Nocebo

[UncleEbenezer]

I wonder if anyone has studied the effects of nocebo on covid?

Yesterday's "inside health" on t'wireless spoke of a powerful nocebo effect, and - alongside some anecdotals - a proper trial that had demonstrated rather spectacularly the effect of nocebo in the side-effects of statins on some patients.

Given all we're being told about covid, there must be a powerful nocebo effect in the population. How much of the total problem is in fact nocebo? Intuitively it might cause people to go down with symptoms - sometimes serious - and might also tend to amplify the differences between demographics who expect to be at high risk and those told they're unlikely to suffer worse than a cold.

[johnhemming]

I wonder if anyone has studied the effects of nocebo on covid?

I don't really know how you could isolate this out.

[PinkDalek]

For those, like me, who've never heard of Nocebo, here's a randomly located article:

Most statin problems caused by mysterious 'nocebo effect', study suggests 15 November 2020
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54951648