[logicalmonster]

Thank you. Analyzing this kind of data is the kind of thing I'm talking about to try and get to grips with the risk-management calculation involved.

But even if there's no medical flaws with this study, it doesn't necessarily answer the question to me because this overall point might really be more of a psychological question mark than a medical question.

If you tell people they had Covid, some portion of people who have been stressed out by the media focus may panic and mentally exaggerate post-viral symptoms based solely on the fear they feel with Covid over the flu, even if the actual medical conditions they experienced would not cause them to panic if they were told they had the flu.

I think a study that would actually illuminate here is to tell half the patients who had Covid that they actually had the flu, and telling half the patients that had the flu that they actually had Covid, and then doing a comparison on how peoples' perception of which illness they had impacted how frequently they reported symptoms. (I don't know, but I doubt that would be considered medically ethical though.) My guess is that the media focus on Covid is impacting how people choose to go to the doctor regarding post-viral symptoms and there's no real way to measure this without some unusual experimental design.

[nicoburns]

I don't have solid experimental data on this. But my own experience was that I went into the pandemic assuming that I was young (I'm 28) and that covid likely wouldn't affect me too badly, I then catch it quite early on (Apr 2020), and come out of the initial infection finding that exercise causes me heart pain and fatigue to the point that I sometimes actually fall asleep immediately afterwards (this has gradually improved over time, but is still quite restrictive on activities that I am able to do). And now almost 2 years later this is still affecting me. I wasn't expecting this at all. I was expecting to be able to continue with my life as usual.

I don't know about you, but I've never heard of a young person getting these kind of symptoms from flu. Other viruses like Glandular Fever are known to cause these kind of affects of course. Based on this I rather suspect that the reason there is more media focus on long-covid than long-flu is because covid is causing a lot more post-viral symptoms than flu does. That doesn't mean there is no media focus factor, but I don't think it's the main driver.

[svnt]

You’re not wrong, I don’t know why you’re being voted down. You’d need a double-blind study for these results to be reliable.

[nicoburns]

I think the question is: in the absence of solid experimental evidence why would you assume that the effect is psychological when post-viral effects are well documented across multiple viruses, and have been confirmed by clinical diagnoses by Doctors in thousands of covid cases.

Being skeptical until proven unequivocally is a good approach to scientific enquiry, but it is not good public policy where we must take decisions and act despite uncertainty.

[logicalmonster]

You ask a good question.

I don't have objective proof of this in the sense of "2+2=4", but I think what I've been talking about in many previous posts is a logical systemic explanation and has been repeatedly observed in the last few years.

The media's business model has changed.

At one point the media's business model was based on trust. People watched a guy like Dan Rather repeatedly because they thought he seemed genuine about telling the truth. I'm sure they knew he'd have his own feelings and human biases, but they came back to him because they thought he was focused on truth and felt trustworthy.

The media's business model has changed because of technology such as the ability to measure clicks, measure the intensity of emotion, and social-media and search algorithms that promotes what gets the most activity. Once the media has the ability to essentially drive their own profit via algorithms promoting the emotionally most intense news stories and ideas that gets people sharing and watching, the fear-porn or outrage-porn of the current news cycle will become the only reality for many people.

As an example, many people went from being overly scared about Omicron and Covid-19 fear a few weeks ago, to supreme outrage about Putin and Ukraine and making that the central part of their identity without skipping a beat. And I have to note that almost nobody gave half a shit about past Russian invasions of Ukraine or Georgia until the media told them that they needed to care about this. (Not suggesting that people shouldn't care about this, but the intensity of this switch and suddenly caring about this part of the world feels notably shaped by the media promoting it this time.)

Outrage or fear porn is the new ruler of reality. The media has supreme influence in shaping peoples' perceptions, and if a study about Covid after-affects is done, I'm sure that peoples' fears that are magnified by this new media business model will have some impact in how people report symptoms. If you tell people that Covid is super-scary and long-covid is the new big concern, at least some people will feel panic and be more likely to go to the doctor and express concern over identical symptoms that they otherwise might have not cared about if they experienced it in say 2014 with a flu.

[kelnos]

I get where you're coming from, and agree with you on the effects of media focus.

But I don't think that's a reason not to be worried about this. Reading various threads here, there are people describing pretty awful post-COVID conditions, some that seem way more severe than anything associated with post-flu conditions.

Yes, these are anecdotes. But if we believe them to be true, they should still worry us, even if the incidence is less than 1%. Because if there is even a 0.1% (or maybe even 0.01%)[0] chance that, after recovering from COVID, I might end up physically debilitated for months or years, I will absolutely change my behavior to make it less likely that I get COVID in the first place, regardless of loosening of masking and distancing restrictions. Some might consider that an overreaction, but that's my choice to make.

As you and others point out in this thread, it's not just incidence that matters; severity is important too. If I have a 0.1% chance of dying doing a particular optional activity, I would not do that activity. If instead I have a 0.1% chance of a minor injury doing that activity, I would probably still do it if it was something I believe I'd enjoy.

[0] Just to give you an idea of my own personal risk tolerance: I just did a quick search on fatalities from skydiving, and it looks like it's around 0.0002% (tandem, not solo, based on 2019 reports). That's pretty low, but still high enough for me to not be particularly interested in doing it, even though I think it would be fun. Granted, this is a very different situation than trying to avoid getting COVID.

[logicalmonster]

> Yes, these are anecdotes. But if we believe them to be true, they should still worry us, even if the incidence is less than 1%. Because if there is even a 0.1% (or maybe even 0.01%)[0] chance that, after recovering from COVID, I might end up physically debilitated for months or years, I will absolutely change my behavior to make it less likely that I get COVID in the first place, regardless of loosening of masking and distancing restrictions. Some might consider that an overreaction, but that's my choice to make.

You and I have somewhat different thought-processes when it comes to thinking about risk. All other things being equal, I wouldn't want to risk even a 0.001% chance of significant problems either: but the deciding factor for me is valuing my freedom and not wanting to be scared for the rest of my life. Also, there's no guarantee that you can still avoid Covid anyway even if you do 100% of things perfectly anyway.

That said, I respect everybody's right to choose. That's one value that I hope everybody can learn to respect again.