From the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine:
Monday, March 21, 2022 | 10:30am - 4:00pm ET
Tuesday, March 22, 2022 | 10:30am - 3:30pm ET
A planning committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine will hold a public workshop to explore the long-term and potentially disabling health effects stemming from COVID-19 infection and how they might impact survivors’ ability to work.
This two-day virtual workshop, sponsored by the U.S. Social Security Administration, will bring together invited experts to discuss a range of topic a
reas including:
- Overview of long COVID, characteristics of the population affected, and research initiatives underway
- Postacute sequelae of SARS-COV-2 infection and implications for recovery
- Experiences of long COVID patients and their caregivers
- Long-term impairments from COVID-19 and effects on work-related functioning
- Best practices to improve recovery and potential future advancements in knowledge
The workshop agenda and list of confirmed speakers will be posted to this page soon.
By the way, my impression over the years has been that the National Academies are less a scholarly organization and more a Beltway Bandit, set up to attract lavish consulting contracts from government agencies. They always produce lengthy reports that say nothing of consequence and which contain the vaguest imaginable recommendations, except that there's always a definite recommendation for more "research", presumably done by them. I've never seen a report from a Beltway Bandit that had the slightest impact on actual operations at Social Security. Hiring them is what you do when you think you're supposed to do something but you really don't want to do anything other than kick the can down the road.
It doesn't take any grant of money from Social Security for me to tell you the state of knowledge at this point. There hasn't been enough time elapsed to get a really good idea of the long term impacts of Covid. While there are suggestions that Covid will lead to disability claims, either directly or indirectly, there hasn't been more than a trickle of such claims filed at Social Security so far. No one knows what that means. I'll be amazed if we learn anything more specific that that at this workshop.
1 comment:
While it is true that some of its findings have limited practical effect, the National Academy does produce reports with some useful findings. Even if SSA does not adopt those findings, I've cited the Academy's reports with some effect not only in Court briefs, but also in advocacy efforts. To get full mileage out of the reports contrast faulty reasoning in agency disability decisions with contrary findings in Academy reports on issues like ADLs and functional capacity. There's gold in them there hills, so to speak.
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