How were there any deaths from covid then if getting infected "protects" you?
Our Covid Response
- Thread starter gorfias
- Start date
(reddit comment)....
- "Highlights
• 1883 vaccinated and unvaccinated post-COVID patients evaluated by echocardiogram.
• 2.92% presented pathological TTE findings consistent with post-COVID cardiac injury.
• Unvaccinated patients presented more cardiac injury than vaccinated (4.1% vs 1.3%)
• 15% of the patients reported persistent symptoms at the post-COVID control.
• Complete vaccination was associated with 48% reduction in risk of long-COVID symptoms."
"Interpretation
Protection from past infection against re-infection from pre-omicron variants was very high and remained high even after 40 weeks. Protection was substantially lower for the omicron BA.1 variant and declined more rapidly over time than protection against previous variants. Protection from severe disease was high for all variants. The immunity conferred by past infection should be weighed alongside protection from vaccination when assessing future disease burden from COVID-19, providing guidance on when individuals should be vaccinated, and designing policies that mandate vaccination for workers or restrict access, on the basis of immune status, to settings where the risk of transmission is high, such as travel and high-occupancy indoor settings."
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The haunting brain science of long Covid
In an essay by @WesElyMD, here's Matt Fitzgerald describing his life with long Covid: "It's terrifying. I mean, I've had to dig real deep. How much longer will I feel like this? I'm scared."
www.statnews.com
An MRI study from George Washington University of people who’d had mild Covid-19 symptoms several months earlier found much less gray matter in their brains than they should have had. This ominous finding complements a large controlled study conducted as part of the U.K. Biobank showing that, as compared to people who had never tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, a loss of actual brain tissue was seen in the olfactory cortex and limbic system — think impaired smell, emotions, and memory formation — among people with long Covid.
This tracks with PET scan studies of people with long Covid showing impaired cellular metabolism in the frontal lobe six months following acute Covid. Other long Covid studies using PET scans correlate this slower metabolism with numerous functional problems and symptoms — ongoing issues with smell, memory, cognitive abilities, chronic pain, and sleep disruption — that harms quality of life.
Long Covid is now considered to be a disability by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Yes, that's very Prasad. He uses the typical terms of social media gobshites ("Bombshell"! "Devastating"! "Destroyed"!) to attract attention to articles much less clear than he presents them as. He has a very particular performance where he boasts about his accomplishments, how scientific and reasonable he is, and then proceeds to present grey area and controversy as the obvious reality in a way that makes less showy experts cringe.
The more I observe Vinay Prasad, the more I think there's a huge whiff of crankery about him. And / or, perhaps, that like many people keen on hammering social media, it's actually a sort of narcissism and search for fame, adulation and monetisable content. He's realised his best earnings are in contrarianism, so off he goes. The moment I mostly switched off was when he went full Godwin and started claiming all sorts of reasonable public health measures would destroy democracy.
In fact, here's scientist/clinician Dr. David Gorski doing a monster takedown on Vinay Prasad (It's worth pointing out that Gorski and Prasad have history and do not get along, as there's plenty more: https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/tag/vinay-prasad/):
Projection and methodolatry over COVID-19
Projection, thy name is Dr. Vinay Prasad, who tone polices criticism while issuing bad takes on COVID-19 based on methodolatry.
www.respectfulinsolence.com
Have you ever stopped to think that blind idolisation of self-declared experts with YouTube channels, who may be a lot less reliable than you realise, is more likely to bring you to foolishness than wisdom?
That's not the same thing, though, is it?
Positive covid serology does have a meaningful positive relationship with long covid symptoms. There's no different standard being applied here.
Whenever you've disputed the positive relationship, you've fallen into the same holes: comparing it with other respiratory illnesses, or making the argument that covid's overall prevalence in the community explains it (which doesn't make a lick of sense).
What on earth are you talking about? The country with >20 trillion GDP, which spends 750 billion per annum on defence, cannot afford to set up a contact tracing system.. even though it has already done so in the past?
Look, if you're going to require a comparison in which every single variable is the same, you'll never have one. Ever.
But we know: the US has successfully done contact tracing in the past; and other countries successfully used contact tracing against covid.
It is not unreasonable to conclude from that that it's more than possible for the US to use contact tracing against covid.
...right. And they could have done those things if they did plan.
Jesus Christ. The graph I provided was diagnosed cases only. The actual number of infections is going to be far, far higher, and it also shows how the rate of growth was increasing massively by the day.
That's how you reach 20%.
You guys have been at this with him for almost three years. I don’t think you’re gonna change his mind and frankly it’s a waste of of your precious minutes to try.
And I am saying that they are not using a catch-all version. You are the one doing that. Not them. You do not get to project your own failings onto other people.
