COVID-19 is viewed as severe as Tumor and HIV; Perceptions towards Covid- 19 (includes CFS comparison), 2020, Menebo - preprint

Dolphin

Dolphin

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https://www.researchgate.net/public...and_HIV_Perceptions_towards_Covid-19_Preprint
COVID-19 is viewed as severe as Tumor and HIV; Perceptions towards Covid-19. (Preprint)
  • July 2020
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COVID-19 pandemic has killed thousands and still does.

Since its first emergence, people have been having different attitudes and perceptions towards the virus.

Perceptions have profound consequences on behavior.

For example, patient’s perception of disease threat (disease severity) leads to medication adherence.

COVID-19 perception studies guide public awareness efforts or help in understanding behavior, yet limited.

This study responds that call, offers a glimpse.

A repeated cross-sectional data is collected from 376 randomly selected respondents located all over the world in two periods.

Perceived severity (how severe people think COVID-19 and 16 other illnesses are), perceived disease belongingness (rating of COVID-19 and 16 other illnesses as mental or physical) and demographic variables (gender, age and education) are measured.

ANOVA, Spearman correlation and scatter analysis are applied.

Perceived severity, perceived disease belongingness and age correlate between each other.

Participants perceive COVID-19 as severe as Tumor and AIDS (F (2,722) =2.347; p=.096), and as more severe than other 14 illnesses; e.g. Diabetes and High blood pressure.

Age wise, participants above 50 age group perceive COVID-19 as more severe than the under 50 (F (1,240) = 10.378, p <.001).

A month later, depression surpassed COVID-19 to be perceived as more severe.

Majority of respondents attribute COVID-19 as a physical (vs mental) illness, thus consider it severe (vs not severe).

Implications could mean;
(1) COVID-19 patients might be susceptible to social stigmatization as HIV patients,
(2) stay-home obligations are possibly exposing to depression
and
(3) severity perception is shaping intervention friendly behaviors.
Click to expand...
 
Last edited by a moderator:
CFS is included in the following data:

Participants: Europe (34), North America (147), Asia (24), Latin America (35)
Figure 2
Perceived severity of COVID-19 in relative to 16 other medical conditions (April 4, 2020 to April 7, 2020)

Figure 3
Perceived severity of COVID-19 in relative to 16 other medical conditions (May 9, 2020 to May 16, 2020)

Perceived disease belongingness of COVID-19 in relative to 16 other medical conditions
Click to expand...

Possibly others in the final draft; the creation of the PDF seems to have caused some formatting errors.
 
Yikes, but I guess it's higher than I would've expected.

It, and I don't want to sound harsh, but it strikes me that the immense success of the psychology sector has been to popularize and sympathize with common psychological diagnosis while destroying the "functional" ones. We have apps now here in the U.S., and when ever someone encounters the slightest emotion, it the first thing said "you should see someone" (this is a therapist). It's on T.V., social media, an easy character trait in a book or movie etc. This, combined with the fact that everyone has depression, anxiety or stress to some degree and the natural bias to sympathize with something someone has themself experienced has lead to even common depression often described as an immensely serious condition.

And it can be in extreme cases, but often the mild and very mild are conflated in and it has become what it is on this graph, worse than diabetes. I'm sure many people with mild periodic depression believe it is worse than chronic asthma.

I don't want to trivialize those 3 illnesses at all. At their worst, they can devastate a person's life, but perhaps look at the cultural and subjective reasons they might but slightly below AIDS. I know people who really believe that about them in their mild forms.

I also find this might be true about Migraine - a chunk of the population doesn't get them and some get them maybe once a year. They can't understand what those with daily severe migraine go through.
 
I wouldn't take this too seriously. It seems to be based on surveys of a few hundred people scattered around the world. I have no idea why CFS was included as a comparitor, but I'm not surprised it came out quite low on the perceived severity list. Most people probably have not heard of it, and read it as meaning the symptom fatigue, which they consider quite minor.
 
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