More than a year after the start of the corona crisis, RIVM will soon start an investigation to discover how many Dutch people continue to have complaints long after their Covid infection. They have already published the first results in the United Kingdom, but RIVM would also like to have something to do itself.
Yesterday concluded the UK government that 13.7 percent of infected Britons keep symptoms for longer than three months. 1.1 million Britons seem to have (had) complaints for more than four weeks. And 70,000 people would not have recovered after a year.
If that research was carried out a little thoroughly and it was done in circumstances that are comparable to the situation in the Netherlands, then you could learn great lessons from it, right? RIVM, however, thinks very differently about this. They only want to see now whether the virus also has such a bad effect on the health of the Dutch. Which reports the AD.
RIVM thus actually presents itself as a refined research agency. Because when the need is greatest and it is necessary to quickly assess how dangerous that virus is in the long term, then they are nowhere to be seen. But if the results are already known elsewhere, then they suddenly dare to repeat almost exactly the same research.
In just over a year, the entire Dutch society will actually just get a kick after, because you can guess the conclusions of that research: ‘Oops! We had underestimated the virus quite a bit. ‘; “Oh dear, the long-term effects are not comparable to a severe flu.”; ‘In the next pandemic we will really have to intervene better, but then really!’
The RIVM should have carried out this large corona study immediately on the first patients in February 2020, and not just through a finicky series of questionnaires. Research results might then have had an impact on policy. What the RIVM is doing now is mustard after meals. Actually like the Jaap van Dissel club has been doing all along.
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