No, you were 'asking a question' as a rhetorical lead-in with an implied conclusion: Eg, if I say "Are you an idiot?" the sentence takes the form of a question, but its purpose is rhetorical, it's a question that implies that the answer is a given and that "you are acting like an idiot". Similarly, while "did you eat my ice cream?" is framed as a question, its intent and effect is to convey your suspicion that the answer is - again - "you ate my ice cream" under the pretense of a question. In this case you 'asked a question' presuming that a lack of IgM antibodies would rule out Long Covid, and followed that up by explaining why the conclusion you were implying was a point in favor of it being an argument against Long Covid. Let's review:
That's a rhetorical question, followed by an argument that presumes the answer to that question is an affirmative, and from that infers that - as these would be cases where IgM antibodies would not be present - they would have been incorrectly counted as Long Covid, which is further contextualized through your longstanding and continuing incredulity towards Long Covid. Which is to say it's you doing what you always do in trying to force the data to support your extant conclusion.
Don't try to pull that just asking questions bullshit with me. I've already made it clear that my patience with you is already paper thin and I do not appreciate you taking that as an invitation to test it further with more juvenile facsimiles of argumentation whose only purpose is to change the form of your argument into passive aggressive insinuation in a feeble effort to give yourself deniability and avoid owning up to your own ignorance. Making mistakes is human. But jumping through so many hoops to try and pretend those mistakes never happened - as you have been doing - only ensures that you never learn from them.
...And yet again you illustrate that you have learned nothing, don't care enough to do any independent research, and mistake your resulting willful ignorance with the answer not existing. Once again: Long Covid is a recovery period issue, which is to say a long term impact that extends beyond the virus's actual infection. Hence "Post Covid Conditions". As an analogy, think of the Covid virus like the reactor meltdown at Chernobyl and Long Covid like the structural damage and lingering radiation in the aftermath. The initial disaster is over, but the damage inflicted by that disaster can endure for a long time afterwards.
Among other things, you're also making the mistake of assuming that people are claiming that this is unique to Covid, else it wouldn't be worth mentioning. Neither of those things are true. Point of fact, precedence is why this could be so quickly recognized in the first place. Acute respiratory infections have a bit of history with lingering effects. Further reading here and here.
You being "pretty sure the data doesn't exist" and incredulously asking "where is the proof" means bupkis when you very obviously never bothered to even look for it and are instead just assuming your conclusion.
...*blink* ...Do you just pull random studies under the presumption that nobody will actually read them, or something? Or did you just blindly pull a listed reference from a Youtube video that presumed - apparently correctly - that its credulous audience wouldn't bother to read it? That paper isn't even about how Covid compares to other viruses, much less making the idiotic inference that the comparative frequency of long-term symptoms was reason to downplay the impact of those long-term symptoms. Moreover, it in fact concludes the opposite of what you were saying; that "the distribution of symptom prevalence differed by SARS-CoV-2 PCR status (p ≤ 0.004) except for experiencing sores or blisters on feet (p = 0.064)."
Even if I'm being generous, the best explanation I can come up with for you reaching that conclusion is still a spectacular misunderstanding of their results for specific symptoms at the baseline, 6-month and 12-month markers. More specifically, it would be rooted in misinterpreting the final sentence of the results subsections as being broadly applicable to long-term impact in general rather than an exception to the observed trend in those who first reported the symptoms a full year later.
As an aside, I find it morbidly amusing that despite your continued incredulity about "how would you even know that in a world where everyone has had covid" even in this very post, you evidently failed to notice that this paper casually alluded to their ability to do exactly that as a matter of course in the sample selection process.
"After excluding test-positives who were reinfected and test-negatives who were infected after baseline testing (determined by PCR test results held by UKHSA and self-report of whether (or not) the CYP ever had a positive COVID-19 test, including Lateral Flow Tests), 12,949 participants who responded at 6 months post-test were included"
Setting that aside for a minute, it's further worth noting that even if you had been right about comparative incidence rate, it would still be - once again - irrelevant, because concerns about Long Covid are not predicated on comparative incidence rate as contrasted with the long term aftereffects for other diseases. This isn't a footrace wherein all the prize money goes to the first person past the post. Generously, that'd be what we'd call the Fallacy of Relative Privation (aka the "Appeal to Worse Problems" Fallacy), a positively puerile fallacy that insists that if something isn't the foremost example of its kind, it's not worth concerning yourself with. Eg, "Breast Cancer isn't as bad as Brain Cancer, so why do we make a big deal about being vigilant about it?" When you understand why trying to object to Breast Cancer screenings by comparing Breast Cancer's fatality rate to that of Brain Cancer is idiotic, you will understand why the argument you just attempted by misrepresenting that study is equally stupid.
Where is what actually being done? Pretentious amateurs incorrectly assuming that long term symptoms immediately qualify as "Long Covid"? Aside from that being the sampling criteria for that very study, one might note that that's exactly the 'definition' you've been insisting on this whole time!
Again: You very obviously do not understand this topic.
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You're making a completely different argument that isn't the point of natural immunity and vaccine mandates...
