COVID topic vol 2

[Alphaville]

while it’s obvious that third world countries have fewer old people as a proportion of population, i fail so see that this would translate into said countries:

a) not wanting a vaccine,
b) not caring about lost elders,
c) not suffering from deaths and injury at lower age brackets.

in fact latin america has some of the highest mortality rates from covid

https://www.as-coa.org/articles/chart-c ... -caribbean

so we seem to be getting lost in oversimplified statistics and dehumanizing cultural perceptions in this thread...

[Alphaville]

here some stats from india showing a wide distribution of covid deaths among age brackets if you look past the obvious headlines

https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-ne ... ckUcM.html

just look at the shape of the curve

[ertyu]

I was talking about this with a friend of mine from Trinidad who is a doctor. She is of Indian heritage, and says that it's a well-known fact to her that Indian people tend to suffer higher rates of type 2 diabetes at the same weight as white europeans. She says this is because white europeans, being "people from the cold," have on average a higher number of fat cells (need to survive through winter, while equatorial populations don't), and thus more space for fat to accumulate before the fat cells get "full" and the fat starts circulating in the bloodstream causing issues. This might explain the higher incidence of adverse outcomes in Latin America and India.

[chenda]

I was talking about this with a friend of mine from Trinidad who is a doctor. She is of Indian heritage, and says that it's a well-known fact to her that Indian people tend to suffer higher rates of type 2 diabetes at the same weight as white europeans.

Yes that is true; black and south asian people are at a higher risk of diabetes: https://www.diabetes.org.uk/preventing- ... sk-factors

[7Wannabe5]

Right. Chubby, super pale, big butt, frozen tundra heritage females like me not so much. I registered 108 the other day after pancakes and syrup.

[chenda]

Right. Chubby, super pale, big butt, frozen tundra heritage females like me not so much. I registered 108 the other day after pancakes and syrup.

108 ?

[Alphaville]

108 ?

blood glucose?

[Ego]

Interesting Covid study in The Lancet.

Bidirectional associations between COVID-19 and psychiatric disorder
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanp ... 4/fulltext

Main points:

1) 20% of those infected with Covid are diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder within 90 days

2) Those with a pre-existing psychiatric disorder were 65% more likely to be diagnosed with Covid than those without a psychiatric disorder.

[nomadscientist]

"1) 20% of those infected with Covid are diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder within 90 days"


That seems really high. To the extent I'm more impressed by this country's mental health diagnostic capacity than with the implications for the disease.

[7Wannabe5]

It could have something to do with the fact that one of the primary treatments for Covid respiratory distress is known to induce psychiatric symptoms in over 10% of humans (including me, obviously )

[ertyu]

@nomadicscientist, sars-cov-1 also resulted in measurably higher psychiatric diagnoses post-recovery, they did a study in toronto. ventilator ptsd and having a close encounter with a life-threatening situation might be factors, but what's more interesting to me is that more people with mental health issues get symptoms serious enough to be diagnosed. It could be that people with mental health issues are in general less likely to live a healthy lifestyle and take good care of their health, but it also could be that both the mental illness and the weak immune system have the same underlying cause. "Inflammation?" Gut microbiome? Who knows, but fascinating stuff nonetheless.

[7Wannabe5]

psychiatric diagnosis in the previous year was associated with a higher incidence of COVID-19 diagnosis (relative risk 1·65, 95% CI 1·59–1·71; p<0·0001). This risk was independent of known physical health risk factors for COVID-19, but we cannot exclude possible residual confounding by socioeconomic factors.

IOW, those who also take expensive multivitamins from Whole Foods conflation error type.

Statistics are tricky. For instance, normal BMI is associated with longevity over general population, but the cohort with the greatest longevity in the U.S. is overweight (not obese) Hispanic heritage females. Obese African-American men have the lowest longevity. Likely because estrogen protects more than fat kills.

[Ego]

but what's more interesting to me is that more people with mental health issues get symptoms serious enough to be diagnosed. It could be that people with mental health issues are in general less likely to live a healthy lifestyle...

@ertyu, Al Jazeera interviewed one of the researchers who said the same thing

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/11/ ... ness-study

The study also found that people with a pre-existing mental illness were 65 percent more likely to be diagnosed with COVID-19 than those without one.

Simon Wessely, regius professor of psychiatry at King’s College London, said the finding that those with mental health disorders are also at higher risk of getting COVID-19 echoed similar findings from previous infectious disease outbreaks.

“COVID-19 affects the central nervous system, and so might directly increase subsequent disorders. But this research confirms that is not the whole story, and that this risk is increased by previous ill health,” he said.

[nomadscientist]

My guess would be increased risk taking leading to greater exposure.

[Alphaville]

anecdotally, i known people who first experienced covid symptoms as “anxiety.” maybe due to low oxygen? weird virus...

[jacob]

The risk of data-dredging and projecting "interpretations" is always high. Interpretation also doesn't consider the latent variables the researcher was blind to.

As mentioned above, psychological side-effects (like PTSD) are well established for SARS-COV-1 (COVID being SARS-COV-2 of course) and MERS. IIRC, the rate was also quite high (because the disease is physiologically traumatic and perhaps therefore also psychologically whether that's direct or indirect). For CV19, psychological trauma (for lack of a better word) has been reported in ICU survivors. Low blood oxygenation causes hallucinations which combined with tubes going into your lungs is not a fun combination. Think, perhaps, snakes?

Speaking as a layman (this would require a psychiatrist) it's not hard to imagine that people checking DSM boxes perhaps being more in violation of consistently good anti-COVID behavior? It does not take much "away-from-average" behavior to show an effect when you're sampling large numbers. For example, mere red/blue politics has already been shown to have a statistically detectable effect in case- and fatality rates in the US, see e.g. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-00977-7 (A potential blindness here is the fact that blue counties make 70% of the GDP and thus also tend to be richer but IIRC that study didn't look into that.)

To actually establish the causative COVID/DSM relation one would have to do double-blind studies. Such an experiment seems to me to be rather unethical though.

[Lemon]

The fact that a disease which can cause massive multi-system insult can also cause mental health issues in survivors isn't particularly surprising. Especially with the evolving chronicity. Post ICU syndrome has been a thing for a while and delirium in the ICU is pretty common along with general hospital wards. People can hallucinate much more than just snakes!

The actual study is here for anyone interested: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanp ... 4/fulltext

[CS]

The problem with the Pfizer vaccine is that it is a new vaccine technology. Side effects to vaccines can take a while to emerge, and be quite serious when they do. I think the Chinese companies are using more traditional vaccine methods and frankly, if all other things were equal, I'd rather have theirs than Pfizer's.

[fiby41]

India summary statistics:
Recovery rate 93%
Case fatality 1.5%
Active of infected 5%
Daily tests 1.2 million
7% of tests are positive

[Ego]

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1327125840040169472

[moderator replaced meme pic with actual tweet]

Reminds me of the time the President of Tanzania checked the accuracy of the Covid tests by sending a piece of goat and papaya to be tested in addition to some real human samples. The goat and papaya tested positive.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-heal ... reddit.com