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This isn't a study, and scientists have been paying increasing attention to "long COVID" for several months now. See, for example, this feature from The BMJ from July: https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m2815 Alternatively, data from the UK in June suggests that 10% of people with COVID have symptoms that last for more than three weeks: https://covid.joinzoe.com/post/covid-long-term

If the number really is 10%, that's significant. This letter is merely suggesting further research; I think it's far from fear-mongering.

just wanted to add there is also data from Bergamo that indicates long term affects for many people (and a study from Germany - see link buried in the WaPo post) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24418561

It's a novel coronavirus, not just any old coronavirus. It jumped from an animal species. What you are saying is equivalent to "The Spanish flu is just the flu. Thousands of people get the flu every year and we probably have some immunity to it. No big deal."

When does this one stop being novel? This naming convention just has "new coke" vibes to me. I mean, when there is an other emergent virus of this type, it will take the name "novel". Which might typically be fine, but not when the name has become part of a public lexicon. It's all just a weird convention really. If another major novel type emerges soon it will be absurd if medical historians are looking back and trying to determine which virus articles are talking about. Coronavirus Classic.

Exactly this. People have latched on to the wrong meaning of "novel", ascribing meaning beyond just "not seen before", instead treating it something like "acts worse/differently from other coronaviruses".

The scientific community has a specific name they use for Covid-19 (SARS-CoV-2). Also, timing would also be a very good indicator of what virus the author is talking about. Novel is in relation to the human races exposure to it. For example, there are modern flu virus that trace back evolutionarily to the Spanish flu, but are not novel, they are just "the flu" today. When the Spanish flu jumped to humans it was a novel flu, hence how deadly it was. Again, scientists have clear distinctions between different kinds of flu's, e.g. H1N1, H1N3.

At the end of the day, this is a political decision. Science does not provide the answer on what to do, just the facts.

Politics must decide whether to subject a large fraction of the population to the risk of this disease or whether to convince or coerce people to not go to football games, movie theaters and cocktail parties for a year or two.

Luckily, we as individuals still have the choice of not getting infected, although the risks of everyday activities increase dramatically when there are high levels of transmission in the community.

Yes, every day activities such as going to the grocery store or going outside. Making this a political issue ignores the very real consequences for the people who don't want to risk getting COPD for the rest of their lives. Imagine not being able to get food without taking on that risk because a core group of other people have decided to sacrifice you on the altar of the economy.

You can view it as a personal decision or a community decision.

Do we restrict the community for the individual or the individual for the community?

Your feelings on this aren't universal and neither are mine.

You know, we're living in a society!

Sure but I think we do ourselves a disservice when we step back from the actual issue and start talking philosophically. We need to focus on the specifics of what is being asked of us and what that is preventing. Otherwise we'll never agree on anything.

Mask use is an individual issue in that it protects other individuals around you. Your right to throw punches stops at my nose. Suppose that we did nothing and let it spread. There would inevitably be a whole lot of people going around spreading it to people who don't want to be infected. This would be the case regardless of how individuals chose to self-isolate. People would go to the grocery store sick and breathe on everyone else there. This is the normal MO when in Flu season.

So it is an individual issue in the sense that as an individual I need to be able to buy food safely, and your choice to spread this unimpeded would infringe on that fundamental right.

And at the end of the day we're weighing the inconvenience of wearing a mask and staying home when sick for a few months versus the inconvenience of wheeling an oxygen bottle around with you for the rest of your life. If you have a cogent argument for why I should be stricken to save you the inconvenience then I'll listen.

But "science" doesn't give you the answer of how to weigh costs and benefits relative to individuals and communities.

You’re right. What we value is an individual choice. But Science can inform our understanding of cause and effect.

Your beliefs about masks aren't universally shared even by many scientists, let alone the public. To many people you have seized on an unsupported belief and now insist everyone around you makes their own lives worse, indefinitely, or else they are "bad people".

Please do show us the people who are now seeking an oxygen bottle around for the rest of their lives because of covid that could have been stopped by a mask.

There are other reports of this: https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/facebook-covid-support-g...

That said - I would expect some extremely rare outcomes in a sample of 35 million people. We live in a connected world: https://www.gwern.net/Littlewood

I really want to see good stats.

Even for, the simple you would think, case of CFR - what are the current reliable numbers here? In https://ourworldindata.org/mortality-risk-covid I only see cumulative nubers - that is not very informative when we can see how the mortality now is incomparable with the mortality in April and May, we need monthly or weekly cohorts data!

This isn't a study, it's a case report in a letter to the editor. What on earth are you talking about?

He's just saying that to highlight that we shouldn't be attempting to draw any broad conclusions as other commenters are.

Bingo. The plural of anecdotes isn’t data.

Until there is a good study that controls for biases as well as expected side effects of severe disease like pneumonia, we can conclude nothing about the population

>Yes, covid is terrible but it's a different strain of a coronavirus (of which 20% of common colds are too), it's not something mystical. There's a strong chance we have substantial cross immunity to it though T-Cells defence. The literature is saying that if you're under 48 the flu has a higher mortality rate. We've mostly passed through the gompertz curve of the virus mortality as described by initial research by Hope Simpson regarding the seasonality of influenza viruses.

Sure. But COVID-19 is currently in pandemic mode, having now infected at least 10% of the worlds population with zero signs of slowing down. This is not an endemic virus with a known cap on seasonal infections like the flu or colds. The area under the curve is going to be massive in comparison. That's the issue. Yes, it may have many similarities to the long term effects of other viruses. But now we will have hundreds of millions of people dealing with this, rather than hundreds of thousands. Quantity has a quality all of its' own.

10 percent? From where did you get this number?

https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-archive-united-nat...

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/1...