Again, what's the point of this have to do with vaccine mandates and natural immunity? Vaccines also don't stop re-infection either. Why is reinfection your endpoint? Protection from severe disease and death should be your endpoint.
Typical ad hominem attacks vs actually demonstrating how someone is actually wrong...Yes, that's very Prasad. He uses the typical terms of social media gobshites ("Bombshell"! "Devastating"! "Destroyed"!) to attract attention to articles much less clear than he presents them as. He has a very particular performance where he boasts about his accomplishments, how scientific and reasonable he is, and then proceeds to present grey area and controversy as the obvious reality in a way that makes less showy experts cringe.
The more I observe Vinay Prasad, the more I think there's a huge whiff of crankery about him. And / or, perhaps, that like many people keen on hammering social media, it's actually a sort of narcissism and search for fame, adulation and monetisable content. He's realised his best earnings are in contrarianism, so off he goes. The moment I mostly switched off was when he went full Godwin and started claiming all sorts of reasonable public health measures would destroy democracy.
In fact, here's scientist/clinician Dr. David Gorski doing a monster takedown on Vinay Prasad (It's worth pointing out that Gorski and Prasad have history and do not get along, as there's plenty more: https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/tag/vinay-prasad/):
Projection and methodolatry over COVID-19
Projection, thy name is Dr. Vinay Prasad, who tone polices criticism while issuing bad takes on COVID-19 based on methodolatry.
There was literally never any data supporting vaccine mandates the entire time. Where is the data saying vaccination stops covid spread? Pfizer had to literally come out not too long back and said they never did a trial on the vaccine stopping covid spread. Basically every other peer country worked natural immunity into their policies.
Posts mislead on Pfizer COVID vaccine’s impact on transmission
After Small testified before the European Parliament’s Special Committee on the COVID-19 Pandemic, misleading claims about whether Pfizer knew the impact of its COVID-19 vaccine on preventing transmission spread widely on social media.
apnews.com
That is the same thing because to get into those ridiculous numbers you have to count cases of "long covid" not actually caused by covid.
Without adjustments, ivermectin also shows a positive relationship with providing benefits. If say 70% of the community got covid, then 70% of long [whatever] cases will probably be caused by covid...
OMFG, YOU CAN'T JUST THROW MONEY AT PROBLEMS AND HAVE THEM GO AWAY. It isn't an issue of money. How are you gonna get the workers needed to contact trace? How are you gonna get testing results back fast enough? How are you gonna get Americans to answer unknown phone numbers or all download a covid app? Just throwing money at stuff doesn't magically make it happen.
Contact tracing is very different with regards to different diseases. Why'd the US ever have a measles issue, we can just contact trace it, right? Why have a flu vaccine, just contact trace it?
But they didn't plan so any options that require advanced planning are off the table. Japan didn't try to do things they knew they couldn't do.
Yeah and what's your point? That's literally what I've been saying the entire time. When Fauci told New York that everything is fine on Feb 29th, it wasn't fine because of all the cases we didn't know about, that's literally my point. And April survey was the 1st time we got accurate numbers. The US went from "everything's fine" to "oh shit, shutdown the country" in a couple days because of said unknown cases and covid spread.
The CDC director just literally lied to Congress a few weeks back about masking still...
You can easily change my mind with basic proof.
They are using that version because the amount of long covid happening according to these people are so unrealistically high that they have to be using cases not caused by covid.
I'll stop "asking questions" then... I was legit asking for a way to determine long covid properly so we can accurately know how common or uncommon it actually is. What is your method for determining whether long term symptoms is caused by covid or something else?
Stop talking down to me like I don't understand basic things. I completely get that long covid is a post infection issue. If I didn't understand that I would say long covid isn't a thing because all people with long covid would test negative for covid. When I have ever insinuated that? My issue was that you said sometimes long covid just happens months later basically out of the blue. Where's this rationale for long covid or long whatever happening in people that are fine months after infection, then getting hit these symptoms? To my knowledge, people with these long term symptoms never can shake these symptoms, maybe they have a good week or feel like they are getting better, but then get worse again. They don't get perfectly fine for months and they get hit with said symptoms basically.
My fault, linked the wrong study. I linked this one before and you never actually commented on it.
SARS-COV-2 Positivity and Patient-Reported Well-being 3 Months After Symptomatic Illness
This cohort study compares patient-reported physical, mental, and social well-being at 3 months after symptomatic illness among adults with positive vs negative test results for SARS-CoV-2 infection.
jamanetwork.com
The ones claiming long covid is a "mass disabling event" are not trying to actually determine which cases are legit long covid and those that aren't. If this narrative was never pushed, I wouldn't have ever talked about long covid in the 1st place.
The ones that claim something to be true are the ones that have to prove it. I'm still waiting for that proof. If I said I have the cure for cancer, you'd ask me for proof wouldn't you? It wouldn't be on you to prove me wrong, it's on me to prove my claim.
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Au contraire, I supplied a link to an article by David Gorski that supplied reasons why Prasad's take on things is at best dubious. As I supplied it, a reasonable expectation is that you should have read it before commenting.
