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Comment by usednet | Hacker News Reader

I think its highly likely long COVID simply does not exist, at least in the way we currently imagine it. The body of evidence that long COVID has a biological/chemical/physical basis is very unconvincing. The demographics of the people who get long COVID is the most telling evidence that its more of a syndrome than an actual disease. Over 20% (!) of bisexual people have/had long COVID. Long COVID sufferers are more likely to have conditions like POTS, where a significant number of patients are very likely just exaggerating physiological symptoms. We should stop elevating these "diseases" into the public consciousness before there is scientific evidence that they actually exist.

https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M21-4905

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/replication-attempt-bi...

https://www.piratewires.com/p/bisexuals-long-covid

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Yeah, no. The science -- and basic common sense -- is against you. There are many people who are hypochondriacs and make stuff up. However, anecdotally, I know people who:

- Had severe memory problems for a few months following covid

- Had severe balance problems for a few months following covid (to the point of falling when walking around the house)

- Basically couldn't talk for a month after a mild covid infection, due to coughing fits (despite having mild/no respiratory symptoms during a very mild covid).

... and so on. These are not psychosomatic symptoms. You can't make up a hoarse voice with an extreme cough.

You can talk to doctors too. This stuff is pretty severe. If your argument was that, rather than 4 million people out on long covid disability, it was, say, 2 million, I'd listen. However, your argument is like someone near the equator arguing snow doesn't exist.

Under/over/misdiagnosis is a thing for a lot of conditions, but that doesn't mean those conditions don't exist.

You'd also be better off citing medical journals than conspiracy web pages with web surveys and sample biases.

This not true, a plenty of well established scientific authorities in Cobid accept the existense of long Covid. Check Akiko Iwasaki for example https://twitter.com/VirusesImmunity. exsitense of long Coivid is not controversial.

additionally:

“According to large population-based surveys, up to 33.7% of the population are affected by an anxiety disorder during their lifetime.”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4610617/

published prior to covid

> Over 20% (!) of bisexual people have/had long COVID.

That’s bizarre. I’m not sure what would cause those numbers regardless of whether long covid is real.

whats causing it the poster's own biases

Take a look at the CDC's offical long COVID data and do your own calculations.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/covid19/pulse/long-covid.htm

because we all know the CDC has been a reliable source of information with them constantly changing to stats to whatever they liked to see... suuure

You think the CDC is fudging the data to make it look like bi people are getting all the long covid?

Why?

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