Oddbean

I'm curious what the long-term impact of covid is going to be. We're seeing more data come out, e.g., this study from yesterday where 11% of people who had "mild" covid had impaired lung function one year later, with no observable improvement in trajectory over time (measured as % of people impacted), which nicely complements studies that show long-term impact on the heart and the brain The questions I'm most curious about are what the cumulative impact will be and what impact vaccination has. https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/111/059/284/171/965/224/original/5e1467584d2660be.png

So far, most of these studies have mostly been on vaccinated populations, e.g., enrollment in https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0290893 was 20/05 to 21/12 and vaccines started becoming generally available in 21/08, so the population is likely to mostly be vaccinated people. There's at least one cohort for which people have published longitudinal data on cumulative impact (and it doesn't look good), but there's a lot of heterogeneity between populations and it would be nice to see more data on this.

@ed709062 So, I'd be interested to know what the background rate of impaired lung function in the population was, pre-COVID - is 11% of people who've had mild-COVID 10x worse than the background rate? 100x worse? Same as the background rate? I have no idea, and I can't find any info on this in the study at a quick search.

Difficult to analyze long-term data when not enough water has yet run under the bridge. In my experience I have treated numerous patients with long-term covid. I have seen quite unwanted consequences such as memory loss, dyspnea, heart disease, immune diseases... Same about vaccines. It will take time to know safety and efficacy data at 5 to 10 years. It is curious how being a doctor the patient asks for security when medical sciences depend on probabilities. The constant paradox in which professionals live with the environment and ourselves 😅

@ed709062 currently in respiratory rehab for a bout in January. Went from being a 68 year old acting 79 year old to a 91 year old feeling 81 year old. Great full to have been vaxed and boosted but definitely not a magic bullet.