Reply to NIH Long Covid study

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Isn't the takeaway this, which most people here don't seem to be understanding: the physical ailments that would generally be responsible for causing the reported symptoms of "long Covid" are not present in higher rates in the Covid test group than in the control group. Meaning, there is, according to this study, no evidence of Covid causing long-term health problems. There is some evidence that those symptoms may be caused by underlying anxiety. So many posters seem to be interpreting this as "long term Covid exists and we still don't know why."[/quote]

OP here and I don't think most posters in this thread have drawn that conclusion at all. I do think that's what a lot of people on Twitter are saying, including a lot of doctors who have been posting about long Covid for a long time and are trying to immediately discredit this study because it contradicts what they've been saying. I am cynical because I think many of these doctors fear that if it turns out long Covid isn't really the crisis they have been touting it as, they will no longer get the media and speaking gigs related to long Covid. I think there's some grifting going on.

One thing I appreciated about the thread on this study I posted in my OP is that it's very balanced. He notes the limitations of the study -- it doesn't include patients who had serious cases of Covid that required hospitalization, and the tests they ran are not exhaustive (though do cover all the standard diagnostic bases, I should note). He's not saying the study participants are lying about their symptoms, be he's noting that the study found these symptoms could not be attributed to any of the physiological conditions they tested for. I think it's most notable that they could find any difference in lung capacity and only very slight differences in endurance between the test and control groups, even though members of the test group were much more likely to list "shortness of breath" as a symptom. This does lend itself to the idea that there is some psychosomatic component to this.

The thing is, I do think there are longterm issues with Covid in some people. But this study seems to indicate that they are not widespread and that, specifically, they aren't common in people who had mild cases (which is most people). I can't figure out why people don't see this as GOOD news, given all the long Covid hype we've seen recently. Why are people so invested in the idea that Covid (an illness pretty much all of us will have eventually) is debilitating? Wouldn't it be good to learn that most people return to good health after recovery? It honestly sets me at ease as someone who has not had it yet but knows it's probably only a matter of time.[/quote]

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