The Radio 4 link led me to Alwan's original blog, from which some understanding can be gained.
What is now becoming clear is that mortality is not the only adverse outcome of this infection and our surveillance systems must keep up and reflect that. I am advocating for precise case definitions for covid-19 morbidity that reflect the degree of severity of infection and allow us to measure moderate and long term health and wellbeing outcomes. At this stage of the pandemic, it is vital that we accurately measure and count all degrees of infection, not only in research cohorts, but as part of population-based routine surveillance systems. This includes people like me who were not tested at the time of their initial infection. Death is not the only thing to count in this pandemic, we must count lives changed. We still know very little about covid-19, but we do know that we cannot fight what we do not measure.
https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2020/07/28/nisreen-a-alwan-what-exactly-is-mild-covid-19/
That seems to end with a simple fallacy. It is perfectly possible to fight what one does not measure. It is merely more difficult to know whether one is winning. But, as Robert McNamara found, you have first to know what it is important to count. He said "Count what is important, do not make important what you can count", but may have lost the war from relying on body counts. He supposedly thought them all that mattered.
It looks as though Alwan wishes to make important what she thinks might be countable. That may have limited importance. It seems unlikely to be helpful.
And good luck with accurate measurement of all degrees of infection.
I eventually stopped telling everyone how I felt because they wanted me to get better . . . soon.
