THANK YOU BROTHER, RICIN
Long COVID remains one of the more puzzling aspects of an already confounding pandemic. Even today, doctors and scientists alike still struggle to agree on an exact definition for the array of lingering, long-term side-effects reported by so many “recovered” COVID-19 patients. Now, a thought-provoking new study argues that the threat of long COVID has been overblown by a flawed body of research thus far.
An international team of researchers from the University of California-San Francisco, the University of Southern Denmark, and St. George’s University of London point to a combination of overly broad definitions and a lack of appropriate (or any, in many cases) comparison groups, among other factors, as contributing to the distorted risk perception of long COVID. In other words, research efforts so far to assess and understand long COVID’s incidence, prevalence, and control of the condition, or epidemiology, have largely missed the mark.
Moreover, the inclusion of poorly conducted studies into systematic reviews and pooled data analyses also likely played a part in all this, the study authors explain. Researchers add that such flawed research efforts have almost certainly contributed to a number of negative consequences. Those include increased public anxiety and healthcare spending; misdiagnoses; and diversion of funds from others who really are experiencing long-term conditions secondary to COVID-19 infection.
This latest report notes that many after-effects linked to COVID-19 infection include post-ICU syndrome, defined as a grouping of health issues present when a patient is in intensive care that continues to persist even after the patient is discharged home, as well as shortness of breath following pneumonia. While such symptoms may legitimately be caused by long COVID, they are also very common among many upper respiratory viruses, researchers point out.
In fact, the research team stresses that none of the current working definitions of “long COVID” used by influential health bodies all over the world, such as the CDC and WHO, actually require a causal link between the virus responsible for COVID-19 (SARS-CoV2) and numerous symptoms.