The second source, published to the preprint server medRxiv on July 26, compiles the results of a poll on social media asking about vaccination and COVID infection. The public poll was posted to the Facebook group for Survivor Corps, a grassroots organization of COVID-19 survivors founded by Diana Berrent in March 2020. Out of 1,949 respondents, 44 reported having a symptomatic COVID-19 infection after getting vaccinated. Of that group, 24 reported they had symptoms of long COVID. One person said that their infection led to long COVID and hospitalization.
The paper, co-authored by Berrent, Yale School of Medicine cardiologist Harlan Krumholz, and postgraduate associate Daisy Massey, is not peer-reviewed, and its methods are far from rigorous; by no means should the numbers be extrapolated to apply to the general population. “I’ll be the first to say this isn’t great data,” said Berrent of the poll results. “But it’s an important signal that we need to do a better job of tracking these cases.” When Iwasaki stated on Twitter that breakthroughs could lead to long COVID, she pointed to an early version of the Survivor Corps data.
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