That saying, or ones like it, are also attributed to Carl Sagan, G. K. Chesterton, James Oberg, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, Virginia Gildersleeve, Bertrand Russell, Max Radin, ...
This article mentions Walter M. Kotschnig as the author of the earliest known instance of the saying, but notes that even Kotschnig seemed to be quoting something that was already known at the time:
An appropriately simplistic quote from someone who habitually and sometimes famously demonstrates being stubbornly narrow minded. But then, how else would he not know that brains don’t fall out of—nor are placed in—minds.
That's interesting, thanks. First study I've seen with more than a handful of participants, doing something other than self-reporting of symptoms.
That said, it's notable that:
* They don't have a control group (makes it impossible to know what the baseline rate of these symptoms is in the population).
* They don't measure the various criteria for "organ impairment" before the participants caught covid (makes it impossible to know if the people who were found to be abnormal were abnormal before catching the virus -- there are a fair number of smokers and obese people in this sample, so this isn't an idle concern).
* They find a fairly strong association with hospitalization (i.e. the people who are sickest, end up having the most lingering symptoms).
* The people who were sickest tended to have the most pre-existing risk factors for the same outcomes being measured by the study (i.e. there's a hidden correlate).
Because of these limitations, you can't really draw any broad conclusions from this study. In general, I'd say that it shows that older / obese / unhealthy people are more likely to have both severe Covid, as well as concomitant symptoms of severe Covid.
There are beginning to be data on this available around well defined, young, and ultra healthy groups such as athletic leagues. Look within a given league at these long term effects / organ damage / health problems among those who recovered to rule out a lot of the self-selection or other variables.
To some of your other points, the high end leagues are quite well medically documented, and the individuals are quite healthy.
That said, it also appears for some individuals, initial “long term” damage (ongoing heart or liver problems three months after recovery) may be less or gone some six months in.
Seems answers are as yet by and large unresolved. In situations where one does not yet know the actual risk, one may prefer an abundance of caution over unknown “calculated” risk given the long tail of possible effects.
"There are beginning to be data on this available around well defined, young, and ultra healthy groups such as athletic leagues. Look within a given league at these long term effects / organ damage / health problems among those who recovered to rule out a lot of the self-selection or other variables."
I'm aware of one publication, which showed 4 athletes with heart-inflammation markers in a sample of 26 athletes:
BTW I’m on mobile so didn’t re read that study but when I read the myocarditis study a month ago it turned out that the base rate of myocarditis was really no different than the COVID-19 rate and thus the whole scare was more or leas unfounded.
For studyi these supposed long-term effects I like to look at SARS-1 studies since we’ve had almost two decades. What we find is a few months of raidological ling abnormalities that heal, and mild cognitive deficits that linger for up to a year before disappearing completely. SARS-1 is miles worse than SARS-2 so the idea that young asymptomatic COVID-19 cases will end up with long term health problems is just completely farcical.
Unfortunately reading these studies requires a very critical lens. You showed that in your above comments but, for example, the person alleging these unproven and speculative long term impacts appears not to take that critical approach.
"I’m on mobile so didn’t re read that study but when I read the myocarditis study a month ago it turned out that the base rate of myocarditis was really no different than the COVID-19 rate and thus the whole scare was more or leas unfounded."
Generally agreed. There have been a few papers on this, and most of them were...flawed. To say the least.
This paper is the latest to suggest lurking heart problems in young healthy people, and while the sample is quite small and the observed metrics are questionable, I haven't seen anyone seriously attack the methodology. But in general, I'm skeptical of the claim as well, and I wouldn't suggest that this paper is definitive evidence of anything.
"Unfortunately reading these studies requires a very critical lens. You showed that in your above comments but, for example, the person alleging these unproven and speculative long term impacts appears not to take that critical approach."
100% agreed. It's been a general problem with all of these Covid-related pre-prints. Terrible, flawed studies get picked up by the media and credulously reported. By the time the flaws are found by serious researchers, the media is on to the next headline, never taking time to correct the record.
Japan and China use regular Western comma grouping for Latin numerals. The myriads are used only when using Japanese/Chinese numerals: １万円 for 10,000 yen, ２億円 for 200,000,000.
Thanks, I didn't know the formatting was following rules of Latin/Roman numerals. I remember having difficulties when learning to group numbers by 10k (with the -man suffix) during japanese courses more than a decade ago, I always assumed that was used everywhere.
