05-14-2023, 08:48 PM
(05-14-2023, 01:52 AM)plam Wrote:(05-13-2023, 09:43 PM)tomh009 Wrote: Long COVID is a serious issue. But it sounds like what you are referring to is not the usual, rather severe, long COVID, but the case where the person has not 100% recovered, even after a long time. Is that correct?
And is your estimate of 8% of the total population? 8% of people who had COVID at least once? 8% of infections? 8% of symptomatic infections? Something else? Because, at a glance, 8% is a huge number.
8% is a lot. It is not credible that 8% will have debilitating long COVID. It is credible that we all know someone who has debilitating long COVID, but they are going to be suffering quietly. I think the 8% is people who are not fully recovered after 3 months.
The other thing is that sometimes people with chronic conditions can present as well for 2 hours on one day and then relapse for a week after that.
This is a per-infection rate, though it is possible that it's somewhat lower on subsequent infections. Hard to say about asymptomatic infections. I can't remember what the estimate of asymptomatic infection rate is.
Thanks. Very helpful. It does seem to be a spectrum type condition, with symptoms ranging from incapacitating to intermittent. And as the likelihood appears to correlate with COVID severity (hospitalized patients much more likely to have long COVID issues) those with mild (or no) symptoms will be significantly less likely to get this. But even if you were to use only 8% of hospitalized patients, that's still a big number.
But I'll note that many other diseases do also have ongoing or lingering symptoms or issues, and the patients do not recover to "like-new" condition, so this is not unique to COVID. What is different is the huge number of people that suffered through COVID, and thus also the number suffering from long-term symptoms.