The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released new data this week claiming that more than 3,500 Americans have died from “long COVID,” although some experts are criticizing the conclusion as a flawed reading of data.
Researchers examined death certificates for Americans who died between January 1, 2020 and June 30, 2022, searching for keywords like “PASC” (a clinical term for long COVID) or “long COVID.” They identified 3,544 death certificates for COVID-19 victims that included long COVID terminology.
Long COVID kills? Sadly, that’s still unproven, great analysis by @VPrasadMDMPH https://t.co/BoXrSwJU7U
— Marty Makary MD, MPH (@MartyMakary) December 15, 2022
The study defines long COVID as continuing to experience symptoms in the time after someone has recovered from a COVID-19 infection. All of the long COVID deaths are also counted as regular COVID-19 deaths, and the deaths were most highly concentrated in individuals aged 85 and older, as with acute COVID-19.
A limitation of the study, according to the authors, includes that it may “underestimate” long COVID deaths because it wasn’t well-classified clinically in the early days of the pandemic and because they only examined death certificates that listed COVID-19 as a cause. But some critics pointed out other problems with the paper.
“They have no actual data that long COVID killed anyone,” Dr. Vinay Prasad, professor at UC San Francisco, tweeted. “They are just tabulating the whims of whoever was asked to sign the form.”
Dr. Marty Makary, professor at Johns Hopkins, criticized media outlets for uncritically repeating the study’s findings without looking deeper into the methodology of simply looking at death certificates.
Dr. Eric Topol, director and founder of the Scripps Research Translational Institute who had generally been in favor of harsher COVID-19 restrictions during the pandemic, even told STAT News that the study isn’t particularly reliable because it relies on death certificates. “It’s especially clouded because long Covid isn’t known to kill people directly,” he said.
“When you look at the whole list of symptoms and signs, you don’t see a direct link to death. You see fatigue and breathing difficulties and headaches and brain fog,” he continued. “If somebody had a stroke and they’ve had Covid a couple of months prior, and it was thought that the stroke was a complication of Covid, I don’t know that I would sign them off on their death certificate. I would say they had a stroke. I can’t prove cause and effect. I wouldn’t think of it as long Covid.”
Despite the paper’s shortcomings, it was reported largely uncritically by most media outlets. Politico’s piece on the research lamented that the illness is still “dismissed,” while CNN said that the “true numbers are likely much higher.” CNBC, CBS, The Hill, ABC and Axios all had posts with similar framing. (RELATED: Big Pharma Can’t Figure Out How To Cash In On ‘Long COVID’)
To date, there is still no consensus definition of what long COVID actually is. There are hundreds of possible symptoms, depending on which medical professional you ask, while others believe it to be a psychosomatic condition. One study found that the only reliable predictors of developing “long COVID” were being a woman and having self-reported anxiety issues.