It's also worth taking a look through some of his many other posts on Vinay Prasad, because he skewers quite a lot of Prasad's claims. Plus also, we can see, despite you throwing the claim of "ad hominem" at me, what's clear is that ad hominem is a favourite tactic of Vinay Prasad. (Are you critising him for it in his Twitter feed or YouTube comments?)
An Open Letter to ZDoggMD
I hope you'll agree with me that the biggest advocate for vaccination on social media should have no trouble sharing all of the facts about COVID-19 and children on a very frequent basis.
sciencebasedmedicine.org
And herein lies a lot of the problem: you have placed utterly disproportionate trust in sources which are unbalanced and fringe, and formed your worldview around them. The cartoon supplied by Crimson5phoenix then really does sum up where you are.
The data basically backs that every single demographic group would benefit from covid vaccination, including children. That's basically therefore where mainstream science and medicine stands, and most people on this forum. What the rest you're blathering on about, who gives a damn? This is a lot of what you have been doing the last few years: talking at users here, demanding that they shouldn't believe in relative trivialities that they never said they believed in anyway. Because you're actually not arguing with them: you're arguing against the straw men that your crank sources created so that they could sell money-making web subscriptions and merchandise to gullible conspiracy theorists.
What you, following the lead of your crank/quack sources, are doing, is not really engaging with the simple, broad facts. It's the way you're sort of constantly dancing around the big picture. You frequently bring up oblique and even digressive issues that you appear to have taken wholesale from the crank / quack / contrarian / conspiracy theory fringes. These oblique attacks exist because the broader, bigger picture is relatively straightforward and much harder to argue with. So the crank fringe manufacture weak, minor and oblique criticisms as a tactic to undermine trust in the bigger picture, because they lack good grounds to attack its main pillars. (Although, as Gorski & Howard point out, they just flat out lie and misrepresent when it suits them too.)
And you think it's not conspiracy theory? Because it is. Because they're all calls not to trust perceived authority or "elites": the medical community, the scientific community, the government, the Democratic Party, CDC, Anthony Fauci, Big Pharma, the media, Big Tech (social media). The constant, neverending tone is conspiracy: censorship, lies, attempts to control us, destroy democracy blah blah blah. It's the same old shit of posturing as bold mavericks willing to face persecution telling truth to power, but really it's just being David Icke or Alex Jones without the full-on crazy.
"They are out to get you! They are the cause of all the problems in your life! Give me money so that I can continue my crusade on your behalf!"
So they didn't actually count it, you're just making an additional assumption based on your own understanding. Got it.
That's literally not how a positive relationship is identified. My lord, you genuinely just have no idea about the most basic elements of this.
You are the one constantly harping about how America doesn't have the resources. You cannot then whine and gripe when the reply directly addresses resources. You're the one who made it about that.
They had more than enough time to hire, considering its an unskilled position in a hirer's market, and they knew about the danger ~4 months beforehand at least. And covid contact tracing systems have already worked with the test results coming back quickly enough, so that's just a nonissue.
It's almost like those things aren't pandemics!
"They couldn't do stuff they didn't do cos they didn't do them!"
The fuck argument is that?
The CDC already had numbers from early-mid March that were no less accurate than the ones in April, and already showed a significant growing problem. That's why NYS already implemented restrictions in March.
If you're well aware that the undiagnosed cases mean the total will be far higher, even in mid March, then you know it wasn't at "zero". So you knew from the start your "0 to 20% overnight" line was utter drivel.
The very first argument against Prasad was hilariously bad so why should I even keep reading his reasons at this point? Prasad's comparison to the flu in kids was argued as wrong and misinformation because covid killed 227 kids during the pandemic and the flu killed 1 kid in that same time. Uhh..... THE FLU WAS FUCKING GONE FOR A YEAR OR SO. No shit covid will kill more when the thing you are comparing it to vanished during that time. The question would be, did covid kill more kids than the flu USUALLY does during that time? Point out me an actual good argument in good faith that what Prasad said is definitely wrong.Au contraire, I supplied a link to an article by David Gorski that supplied reasons why Prasad's take on things is at best dubious. As I supplied it, a reasonable expectation is that you should have read it before commenting.
It's also worth taking a look through some of his many other posts on Vinay Prasad, because he skewers quite a lot of Prasad's claims. Plus also, we can see, despite you throwing the claim of "ad hominem" at me, what's clear is that ad hominem is a favourite tactic of Vinay Prasad. (Are you critising him for it in his Twitter feed or YouTube comments?)
