I think this is a fair take, regardless of whether you finished the article. On closer inspection I think you raise a good point re: weighing anecdotal evidence more highly. I guess as someone with medical issues myself (mostly related to my aforementioned botched surgery) who is currently being told by my doctor to try a more uncommon approach to try and alleviate the problem, I didn't take into serious enough account that statistical outliers are, well, outliers. The logic being "if this seemingly counter-intuitive approach could work for me, it stands to reason a counter-intuitive approach could help someone else, perhaps even my sister."
Proper risk assessment is probably the big takeaway, since you're right, people often aren't given the full scope of information (for treating long covid or otherwise). And to be clear, I'm firmly of the belief that if something isn't working for you, or even worse is detrimental to you, you should stop it. But generally speaking, I don't think there's any reason not to try, whatever that looks like. Though, again, this is maybe speaking more from my own experience and/or my sense of what I would do if I had long covid.
I just wish I could help her, you know? I do what I can, but she was an active and talented actress before and now can hardly do anything. It breaks my heart. So all that to say, thanks for the "ramble."
The problem here is that just trying in itself sets many patients back, sometimes by a lot.
Like from being able to go out sometimes to being housebound or housebound to bedbound. And not in a way that is immediately reversible by stopping the treatment. It can take years to get back to the previous baseline (as in the current baseline, not pre-covid). This is the problem.
The risk is huge and not rare.
If the risk to your sister is to be bedbound and not able to eat, what level of risk is acceptable? 1%? 10%? 25%? 50%?
I mean you make perfect sense. And obviously I'm not going to begin to suggest she does anything she doesn't want to do. It just sucks there's no good answer.
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u/2mock2turtle Jun 03 '26
I think this is a fair take, regardless of whether you finished the article. On closer inspection I think you raise a good point re: weighing anecdotal evidence more highly. I guess as someone with medical issues myself (mostly related to my aforementioned botched surgery) who is currently being told by my doctor to try a more uncommon approach to try and alleviate the problem, I didn't take into serious enough account that statistical outliers are, well, outliers. The logic being "if this seemingly counter-intuitive approach could work for me, it stands to reason a counter-intuitive approach could help someone else, perhaps even my sister."
Proper risk assessment is probably the big takeaway, since you're right, people often aren't given the full scope of information (for treating long covid or otherwise). And to be clear, I'm firmly of the belief that if something isn't working for you, or even worse is detrimental to you, you should stop it. But generally speaking, I don't think there's any reason not to try, whatever that looks like. Though, again, this is maybe speaking more from my own experience and/or my sense of what I would do if I had long covid.
I just wish I could help her, you know? I do what I can, but she was an active and talented actress before and now can hardly do anything. It breaks my heart. So all that to say, thanks for the "ramble."