"Those who do not get a COVID-19 vaccine have an increased likelihood of developing long COVID,” CDC epidemiologist Sharon Saydah said during a recent meeting of the agency’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices."
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The framing in this article strikes me as a bit odd. The headline makes it sound like people are experiencing “terror” irrationally, but all the data in the article says LC is still a really significant risk. And yes vaccines reduce the risk, but it never says by how much (my understanding is ~35%).
Yep, studies show incidence of LC in the fully vaccinated is 10-20%, which is… REALLY high for a disease with no season that you can catch despite vaccination.
The comparative studies I’ve seen have it occurring at about the same rate as lingering symptoms from the flu: more likely to trigger heart issues, but without the chance of triggering lupus.
Maybe people were underestimating the impact of the flu, or maybe people just have different risk tolerance
Me ^ like many others I was able to trace the start of my fatigue and GI issues to a viral infection I had in college. These are two of the biggest long Covid symptoms surprise surprise. And look at shingles… I’m so sad the chicken pox vaccine came out too late for me.
The risk of lingering symptoms being similar stands in contrast to the risk of death, though: the risk ratio for death for unvaccinated Covid pre-Paxlovid was more than an order of magnitude higher than even the most deadly flu strain we’ve seen.
It's true COVID is not the flu. We have largely downplayed the seriousness of the flu though. I hope that can change as we talk more about post viral illness in general going forward.
Allow me to offer myself as a data point for the former. I used to think that the flu was like a really bad cold, probably because so many folks can't tell a really bad cold from a mild case of the flu.
People are so bad at it but I can never tell how much of that is because we don't really teach statistics in a meaningful way at the high school level. And then I think I might be weird for finding statistics useful.
Yes. Helpful. And also people will struggle with internalizing stats because of how our brains work. A rare but major event becomes more salient emotionally if I know someone it happened to than a likely but significant event. It’s a fight against emotion.
Professional scientist here who has been waving the "Statistics are more useful than calculus for most people, including most scientists" flag for *years*.
I teach some very basic stats & tell my students they should take a full stats class bc without a basic statistical understanding, regardless of your profession, you will likely misinterpret or be misled about the meaning of data
It’s important not to discount actual risk (as opposed to case-based risk). Covid isn’t particularly seasonal, is way more contagious, way more common, and re-infections happen way more frequently. People tend to get flu maybe once a decade, maybe less if vaccinated. Covid is very different.
@astrokatie.com I posted the article not expecting it to go viral. It has issues as it does not mention masks as a mitigating factor in addition to vaccines. I guess part of me was just glad that a major newspaper was still talking about these issues. We have low expectations in the U.S. I guess.
or even that 1% chance of dying - not risking my actual life on that, you know? might be my day to roll the 00.
(and the vaccine may not be an autosuccess on 'don't get COVID in the first place' but it lets you roll with advantage. always roll with advantage when you can.)
I hate that Official Public Health has left such a vacuum that it’s up to a theoretical cosmologist to make these points—but I really appreciate how well you make them.
But given how much LC has been built up as The One Chance To Investigate Post-Viral Illness, it doesn’t surprise me that it ended up highly overloaded.
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Maybe people were underestimating the impact of the flu, or maybe people just have different risk tolerance
heck, even the scary symptomatic polio was basically another post-viral syndrome
the rates are way undercounted
The risk of lingering symptoms being similar stands in contrast to the risk of death, though: the risk ratio for death for unvaccinated Covid pre-Paxlovid was more than an order of magnitude higher than even the most deadly flu strain we’ve seen.
I got Swine Flu the year that was the pandemic and have gotten the flu vaccine every year since.
calling straight-up uninformed acceptance of risks “risk tolerance” is… not a great way to discuss the problem.
https://erictopol.substack.com/p/ziyad-al-aly-illuminating-long-covid
(and the vaccine may not be an autosuccess on 'don't get COVID in the first place' but it lets you roll with advantage. always roll with advantage when you can.)
MOST PEOPLE: 1%? Why are people worried?
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