A lot of non-peer-reviewed, very tentative COVID studies get amplified by Twitter &then spread like wildfire, and of course the limitations and criticisms of the studies never get any play

like, let's talk about the study on cognitive decline in COVID patients for instance...

You might have seen this article making the rounds on here/get featured by Twitter this week. Sounds super scary right? https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-brains-int-idUSKBN27C1RN?taid=5f9833b47b7d920001503908&utm_campaign=trueAnthem:+Trending+Content&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter

Well here's the problem with this study. These respondents are not even confirmed COVID patients. They're just people who completed an online intelligence teste and then told the researchers they'd had COVID. it's all self-report.

There were no COVID tests done on the majority of the people in the study, or antibody tests, or evidence provided of hospitalization... they're just people who said they had COVID. which, you know, maybe they did. Or maybe they had any flu or cold sometime this year.

another huge problem with this study? No pre test.

No
pre
test.

In other words there is no proof of cognitive decline because we don't know what people's cognitive functioning was before they (maybe, according to them) got COVID.

So what does this study actually show?

People who tell online surveys that they think they had COVID scored lower on a cognitive functioning test than you'd predict for a typical person of their age.

It very well could be having COVID impacts cognitive functioning long term! But we don't have long term data on that yet, and it's only been observed in serious cases. to put a specific figure on it and say it generically like "COVID ages your brain by ten years" is alarmist

And alarmism is really not a good way to go -- public health communication research has shown for DECADES that terrifying people paralyzes them and makes them less likely to behave safely and responsibly. You want to empower people not make them feel terror and doom

You know what alarmism IS good for? Page views, shares, and ad revenue. The algorithm loves terrifying shit, a lot of journalists have been trained to eat up terrifying shit, and we are all hungry little piggies at that anxiety trough

And I get it, I really do. I've shared non peer reviewed stuff bc was feeling urgent panic. I was one of those "don't take anti-inflammatories if you get sick! Only take Tylenol for COVID!" people earlier this year. It felt good to have a concrete warning to give to people.

The truth is, more information isn't necessarily more power. Not when half that information hasn't been vetted and all of it is frightening and disempowering.

YEP. Or the doctor who had no expertise in fomites/surface transmission who made the video telling everyone to sanitize their grocery bags and shit, which people all studiously obeyed for months https://twitter.com/ElliotBaggott/status/1322230693469016065?s=20