Isn't there an obvious confounder that vaccinated kids will be from families that are more likely to think covid and long covid are terrible dreadful diseases, and induce "long covid" through something like Munchausen's by proxy?
I've only really met 1 person who told me they had long covid, and it was absolutely clear that, for them at least, it was a pure mental health condition brought on by the overwhelming fear in the media she consumed (plus, presumably, some sort of psychological predisposition).
Covid was her life, she was obsessed with it - and of course commensurately highly jabbed. She told me that 11 out of 12 of her friends who got covid got long covid, which is clearly absurd one way or another.
Any child in her household would have certainly been a) jabbed to the hilt, and b) at far greater risk of reporting long covid because of her mental state.
This is addressed in the footnotes. Of course I have to mention again that I'm not happy with the methods and data accessibility in this study - but in supplemental S2, they look at "Long Covid" (as defined) for infected -> vaccinated (vs., I think infected -> unvaccinated, or maybe uninfected -> unvaccinated, it isn't remotely clear), and rates of subsequent long covid are lower (i.e. vaccination has indirect or direct efficacy, presumably indirect, i.e. fewer new infections are happening). So here is a group with the same confounder (vaccination), known previous infection, but no increased outcome of "diagnosed Long Covid." That's an argument against reporting/utilization bias.
This is on top of the matching in the main analysis and "mediation" (efficacy if infected after vaccination) analysis, which already creates an unvaccinated control group that has same prior healthcare utilization and chronic condition rates as vaccinated.
So, as much as is possible with no access to the raw data, this seems satisfactory for a conclusion that some confounder being the cause of the negative efficacy is plausible but not compelling.
OK thanks, I didn't properly understand the footnote.
For what it's worth, to my mind the logic of covid fear being causative of both vaccination and long covid, perhaps especially in the children of the fearful (in most places, kid-jabbing parents would have been reasonably extreme), is so compelling that I'd almost use it as a basis to doubt any study that didn't detect it.
The anecdote I referred to really opened my eyes to what it must be like deep in the herd -- and I don't think this unfortunate woman will have been particularly rare.. ..as I say this causality seems so obvious now.
While I have you here I just want to say how much I enjoy your writing - thank you.
Oh, I forgot one other point I had in mind while replying, which is simply that "if Munchausen's" then the bias should be stronger in the 5-11 group than the teens. So you could maybe argue that this is going on with the diagnosed Long Covid (whereas the negative efficacy is the same for both age groups for "probable") but this itself is confounded by lower incidence in the youngest to begin with. So no obvious argument either way. Anyway just jotting down as note to self.
Yet another paper in which the authors go to great pains to bury the lede, which is that vaccinated kids who get COVID are 78% more likely to later receive a Long COVID diagnosis than are unvaccinated kids.
We win this thing with words. Check out my new word, coincidist, describing people who blame medical harm on coincidence. Coincidism is a filthy thing that goes right along with fascism and communism. We counter coincidism with creativity, humor and love.
Isn't there an obvious confounder that vaccinated kids will be from families that are more likely to think covid and long covid are terrible dreadful diseases, and induce "long covid" through something like Munchausen's by proxy?
I've only really met 1 person who told me they had long covid, and it was absolutely clear that, for them at least, it was a pure mental health condition brought on by the overwhelming fear in the media she consumed (plus, presumably, some sort of psychological predisposition).
Covid was her life, she was obsessed with it - and of course commensurately highly jabbed. She told me that 11 out of 12 of her friends who got covid got long covid, which is clearly absurd one way or another.
Any child in her household would have certainly been a) jabbed to the hilt, and b) at far greater risk of reporting long covid because of her mental state.
This is addressed in the footnotes. Of course I have to mention again that I'm not happy with the methods and data accessibility in this study - but in supplemental S2, they look at "Long Covid" (as defined) for infected -> vaccinated (vs., I think infected -> unvaccinated, or maybe uninfected -> unvaccinated, it isn't remotely clear), and rates of subsequent long covid are lower (i.e. vaccination has indirect or direct efficacy, presumably indirect, i.e. fewer new infections are happening). So here is a group with the same confounder (vaccination), known previous infection, but no increased outcome of "diagnosed Long Covid." That's an argument against reporting/utilization bias.
This is on top of the matching in the main analysis and "mediation" (efficacy if infected after vaccination) analysis, which already creates an unvaccinated control group that has same prior healthcare utilization and chronic condition rates as vaccinated.
So, as much as is possible with no access to the raw data, this seems satisfactory for a conclusion that some confounder being the cause of the negative efficacy is plausible but not compelling.
OK thanks, I didn't properly understand the footnote.
For what it's worth, to my mind the logic of covid fear being causative of both vaccination and long covid, perhaps especially in the children of the fearful (in most places, kid-jabbing parents would have been reasonably extreme), is so compelling that I'd almost use it as a basis to doubt any study that didn't detect it.
The anecdote I referred to really opened my eyes to what it must be like deep in the herd -- and I don't think this unfortunate woman will have been particularly rare.. ..as I say this causality seems so obvious now.
While I have you here I just want to say how much I enjoy your writing - thank you.
Thanks!
Oh, I forgot one other point I had in mind while replying, which is simply that "if Munchausen's" then the bias should be stronger in the 5-11 group than the teens. So you could maybe argue that this is going on with the diagnosed Long Covid (whereas the negative efficacy is the same for both age groups for "probable") but this itself is confounded by lower incidence in the youngest to begin with. So no obvious argument either way. Anyway just jotting down as note to self.
Yet another paper in which the authors go to great pains to bury the lede, which is that vaccinated kids who get COVID are 78% more likely to later receive a Long COVID diagnosis than are unvaccinated kids.
Not just burying the lede but almost speaking in code when they finally get around to discussing it.
We win this thing with words. Check out my new word, coincidist, describing people who blame medical harm on coincidence. Coincidism is a filthy thing that goes right along with fascism and communism. We counter coincidism with creativity, humor and love.
https://open.substack.com/pub/coincidism/p/ive-created-a-concept-i-call-coincidism?
So *much* medical freedom in US followed the defeat of fascism... Like the opening credits on Beverly Hillbillies