You enjoy your ZDogg MD vids as well. It's interesting to note contributor Jonathan Howard's comments here, that ZDogg, far from presenting any special insight into Covid, is in fact pushing a very unbalanced line. Note, for instance, where Howard points out ZDogg's overall misrepresentation of vaccines, hyping the threats (myocarditis) far more than representing the benefits. And oh look: who also pops up here identified as another serial misinformer to the public who enjoys much of ZDogg's largesse, but one your other favourite sources, Marty Makary. See how he notes that the likes of Makary and Prasad are now supplying heaps of material which is being used by the flat-out anti-vaxxers. And there are people here who would like us to believe it's mainstream science and medicine that's the problem.An Open Letter to ZDoggMD
I hope you'll agree with me that the biggest advocate for vaccination on social media should have no trouble sharing all of the facts about COVID-19 and children on a very frequent basis.sciencebasedmedicine.org
And herein lies a lot of the problem: you have placed utterly disproportionate trust in sources which are unbalanced and fringe, and formed your worldview around them. The cartoon supplied by Crimson5phoenix then really does sum up where you are.
The data basically backs that every single demographic group would benefit from covid vaccination, including children. That's basically therefore where mainstream science and medicine stands, and most people on this forum. What the rest you're blathering on about, who gives a damn? This is a lot of what you have been doing the last few years: talking at users here, demanding that they shouldn't believe in relative trivialities that they never said they believed in anyway. Because you're actually not arguing with them: you're arguing against the straw men that your crank sources created so that they could sell money-making web subscriptions and merchandise to gullible conspiracy theorists.
What you, following the lead of your crank/quack sources, are doing, is not really engaging with the simple, broad facts. It's the way you're sort of constantly dancing around the big picture. You frequently bring up oblique and even digressive issues that you appear to have taken wholesale from the crank / quack / contrarian / conspiracy theory fringes. These oblique attacks exist because the broader, bigger picture is relatively straightforward and much harder to argue with. So the crank fringe manufacture weak, minor and oblique criticisms as a tactic to undermine trust in the bigger picture, because they lack good grounds to attack its main pillars. (Although, as Gorski & Howard point out, they just flat out lie and misrepresent when it suits them too.)
And you think it's not conspiracy theory? Because it is. Because they're all calls not to trust perceived authority or "elites": the medical community, the scientific community, the government, the Democratic Party, CDC, Anthony Fauci, Big Pharma, the media, Big Tech (social media). The constant, neverending tone is conspiracy: censorship, lies, attempts to control us, destroy democracy blah blah blah. It's the same old shit of posturing as bold mavericks willing to face persecution telling truth to power, but really it's just being David Icke or Alex Jones without the full-on crazy.
Oh my god, anti-vaxxers are using data that shows vaccines have side effects?!?! No fucking shit they would. Why would someone talking about myocarditis not be referenced by anti-vaxxers? That's not an argument that the person talking about myocarditis is wrong because some other person you don't like referenced said discussion. When have ZDogg, Prasad, Makary said those that haven't been infected with covid should NOT be vaccinated? Also, there are certain groups (age/sex) that actually do get more harm from the vaccine vs actual covid infection.
I go by the data, those doctors have shown the data that covid infection provides at least as good or better protection as the vaccine so you don't need it if you had gotten covid (sure there's exceptions like the vulnerable without normal working immune systems should be vaccinated or boosted), that's what literally every piece of data on the subject says. Same thing with the cost-benefit analysis of the vaccine in certain groups.
Uhh... There's no reason to force a vaccine on people when there's no community benefit... when not every age/sex group benefits... when the 100+ million already infected (in the US) don't need the vaccine... I was forced to get the vaccine for no reason as I already had covid and didn't want the vaccine. I did the research and got the J&J vaccine because it was the far safer option in my age/sex group and it was also one and done, now you can't get it anymore.
There was censorship, you'd get banned from several places just saying if you had covid, you don't need the vaccine (that is literally scientific truth). You couldn't talk about the lab leak theory even though now the FBI and DoE both have found that to be the most likely scenario. The guy that did the Cochrane mask analysis had his paper ready in 2020 and they wouldn't publish it until a few weeks back, that's censorship. That guy that did the Cochrane report is very well respected person that did the Tamiflu analysis showing that didn't work.
Show me any legit data that long covid happens more often than long [whatevers] that we need to be concerned about it any more than the other long lasting symptons from other infections. That's literally all you have to do is show the data, it seems like you all allergic to proving anything with basic data.
We literally didn't have the resources (there's more resources needed than just money)... I provided how contact tracing in August in America looked... Why'd healthcare workers have to reuse masks at the start of the pandemic because America had the money so a mask shortage is inconceivable right? Do you not know how literally every industry was needing workers during the pandemic?
Yes, flu and measles were never pandemics... sure...
I literally cited the article about Japan saying they couldn't contact trace and test so they didn't. They did want they knew they could vs wasting resources on something that wouldn't work.
Where are these numbers...? The Santa Clara county survey was the very first one in America IIRC and that was beginning of April. From what WE KNEW, covid spread wasn't nearly even close to that great (tip of the iceberg). Talk to any infectious disease expert and they will say you can't contact trace something like covid that had already spread that much.
That's not required. You're yet again trying to shift the conversation onto whether/how much we should care, rather than sticking with your original claims.
