Is Long Covid affecting the labor shortage?

[frozenborderline]

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/a...ng-covid-is-showing-up-in-the-employment-data
The obvious answer would be yes.

And this article does show that. But far far more modestly than I expected.

The numbers of new ME/CFS patients post pandemic and moderate to severe long covid are mind bogglingly high, off the top of my head ME/CFS, prevalence , already high , tripled or more and went up to 4 to 6 million from a Leonard Jason prevalence study. And like the above article says , long covid estimates even for the fairly disabled portion are above 7 million. In a country of circa 300 something million. So how is this not devastating the labor force. Is it just a delayed effect. Is it masked by other things. Like are people with long covid just saying they quit their jobs for other reasons and not telling census takers they are disabled even if they have brain fog?

I WANT these illnesses to affect the labor force. If they do, they can achieve attention. Only economic incentives really matter much in research funding. If enough people get sick it's like almost a general strike. It would slow down economy enough to require intervention. Just like acute covid .

Anyways. Thoughts, guys? I'll try and think of more people to tag who are into this topic. Please let me know what other accounts may be good to tag. I am thinking maybe some meaction people or people from other activist groups on here would be interested but I don't know those peoples accounts.

@Hip @Learner1 @ScottTriGuy @Ben H @Janet Dafoe @pattismith @sb4 @necessary8 @pamojja @LongCovidOli @Pyrrhus

 

[frozenborderline]

So to start off with. The Brookings institute seems to have an obvious ideological bent that could change how they're reading the data. They seem to be somewhat neoliberal/pro austerity... But there is a real concern for me in seeing these numbers, where the employment data isn't reflecting the enormity of the estimated increases in disability. Now, the article I'm posting these screenshots from uses self reported longcovid surveys by advocacy groups as part of the high estimate of disability increase which they think the employment numbers don't bear out. It's one thing to see this and think "geez, what if the self report for long covid is just high and there is exaggeration and its not as big an effect as we think". But Leonard Jason's Me/CFS prevalence study, released this year, already showed a big increase in ME/CFS and I believe didn't rely just on self report data. So I don't know what to believe. Continued...

 

[frozenborderline]

Leonard Jason's Me/CFS prevalence study, released this year, already showed a big increase in ME/CFS and I believe didn't rely just on self report data. So I don't know what to believe. Continued..

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21641846.2022.2062169?journalCode=rftg20

There's more but since I want to return to the original Brookings article, I'll just post the conclusion and some stuff about the methodology. Basically like I expected they are pretty rigorous and don't rely on self report data. They make conservative estimates of prevalence increases of me/cfs from covid , which are lower estimates than I think most me/cfs doctors or researchers would have (5-10 percent). The reason for this conservatism I think is to be very sure that they don't give wildly inflated numbers that can be picked apart by skeptics , bc even with this conservatism the numbers are pretty high. But to back this up: mono has about a 10 percent rate of conversion to Me/CFS, lyme has about a 25 percent conversion rate to long term disease of some kind (unclear how much of that becomes me/cfs), and Sars 1 I believe had a 40 percent or more rate of ME/CFS. Hence why I think 5-10 percent isn't very high and is conservative. I'd expect the rates to fall between mono and Sars 1.

So unless all of the models, including the Bateman study that Jason bases his prevalence conversion estimate at , and the CDC data from before covid prevalence rates of me/cfs, are all wrong and inflated somehow, this is a big increase in serious disease, even just considering me/cfs, without considering people who may have other illnesses from long covid that don't have PEM as a feature. Like heart issues, Dysautonomia, mcas, brain fog on its own, pain, arthritis, etc.
So why the hell isn't it showing up in the employment data on a massive scale?

 

[frozenborderline]

(Leonard Jason's conclusion, just to make things crystal clear before we get back to the whole Brookings institute study)

Also @rpapen77 you may want to follow this thread

 

[frozenborderline]

 

[frozenborderline]

Hey , I'd really like to start this conversation. Are there any economists here ?

 

[frozenborderline]

Also forgot to tag @jeff_w

 

[frozenborderline]

https://www.npr.org/2022/07/31/1114375163/long-covid-longhaulers-disability-labor-ada

 

[frozenborderline]

Alright so remember how I said maybe the Brookings institute has this wrong and is being too conservative ? Well they published an updated estimate of the people out of labor force due to long covid and it is more than double their previous estimate. Interesting. It could still be low but we shall see


Here it is : https://www.brookings.edu/research/...te=1&user_id=135e4b25076fba1678f044f6743aa21a

 

[hapl808]

These kind of estimates and models are almost impossible. I mostly live off savings and try to work on the rare occasions when I'm able and where I can work around constant crashing. I'm basically out of the labor force, but would not appear as such in any estimate. (More because of ME/CFS in my case, but same issues.)