Oldman too said:
...ummm, nope. Really Interesting papers, but it's all about identification of
risk factors for long CoViD, not about prevalence.
Re. actual prevalence, I found a meta-analysis from April 2022:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35429399/ (
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9047189/pdf/jiac136.pdf)
which, due to its meta-ness is based on 2021-published data, and hence not the freshest. But still, its sources guide you to studies like
Hirschtick et al. 2021, which estimate the general population prevalence based on the prevalence of long CoViD in post-CoViD patients.
The Long-CoViD-prevalence in the US population deferred by the Chen et al. metaanalysis form Hirschtick et al. is 0.47 [0.41; 0.54] for male, 0.56 [0.52; 0.66] for female citizens - in 2021. That'd mean roughly half a percent of roughly 330 million, or a million and two thirds identified cases. In December 2021, publication date - data collection ended Oct 2021. Hence before many of the patients from the big Delta wave even got to the necessary time point to potentially qualify for Long CoViD. Doh... ...dis be tricky.Also, there are quite a bunch of other issues, most central those of underreporting:
The first issue is, that neither all CoViD cases were registered, nor were all acute CoViD patients followed up. So there's quite the uncertainty... ...underreporting. This quite obviously can make quite the difference. Especially if you try to compare data from a "open-to-all"-System like tha NHS with centralized data collection like the British NHS... ...with a pay-per-visit-system for many with fractioned data keeping like the US.
The second issue is that the individual bias to (not) report is pretty variable, too: Harry the hauler might not at all find the odd way stuff tastes worth paying fifty bucks to visit the doc, as might Charlie the couch potato think of his headache or shortness of breath. Ben the binge drinker might well consider his dizziness a warning sign caused by his hobby, whereas Dianne the drama queen will show up in the practice with every minuscule symptom, and Mary Munchausen-Syndrome will anyway take it all and find some extra...
And, as mentioned above already, this pertains to 2021 data, when even Delta hadn't been "washed out". Omicron apparently doesn't cause that many long CoViD sufferers, but we don't know yet.To give _some_ answer to the question:
I'd put my money on the NHS data, and simply multiply by case numbers and underreporting, then use the different population sizes as basis. So, guesstimating the US figure from those estimated 2M ppl in the UK's 22.5M cases* in a 60.8M** population, with an
excess mortality based vs. reported factor for CoViD deaths of 1.4-ish would give me a "CoViD-prevalence-estimate-coefficient" of...
22.5M * 1.4 / 60.8M = 0,518
...meaning 52% of the UK population having seen CoViD (let's ignore multiple infections for simplicity's sake - it's a guesstimation). So the Long-CoViD risk on a per case-basis would be 2M estimated Long-CoViD cases divided by 31.5M "true" Cases, or .0635 - 6.35% of (corrected) cases. So that 0.0635 would be the "Long-CoViD-factor"
...with the USA's 84M cases* in a 330M** population with the
death underreporting being estimated as 1.6-ish...
84M * 1.57 / 330M = 0.401 ("true" CoViD case rate per US citizen, which sounds about right)
84M * 1.57 * 0.0635 = 8.5M
...or: I'd slipshoddily
guesstimate there probably are
8.5 million Long-CoViD-sufferers in the USA.Feel free to add, argue, debunk, debate my train of thought. I'm happy to learn! This should in no way be perceived as scientifically sound, just as a moderately informed approximate number using some sound data sources.
TL;DR:
Millions for sure. How many? Not so sure. Way more than 5, def.* from the JHU CoViD Dashboard, 6/1/22 (date of typing)
** from Wikipedia, 6/1/22 (date of typing)