A positive relationship would be demonstrated by a comparison with the wider group of people who did not suffer from covid. And on that measure, you yourself have already provided the data.
Just reiteration of your position, and some more blabbering. Nothing new here to address.
The relevant resources are money, workforce, training, and time. On each of those measures the US had more than enough to compensate, and chose not to. The same is true of dozens of other countries.
*rolleyes*
They were not global pandemics in the era of modern contact tracing, no.
But you'll notice that contact tracing has in fact been used to address influenza, and has been successful in reducing the impact.
I've already provided you with the CDC data, which includes numbers from early March. I'm not interested in your incessant moaning that data hasn't been provided, when it already has and you've just failed to read it properly. It's your favourite tactic but it's tiresome as all hell.
And just like that, the mask slips and you just out and admit that your position is simply an argument from incredulity. You don't like the results you see, therefore make assumptions that you presume "have to be" true because you believe you simply know better and that therefore good data must confirm your preconceptions. That is to say, you had already decided what the conclusion should be and are trying to force the data to fit it. You think the results are too high, and therefore conclude that they must be using a catch-all definition.
Never mind that this isn't some abstraction or matter of opinion. People can see that you're wrong just by reading the paper, and seeing that their methods focused on patients with a self-reported and unconfirmed belief that they had Long Covid, that this belief was then tested against serology, and their conclusion was that and I quote - 'A medical evaluation of these patients may be needed to prevent symptoms due to another disease being erroneously attributed to “long COVID” '. This rather neatly spells out that no, a catch-all definition was not being used because the cases that lacked a positive serology result were deemed erroneously attributed to Covid. These were not considered valid Covid cases, but false positives that came from laymen making presumptions about the cause of their symptoms. Which is to say that it's quite easy to see that you are mischaracterizing it and that they are not, in fact, using the definition you're insisting upon.
You not wanting to believe it - or alternately being too inept to grasp the practical meaning of each of those points of data - is your failing. You don't get to lie about the data just because you don't want to accept that you shot your mouth off in ignorance and were wrong about it.
How about we cut the shit and get right to the chase. Because I could probably pull and quote medical journals until I was blue in the face, but at the end of the day it wouldn't matter. I've already provided you with resources that lay out a few tests doctors currently use to identify whether or not a patient had a recent covid infection, and the very sources you yourself are citing not only corroborate them but actively employ them in their methodology. Hell, the aforementioned paper specifically laid out the serologic testing they employed. And yet you're still insisting on acting like I'm trying to innovate some hypothetical test rather than simply explaining that the methods you're claiming can't exist actually do exist.
Setting aside that I've already given you an overview of a method that is employed to evidence this diagnosis and that you've already abundantly proven that you aren't paying enough attention to even recognize that your own sources explain how they have been using similar methods to get the results you're bastardizing - much less raise informed objections about them - the fact of the matter is that the how of it is not even germaine to this conversation. I am not proposing a new method, nor would you be in a position to test or object to them if I was. I am simply telling you that what you ignorantly believe to be impossible is in fact not just possible but in broad use, as you should already know because the very things you cite corroborate as much. Whether or not you understand how it is done is immaterial to that fact. Point of fact, as you are a layman for this topic rather than a subject matter expert, your unfamiliarity with the topic making it difficult for you to understand it is expected.
I speak to you like that because you very obviously don't understand basic things. For goodness sake, this entire conversation is a product of you trying to pass off your ignorance as expertise and being so stubbornly prideful that you started insisting on demonstrably false statements and downright idiotic non-sequitur that showed that you didn't even read the things you were citing and simply didn't want to accept that you were wrong.
You may have noticed a bit of a trend in people telling you for a long time now that it's painfully obvious that you don't have any idea what you're talking about and that you have been doing nothing but trying to bullshit your way through the conversation because you're too proud to own up to your own ignorance. That keeps happening because you keep saying stupid things when you're shooting your mouth off in ignorance.
You want me to stop talking down to you like you don't understand basic things? Then start actually putting in the legwork and learn about those basic things instead of assuming that that you're already an expert in a subject that you are demonstrably ignorant of. I'm not going to pretend you're acting like a figurative A-student when your responses indicate that you haven't so much as opened the figurative textbook, much less when you stubbornly refuse to even acknowledge that deficit in knowledge, never mind learn from your mistakes.
I treat you that way because you consistently demonstrate that you need even basic things explained to you, and that you have shown absolutely no initiative to learn about them yourself. For that matter, I've had to repeatedly explain multiple definitions to you several times over because you evidently couldn't be bothered to even look up something that simple, and then kept trying to insist that those definitions - even as employed by your own sources - must be wrong simply because they clashed with your presumptions.
