The paper compares to a group of people diagnosed with influenza (and a number of other things), as a control. For the flu, they find that 13.3% of these people had the same symptoms (vs. 18.8% in the covid cohort; ratio = 1.41). This is in Table 3.
Table 2 shows you the similar analysis, but just for first-time diagnoses, and these are 5.8% (covid) vs. 2.8% (influenza) for a ratio of 2.07. So while there do appear to be differences in the groups, focusing on the absolute percentage in the covid cohort alone is a misleading and fear-mongering way to interpret the results.
Table 2 shows you the similar analysis, but just for first-time diagnoses, and these are 5.8% (covid) vs. 2.8% (influenza) for a ratio of 2.07. So while there do appear to be differences in the groups, focusing on the absolute percentage in the covid cohort alone is a misleading and fear-mongering way to interpret the results.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0...