Different patterns of persistent somatic symptoms after COVID-19 reported by the Dutch media and the general population, 2024, Ballering et al.

SNT Gatchaman

SNT Gatchaman

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Different patterns of persistent somatic symptoms after COVID-19 reported by the Dutch media and the general population
Ballering; Plug; van Zon; Olde Hartman; Das; Rosmalen

OBJECTIVE
Post COVID-19 condition is characterized by persistent symptoms after COVID-19 with yet unknown etiology. To explore whether media-related nocebo effects potentially contribute to post COVID-19 condition, we studied in an observational cohort whether frequencies of media coverage of symptoms after COVID-19 corresponded with prevalence rates of these symptoms in participants from a general population cohort diagnosed with COVID-19.

METHODS
Prevalence rates and typology of symptoms after COVID-19 in the general population (N = 4231), adjusted for prevalence rates in a matched non-infected control population (n = 8462) were calculated by using data on 23 symptoms from the Lifelines COVID-19 Cohort collected between March 2020 and August 2021. Media coverage of post COVID-19 condition was assessed by coding 1266 Dutch post COVID-19-related news articles (inter-rater-κ ≥ 0.75), published during the corresponding timeframe. Herein, we assessed whether the same 23 symptoms were mentioned as being related to post COVID-19 condition.

RESULTS
Core post COVID-19 condition symptoms were mentioned in 390 (30.8%) articles. Five of the ten core symptoms were mentioned by 10 or fewer articles. Ageusia/anosmia was most often persistently increased in COVID-19-positive participants (7.6%), yet was mentioned in 80 (6.3%) articles. General tiredness and breathing difficulties were frequently mentioned, in 23.9% and 17.1% of the articles respectively, while these were not the most frequently increased symptoms reported by participants (4.9% and 2.4%).

CONCLUSION
If post COVID-19 condition was predominantly attributable to nocebo effects, its symptom profile would be expected to reflect levels of media coverage for symptoms after COVID-19. However, our findings do not support this.

HIGHLIGHTS

• Media-related nocebo effects are suggested as cause for post COVID-19 condition.

• Nocebo explanations of somatic symptoms are frequently stigmatizing.

• Media coverage of symptoms does not correspond to rates of post COVID-19 symptoms.

• Our analysis does not support a potential nocebo effect in post COVID-19 condition.

Link (Journal of Psychosomatic Research) [Open Access]
 
Prof. Rosmalen probably never heard that many people don't read newspapers anymore.
Bad articles in newspapers? Or even worse research?
They got funds for this garbage.:cry::cry::cry:
O'Sullivan and Rosmalen explaining away LC, must be a trend in BPS.
 
Good as far as it goes, and credit to the authors for both asking the question and accepting the implications of the answer.

What is the bet that they instead turn to blaming the less regulated, more informal social media, which is often blamed as a primary means for the transmission of psychogenic phenomenon.
 
Interesting that Rosmalen's name is on this. The fact that Long-Covid is a patient defined term should have made the article and analysis obsolete though. People were gathering with an array of symptoms on social media, precisely because nobody was reporting on any of this in the news media.

When Garner called out Monbiot for causing Long-Covid by writing his article, a substantial percentage of people had long since developed Long-Covid. It seems that afterwards the rates stabilised. Should one ask Garner whether Monbiots powers reduced the growth rate of Long-Covid?
 
For what it's worth, I don't think this study debunks the hypothesis. It's just not a good study, but also I don't think this can be studied competently. It's far too diffuse a concept, entirely impossible to study in isolation.

However, the idea remains silly nonsense, regardless of whether a few researchers want it to be true or not (which here they clearly do, so much for equipoise), and whether they can successfully fish for confirming 'evidence' or not. There is simply nothing credible behind the concept of mass nocebo, or even the nocebo itself (as otherwise we would literally never hear anyone say "that hurt less than I feared it would") a weird idea invented centuries before the scientific revolution, which can be entirely dismissed along with angels and fairies.

And we all know that regardless of whether a large-scale and very rigorous study could provide substantial evidence against this belief, no one who holds it will change their mind. They will keep vaguely hinting at it, or variously reframing the same idea, attributed to the next turtle down the line.

Sean said:
What is the bet that they instead turn to blaming the less regulated, more informal social media, which is often blamed as a primary means for the transmission of psychogenic phenomenon
Click to expand...
Oh, for sure.

I remain forever amazed that so many physicians can whine about LC having been defined by patients first as a reason to poopoo the whole thing, when it actually represents a massive failure on part of the medical profession. No, airplane pilots are not expected to ask the opinions of passengers about how to fly a plane. But if both pilots end up dead, and no one is flying the plane, you should definitely expect passengers to do their best to land it. Except here it's more like the pilots were playing poker, drunk in the galley, and not remotely interested in where the plane was going, literally laughing at passengers telling them about all the alarms going off and the tower control asking them where the hell they are.
 
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