relevant studies, over 150, and while not technically an assessment of the effectiveness of the measures, it notes that the evidence was not strong (it actually was non-existent) before the epidemic.  It has only gotten worse during the epidemic as it is apparent just from a common-sense perspective that they made no difference in limiting infections or serious disease.  And you will see that almost all the studies cited were modeling ones, in whole or in part.  (UK Paper)

There is a fair amount of medical research that just seems like it is stating the obvious.  This paper for example, finds that less mobility during the epidemic led people to be more depressed.  In other words, if you terrorize people into staying home, then will get both anxious and depressed at higher rates.  Gee, who could have foreseen that.  (JAMA Article)