Long Covid Disability

A study from Israel shows that ⅓ of the people who get Covid suffer some sort of long term disability. (Long Covid)

Those numbers are staggering.

There have likely been more than 100 million cases, and that means 33 million cases of long Covid.

If just ¼ of these people have not yet fully recovered, and extending this across the 330 million people in the United States, it means that 2½% of the population, and thus 2½% of the workforce is missing.

This is an enormous drag on the economy, and one explanation for China's "Zero Covid" policy. 

The long term costs may be unsustainable:

Among adults who get COVID-19, one in three fails to return to pre-infection health levels even months later, a new Israeli study suggests.

After recovery, “about 34.6 percent of participants reported not returning to their baseline health condition,” states a peer-reviewed study by researchers from Maccabi Healthcare Services, one of the country’s four health funds, based on surveys by 699 patients conducted between one and six months after recovery. On average, respondents were five months after recovery.

The study, led by Maccabi’s head of research and innovation Dr. Tal Palaton, highlighted the prevalence of symptoms including memory disturbances and muscle pain, and warned of the public health consequences of long COVID. Policymakers “should expect a significant impact of this syndrome on public health,” it said.

………

And while the sample size is large, it only represents 7.5% of those asked to take part in the survey. In view of this, authors acknowledge the possibility of “selection bias,” meaning that as the survey was voluntary, people who have experienced symptoms may have been more motivated to answer than others. 

I would note that other studies have shown long Covid rates in the 20+% range, so the picture is grim from any number of perspectives.

The long term costs of this disease are likely to be devastating, and countries unprepared for this, like the United States, may be in for a world of pain.