Long COVID is costing countries billions of dollars in lost productivity and increased health and social welfare costs, economists say.
Five years on from the start of the COVID-19 crisis, millions of people are struggling with debilitating health problems that have decimated their lives and livelihoods.
The first cases of long COVID were reported in May 2020.
The OECD, a club of mostly rich nations, estimates long COVID could be costing its 38 members $864 billion to $1.04 trillion annually due to reductions in quality of life and labour force participation. This does not include the extra burden on health services.
The control group would be people vaccinated who never got covid.
If the premise is long covid is caused by the vaccine, and some vaccinated people never got any form of covid (Hi! That’s me!) then you can be reasonably sure the vaccine doesn’t cause long covid.
Similarly if you have people with long covid who never got the vaccine. They got covid, then long covid. That would mean the vaccine is not a factor in long covid.