[timr]

"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.

[acdha]

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.

For example, I linked to this: https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/long-term-symp...

> "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.

[timr]

"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.