They are relatively unlikely to _die_ from COVID-19 (and please do not repeat the false claim that these are only “people already on the cusp of death” - the average victim is losing at least a decade of life based on actuarial data) but we know that there are a much greater percentage of people who will experience significant health problems, potentially with life-long impacts.
Similarly, not everyone on or near campus is a health 19 year old and not every college student can afford to live in their own apartment or with a few healthy roommates. Universities have large numbers of staff of all ages, and no college town functions without a similar all-ages mix of people living near those students. The entire reason why there's so much pressure to re-open is because the lack of federal support means that city and state governments (at least 30 of the states have recent laws preventing them from running a budget deficit during a crisis) are desperate for the revenue generated by those students, and that is another way of saying that lots of people are literally banking on having those students be in contact with a fair chunk of the local economy.
> we know that there are a much greater percentage of people who will experience significant health problems, potentially with life-long impacts
This seems to be an alarmist statement. Any disease with a fever component will leave a small percentage with long term damage, same for diseases affecting the lungs.
>COVID-19: Lasting damage to the lungs, heart, kidneys, brain and other organs is possible after a severe case of COVID-19.
>Flu: Influenza complications can include inflammation of the heart (myocarditis), brain (encephalitis) or muscles (myositis, rhabdomyolysis) tissues, and multi-organ failure.
Scary headlines sell papers. I read recently on the BBC about brain damaged covid patients. There were less than 50 in a country of 50+ million. That is not a "much greater percentage".
It does everyone a disservice to spread exaggerated fear.
> It does everyone a disservice to spread exaggerated fear.
And so does poo-pooing risk when you have no actual numbers.
Every infectious disease expert I've heard from is puzzled by this disease. The variance of individual outcomes from expected norms is simply impossible to predict. Taking unnecessary risk is the act of a fool.
If you or your close ones invite even a small chance of a dire outcome, then you play it safe. And you hope your good neighbors will be likewise considerate.
There are lots of numbers on the flu and other infection diseases that cause the same problems. Here's a paper I just looked up for another comment talking about heart inflammation from influenza, http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.685...
> During the Sheffield, England influenza epi-demic from 1972 to 1973, the cases of 50 consecutive patients who were initially diagnosed as mild cases and were treated on an outpatient basis were followed. Transient electrocardiogram (ECG) changes were seen in 18 patients, and long-lasting changes were seen in 5 patients.
Granted I learned more than I wanted to know about the complications around influenza, and that the numbers are more significant thanI though, but my opinion is reinforced that covid is nothing out of the ordinary for these types of viruses.
>If you or your close ones invite even a small chance of a dire outcome, then you play it safe. And you hope your good neighbors will be likewise considerate.
You asked me about numbers, and now I would like to ask you the same question. What do you mean by even a small chance? Does that small chance include the risk every year from the flu, with all the related complications and possible long term effects? We don't shut the world down every year for that.
I'm not meaning to "poo-poo" risk. I want to quantify it. I'd like an intellectually rigorous response to the situation. I feel like the danger from covid relative to other similar diseases has been exaggerated, so many alarming headlines, for the clicks, not put into context, etc.
I always hear "much greater percentage" type language when referring to long-term effects of COVID-19. Is there an actual number associated with this? Or is it more so guesswork
It’s by definition unfalsifiable (since the long term since March hasn’t arrived yet). Which makes it a great talking point for people looking to spread fear.
We know that there are people who take a long time to recover. This is pretty widely reported but we don’t know how long that will end up taking or what permanent impacts there are since it’s a new disease and treatment options are being rapidly pursued.
There are studies looking at permanent changes to various bodily systems - see for example, this one finding cardiac differences in recovered patients:
There are similar concerns for liver damage, reduced lung capacity, and neurological effects.
Obviously it’s too soon to have high precision numbers for this or level of impact on the rest of someone’s life but it definitely means that the deniers’ favorite framing of the outcomes as 99% ok, 1% fatal is leaving out a lot for the sake of political correctness.
"We know that there are people who take a long time to recover."
There are people who take a long time to recover from rhinovirus. The question is, at what rate? You'll note that this is not covered in the articles you have linked.
We simply don't have the data -- what we have is a small number of anecdotes, and a bunch of news organizations who are willing to write speculative stories before we know anything. But you could write the same kinds of speculative stories about any illness, if you chose to look.
That JAMA article has serious methodological flaws, by the way: their "Covid" cohort has twice the number of smokers as their "risk-factor matched" group, almost twice as many men, more people with COPD, high cholesterol, diabetes and hypertension...and they report their results in terms of absolute numbers of defects observed. The reported differences between those groups is smaller in magnitude than the number of smokers. It's frankly embarrassing that JAMA chose to publish the study.
This is a new disease which is still early in the research cycle but I find it somewhat puzzling that in such a climate you're expecting a higher burden of proof for people urging caution than the reverse, especially given that the medical community and researchers are generally urging caution.
> "I think it's an argument for why we take this disease so seriously," says Dr. Poland. "People who are thinking, especially young people: '(It's a) mild disease, you know. I might not even have any symptoms, and I'm over it.' Whoa. The data is suggesting otherwise. There's evidence of myocardial damage, cardiomyopathy, arrhythmias, decreased ejection fractions, pulmonary scarring and strokes.
I'd tend to think that a doctor at the Mayo Clinic who has relevant education, experience, and is actively working in the response has better instincts for whether we should be taking this seriously.
"I find it somewhat puzzling that in such a climate you're expecting a higher burden of proof for people urging caution than the reverse, especially given that the medical community and researchers are generally urging caution."
I have the same standard that I apply everywhere: the burden of proof is on the person making the extraordinary claims. I don't care if that person is a hypochondriac telling me about secret herbal cures for cancer, or medical doctors who haven't done their statistics correctly. When I can look at the data myself and see that they haven't done their math right, I disregard their opinions.
Having spent my fair share of time "in the medical community", I'm here to tell you that there are plenty of doctors and nurses and professors out there who are more than willing to give a reporter a salacious quote just to get their name in the press or their paper in a better journal. Doctors are humans too: they rush to judgment, fall victim to bias, and get dazzled by the idea of seeing their name in print.
So far we have a few (mostly bad) papers describing a small number of the most serious cases, a few (really bad) papers that have gone on statistical fishing expeditions, and an absolutely credulous news media, willing to amplify any speculative claim for clicks. So no, I don't cede my critical thinking skills to an authority figure, just because that figure is in a lab coat.
Similarly, not everyone on or near campus is a health 19 year old and not every college student can afford to live in their own apartment or with a few healthy roommates. Universities have large numbers of staff of all ages, and no college town functions without a similar all-ages mix of people living near those students. The entire reason why there's so much pressure to re-open is because the lack of federal support means that city and state governments (at least 30 of the states have recent laws preventing them from running a budget deficit during a crisis) are desperate for the revenue generated by those students, and that is another way of saying that lots of people are literally banking on having those students be in contact with a fair chunk of the local economy.