@cwebber has a thread on the current H5N1 situation, which is an interesting (and useful) read.

Dan Sugalski

The main reason the real rates for these rare-infection diseases is lower is because we're only analyzing the stats on the people we actually know got the disease, and for these rare diseases that means people who either died (so the local authorities checked), or got sick enough to go see a doctor *and* got their infection analyzed. If you just felt meh, or didn't present symptoms, or your doctor waved you off, then you won't be in the stats.

2/N

Fay 🏳️‍🌈

@wordshaper @cwebber people also have a tendency to focus solely on mortality and ignore morbidity. covid vaccines are pretty good at reducing the former but only slightly reduce the odds of severe long term effects. but people tend to assume a binary outcome: either you die or you recover and are 100% fine afterwards, completely ignoring the potential for chronic illness. see also: polio

Biorreactivo

@obfusk @wordshaper @cwebber agree that this is a topic to take seriously, irrespective of having vaccines. However, many studies show that COVID vaccination provides good protection against worse symptoms and long COVID. Of course, they are challenged by ignoring the risk and careless repeated exposure and infections.

Fay 🏳️‍🌈

@precariousmind @wordshaper @cwebber recent studies have shown zero effect of vaccination on neurologic long covid symptoms. I'm not saying vaccination doesn't help. it can reduce the risk of some long covid symptoms by 15-70%. and it significantly reduces the risk of severe symptoms in the acute phase. that's great. it's just nowhere near enough given how many people continue to get infected, especially with repeat infections increasing risk.

we're already looking at 7% of the adult population having long covid. and that's just based on people currently experiencing symptoms. it doesn't take into account things like increased risk of developing diabetes, cardiovascular disease, Parkinson's, autoimmune disease, which won't show up in the statistics until more time passes.

I wish they did. but current vaccines do not "provide good protection" against long covid, only against severe acute disease.

Christine Lemmer-Webber

@obfusk @precariousmind @wordshaper This one I'm not so sure about. The last time I read studies, vaccination had a huge effect on the chances of long covid, and that long covid symptoms were happening much less commonly, especially among vaccinated, over time https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/covid-vaccines-reduce-long-covid-risk-new-study-shows

If there is evidence to the contrary, I'm very interested in reading it! I occasionally see *claims* to the contrary on here, but when I go looking for research that's not what I find

Christine Lemmer-Webber

@obfusk @precariousmind @wordshaper Which is not to say that getting COVID is safe or "getting safer"; the reality that any interaction with a disease that is that brutal on the body carries the risk of long term effects. I'm just showing what I've seen in terms of studies on the trend. If there's significant research based evidence the trend is otherwise I would actually really love to know about it!

Christine Lemmer-Webber

@obfusk @precariousmind @wordshaper Also "risk of long covid is now 3-4%" is still a brutally high number given how terrible long covid can be. Your statistical aggregate of risk is still compounded upon every infection (which is not to say that the individual encounter is riskier, but that every encounter is a play of russian roulette, and it's not a game you want to play a bunch of rounds of), and it's best to just not get infected.

Christine Lemmer-Webber

@obfusk @precariousmind @wordshaper Another article https://time.com/6999274/long-covid-risk-2024/

Again, not linking to downplay risks, just to say that I am interested in understanding what the trend is based on current research

Fay 🏳️‍🌈

@cwebber @precariousmind @wordshaper your link supports what I said:

- up to 70% risk reduction for various symptoms
- risk of long covid dropping from 10% to 4% in (recently) vaccinated people

which is great. it's just nowhere near enough to call it "good protection". because that's still millions and millions of people. exacerbated by the risk increasing with repeat infections. of an airborne virus that's everywhere.

and unfortunately, this recent study found that "vaccination prior to SARS-CoV-2 infection does not affect the neurologic manifestations of long COVID":

https://academic.oup.com/braincomms/advance-article/doi/10.1093/braincomms/fcae448/7920652

Christine Lemmer-Webber

@obfusk @precariousmind @wordshaper Oh I hadn't seen that article, thank you! That's what I was looking for