I have had to explain basic things to you multiple times because you made it explicitly clear that you do not understand them, at which point you have then continued to ignorantly sound off about them because you evidently lack the emotional and intellectual maturity to concede an error. For fuck's sake, just above I had to explain to you again that it was both explicit in the paper and patently obvious through its methods that the paper was not using the definition you claimed. Your response was to double down and claim that they must have used the definition you claimed because you unilaterally declared that the numbers were unrealistically high. Never mind your demonstrated inability to weigh reliability or sourcing hierarchy, as you have - rather tellingly - upon learning about their disagreement - tried to champion an editorial over the primary source it was inaccurately representing.
So yes, you absolutely do need basic things explained to you because you obviously don't understand them.
Perhaps you should try actually reading the post and links provided instead of just making assumptions about them? Once again:
"Among other things, you're also making the mistake of assuming that people are claiming that this is unique to Covid, else it wouldn't be worth mentioning. Neither of those things are true. Point of fact, precedence is why this could be so quickly recognized in the first place. Acute respiratory infections have a bit of history with lingering effects. Further reading here and here."
Had you read the links, you might have noticed that other diseases have long been recognized as providing precedence of what you are objecting to as ridiculous in covid. Eg, long term health effects of EBV sometimes only being noticed years later. Never mind the third link focusing on explaining Long Covid specifically.
Bluntly, "to your knowledge" is an argument from ignorance fallacy as far as you're concerned, as at this point we've already well established that you have a lower than layman's understanding of the topic and certainly have not put in any effort (not even following supplied resources) to develop an informed opinion even as the gaps in your knowledge are demonstrated and resources to help expand your knowledge are provided. Maybe you should stop trying to bullshit your way through the conversation (and let's cut that crap, that is exactly what you have been doing) and instead start actually doing some research under the presumption that the many people telling you that your conclusions are patently ridiculous, that you've consistently misunderstood your sources to an almost unbelievable degree, and that you are much more ignorant of the subject matter than you presume...might just be onto something.
Oh goody, yet another study you're bastardizing. From your argument, I think it's more likely that you didn't bother to read it than it is that you simply misunderstood their results, because it strains credulity that you could have walked away with that conclusion naturally.My fault, linked the wrong study. I linked this one before and you never actually commented on it.
SARS-COV-2 Positivity and Patient-Reported Well-being 3 Months After Symptomatic Illness
This cohort study compares patient-reported physical, mental, and social well-being at 3 months after symptomatic illness among adults with positive vs negative test results for SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Let's review:
You claim: the study "basically flies in the face that covid is triggering long-term symptoms any more than similar viruses." or alternatively that it "shows that the people with covid end up doing better faster than those with other viruses."
Which again: IS NOT REMOTELY WHAT IT SAYS
Its actual problem statement: How do patient-reported physical, mental, and social well-being compare at 3 months after symptomatic illness among those who tested positive vs negative for SARS-CoV-2 infection?
So again, it's a study wherein the data consists of a sample group of laymen answering survey questions to self-report in broad strokes about how well they perceived their recovery to be progressing. And by broad strokes, I mean "on a scale of 1-5, how would you rate your experience" broad. No, seriously. When you read further you see that that is literally the methodology.
Speaking as someone who actually has to deal with surveys and focus groups as part of the data I work with...using that to evidence relative measurement of physical wouldn't have been compelling even if the people writing the paper had made the claim (Which they didn't. That's you, yet again, projecting your desired conclusions onto the paper), as such questions only describe the respondent's perceptions. As such they are both necessarily subjective and are subject to a staggering amount of warping based on the respondent's personality, personal tolerances, perceptions of relative significance, emotional state, perception of which answers present them in a more favorable light, what's going on in their life, and even how much they're paying attention that day, to name but a few of the variables at play. Eg, if they're having a bad day for any reason (eg flare ups, a bad night's rest, missed their usual morning coffee, feeling frustrated about a project at work...), they're pretty likely to rate their health over that period as worse than they would have on a good day. It's not exactly a robust methodology that's good at evidencing objective criteria. It has its place and purpose (largely in evaluating general opinion and other subjective perspectives), but that is not one of them.
We use surveys in my line of work, and they do have their purpose, but that's almost always near the starting point for research. Quite literally, the typical pattern for market research would go Focus Group -> Survey -> hypothesis -> proof of concept test -> revision of hypothesis -> test again -> expansion of test -> refinement of methods -> test again -> bring product to market. Even in marketing, surveys are more often used to serve as initial research, and the exceptions when they are used to reach a conclusion is when the conclusion is to the very specific tune of "what is public perception of <x> right now?"
Here, I want you do do something I know you didn't bother to do and look at the PROMIS-29 survey, which this study utilized to measure patient reported outcomes. It's pretty short (literally 29 questions, hence the name) and shouldn't take you more than a minute or so to read through it. You might notice a few things if you do so. To start with, the questions are general wellness questions like "are you able to do chores", "have you felt fearful/uneasy", "have you felt depressed", "have you felt tired", and "have you been able to participate in social activities"...you also might notice that the results can generously be described as...inexact. Point of fact, they're downright vague. And they are, of course, based on the respondent's memory and subjective values.