0.2% of cold viruses are coronaviruses. Only off by a factor of 100x. You quote scientific literature then say it’s lacking any rigor. Kinda hard to listen to the rest of the post.

Do other respiratory viruses attack the blood and kidneys?Genuinely curious. My mother has Leukemia leading to kidney damage. Definitely some fear of contracting it and passing it to her.

I have a friend in the “long hauler” group that is 38yo. Of the people I am one or two steps from, 45% are dead, 45% had mild issues, and 10% long hauler.

So, low number of N is definitely a problem, for both my experience and the paper.

Since neither of you cited anything, webmd says parent is right. Looks like you're only off by a factor of 100x. If you're going to call someone out for inconsistencies, might want to get your data right?

> Coronavirus. These tend to do their dirty work in the winter and early spring. The coronavirus is the cause of about 20% of colds. There are more than 30 kinds, but only three or four affect people.

https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/cold-guide/common_cold_ca...

"The coronavirus is the cause of about 20% of colds." and "0.2% of cold viruses are coronaviruses" aren't necessarily mutually exclusive statements

That’s a good point.

My mind was definitely in the mode of what number and kinds of viruses that a body is exposed to, not so much how contagious it is, but I see your point.

I thought of addressing that, but figured it would be obvious from the tail end of what I quoted:

> There are more than 30 kinds, but only three or four affect people.

There aren't enough cold viruses around to allow for a 0.2% fraction.

30? I thought there were over 100 HRV serotypes, not counting their mutations. And I thought those only accounted for around 35% of all. So 2% is probably a better number. I’m 10x off, just as bad as the parent. Sigh.

> There's a strong chance we have substantial cross immunity to it though T-Cells defence

You criticise the article but then post this without any backup.

> The literature is saying that if you're under 48 the flu has a higher mortality rate

ditto. Show us the figures please.

> N=1 in this study

It's not a study.

>You criticise the article but then post this without any backup.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41590-020-00808-x SARS-CoV-2-derived peptides define heterologous and COVID-19-induced T cell recognition

>ditto. Show us the figures please.

When I have more time I'll pull out this figure. Let me know if you find it in the meantime.

Thanks for posting the link. OK

"With regard to SARS-CoV-2, very recent studies described CD4+ and CD8+ T cell responses to viral peptide megapools in donors that had recovered from COVID-19 and individuals not exposed to SARS-CoV-2, the latter being indicative of potential T cell cross-reactivity21"

They seem to be saying there's value in peptide donors who had recovered from covid, a transfusion of which to those who've not had covid seem to be valuable. It does not say (AIUI) that there is "substantial cross immunity to it though T-Cells defence" in the sense of having a similar disease gives you cross immunity. If I'm wrong, which is likely, please point out the correct passage.

Handling of coronavirus was a failure of Politicians and Physicians.

From the US standpoint, the shutdown should have happened in January. After the first US case, there was no purpose in locking down the boarder. Politician fail.

Physicians stressed harsh lockdowns and played into the fear. This wasn't science or statistics, this was fear. Physician fail.

After hundreds of coronavirus cases in the US, governors created their own lockdowns, but had no control over traveling between state lines. This created no benefit but created poor economic conditions. Politician fail.

You know who has been correct but seemingly unheard during all of this? Scientists/epidemiologists.

They predicted the spread perfectly but Politicians, citizens, and Physicians did not listen.

The projections of the scientists/epidemiologists were WILDLY inaccurate. IHME and Oxford both had major embarrassing downward revisions.

I don't really care about the "projections" of a few people.

The bigger takeaways were our options for how to handle the pandemic and expected outcomes.

> it's a different strain of a coronavirus

So is classic SARS, which is known to cause a post-viral syndrome similar to the one the letter proposes. Indeed, the letter opens with a discussion of exactly that syndrome. So it seems a bit odd to be talking about mysticism and religion in this context.

It's a reference to the lack of scientific rigor in this particular study.

This isn't a study. It's a letter to the editor that includes a case report.

It's odd to me that anyone would mistake it for a study, actually, seeing as it says "Letter to the Editor" right at the top and has no gross morphological features in common with a research paper. No one seems to be trying to represent it as something it makes no pretense of being, except for people who seem to want to discount it without any significant consideration. That's an odd correlation to observe, but there is a lot that's odd about how people have reacted to this pandemic, I suppose.

>No one seems to be trying to represent it as something it makes no pretense of being, except for people who seem to want to discount it without any significant consideration.

You're kidding, right? Anecdotes like this one are dominating the media coverage, especially with regards to 'extended' symptoms of covid.

This is a case report to professionals, and people are discussing it here as such. Invoking 'the media' to refute participants in this discussion is fallacious, because this discussion isn't based on a mainstream media report to begin with.

every day npr trots out doctors and other professionals parroting the (literal) party line stoking continued fear and panic for no benefit to the public, but much benefit to the media itself and their political leanings. being a professional doesn't mean you're immune to propaganda. in fact, a false sense of knowledge and control can lead to greater susceptibility via an elevated sense of self-esteem rather than the humility required to accept and examine wider perspectives openly and critically.

That's right, because the mainstream media report will reference this paper, not the other way around like you are insinuating here. That was, of course, the point of OPs comment:

>Covid has been turned into a religion completely lacking any scientific rigour and I feel this paper will be used as a tool to add to the fear.

> The literature is saying that if you're under 48 the flu has a higher mortality rate.

I don't think that's correct. Covid is well above influenza mortality in every cohort except children, I believe.

Do you have any stats for that? The stats now seem very different from what was happening in April and May. The cumulative CFR is also dropping - but obviously time cohort data must be already much lower.

Flu mortality rate is down in same period though

It's probably about the same up to age 49, maybe a bit less:

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scena...