It is not even tracking the symptoms, it is tracking the respondent's subjective perception of those symptoms and their psychosocial ability to cope with them. "That is the basis of their results. In this cohort study, SARS-CoV-2 infection was not associated with worse physical, mental, and social well-being (as measured through PROMIS scores) at 3-month follow-up compared with no SARS-CoV-2 infection among adults with symptomatic illness." It doesn't even utilize a controlled environment, testing, or even daily reflection, just surveyed the participants about their memory of their subjective experience over the preceding period. Again, this is information that would at best be used to develop a hypothesis and identify something to test, not to derive a conclusion from. Hence why the actual conclusion is nothing more substantial than what amounts to a "further study is needed" statement in the form of emphasizing the importance of including control groups in future testing (which is Standard Operating Procedure).
And yet here you are instead claiming that it proves that Covid isn't even causing long term symptoms more often than similar viruses? That it proves that Covid patients recover faster than people suffering from other viruses? The study and its methods are literally not capable of positing the results you claim, and it speaks to your ignorance that even understanding that much was evidently beyond you. You very obviously didn't even know what you were looking at (presuming that you even bothered to look at it at all) and what it's stated conclusions were, much less how to ascertain the reliability or significance of the data provided.
I'm going to be blunt here, Phoenix. The extent of your ignorance would be less insulting if it were not for your arrogance in trying to present yourself as if you were some kind of expert and so frequently assumed that the presumptions you pull out of your ass must be reflected in the data you evidently couldn't even be bothered to look at.
You demonstrably don't have the slightest clue about the topic, much less the data you're citing. You're just parroting hucksters that took advantage of your inability to vet their claims to sell you a falsehood by flattering your ego and making you think you were clever for trusting them over everyone else.
Bluntly, I don't give a flying flip what pretentious and self-serving justification you're telling yourself as to why you claim to be arguing. I care that you're ignorantly mistaking your uninformed - and frequently unequivocally false - assumptions for robust data, brazenly lying about the data you're pretending to defer to because you evidently either didn't look at it or didn't understand a word of it, and then doubling down on that when people point out that you're not only demonstrably wrong but breathtakingly so.
You're not being clever, just obstinate. You're been doing little more than saying one painfully stupid thing after another and mistaking that for wisdom because you're so out of your depth that you fail to understand the data you're pulling. You don't even realize how frequently your arguments rely on contradictory premises. You confuse the fact that you don't understand even the data presented to you with the information not existing, and you keep claiming simple things whose underlying principle has not been under dispute for decades to be impossible.
So to be as polite as I can about this: Just stop. You're trying your hardest to make us come away with a positive opinion of your abilities but you're only succeeding in making yourself look worse and worse.
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Okay, let's think that through.
The country was under special measures to reduce transmission. Flu was around and covid-19 was around, both were suppressed by infection control measures, and yet many, many more children died of covid than flu. So... covid's actually pretty dangerous, isn't it?
What you mean is that if one child contracts covid and another 'flu, the one with 'flu is statistically more likely to die. Sure, fine. However, you can't actually ignore infectiousness, because if covid is sufficiently more infectious than 'flu, then more children die of covid than flu. In much the same way, whilst the average assault rifle may be more lethal than the average handgun, an awful lot more people in the USA die to handguns than assault rifles. Needless to say this is the point the site makes (there are links to it). And indeed, more children died of covid pre-vaccination than die in the same space of time from 'flu in a normal year, as they point out. So... covid was more dangerous than 'flu to children.
Dude, these guys know their stuff, and they are way ahead of you. You're dismissing them because you didn't read them properly - whether you're lazy or afraid to see the arguments I don't know - they've got a whole page on this that they reference.
Firstly, ZDogg has given a platform to people who oppose vaccinating children. Secondly, they might not be explicitly saying "don't vaccinate", but they have been free to advance a series of misleading and tendentious arguments that tend to deter vaccination. This is just anti-vaxx lite. Saying "Hey, you can get that vaccination, but it's on your own head if you suffer a lethal complication": no-one would be under any illusions that this was warning against vaccination that serves to deter people. And again, I suggest you read the article, which stresses how ZDogg's channel has hammered this line very heavily.
Uh-huh. And which groups are they?
You go by cherry-picked data from biased sources. "The data" needs to be comprehensive or representative of the whole.
Yes, we all remember you touting Paul Offitt all those times... and quietly ignoring the bit where Offitt said he thought people should get vaccinated. Thus, cherry-picking.
I think you're confused about what "scientific truth" is: your very phrasing is scientifically illiterate.
If you've had covid, it reduces the likelihood of harm from later infection. If you have the vaccine, it also reduces the likelihood of harm from later infection. If you have both, or have caught covid twice or been vaccinated twice, it reduces the likelihood of harm from later infection even more. And every booster or infection you have after that will also reduce the likelihood of harm from later infection more. (Well, there will be the odd case this isn't true, but at a general population level...)
