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Passenger on the London Underground wears a surgical mask (Getty)
Back in January, as Covid cases surged and deaths ticked up into the thousands per day, some friends and I made a website to rebut some of the arguments that were swirling around on social media by “Covid sceptics” — people who are sceptical about the virus’s effects (as opposed to its existence). For instance, in response to the common claim that “Covid has a 99.5% survival rate”, we pointed out that although the mortality rate seems low, it still means an awful lot of death if the disease spreads through a whole population. Not only that, but the death rate is a lot higher in older people.
One of the other arguments we made is: death isn’t the only thing that matters. Despite a huge focus on mortality statistics, and understandable fears about elderly relatives dying, even a non-deadly Covid infection is something worth avoiding. The symptoms themselves are often highly unpleasant, as is a stay in hospital if things deteriorate. And, as we wrote, there’s also a risk of “Long Covid”. We linked to a Chinese study from January 2021 showing that many people hospitalised for Covid tended, six months after being released from hospital, to have persistent symptoms: a majority of them reported fatigue or muscle weakness, for example, and almost a quarter reported anxiety or depression. This, surely, is reason enough to take Covid seriously.
In rhetorical terms, Long Covid seemed the perfect stick with which to beat the Covid Sceptics — it added extra weight to our case by bolstering the already scary death statistics, and was the perfect comeback to a breezy “let it spread” attitude. So perfect that I hesitated while typing it out. Could it be too good to be true?
Some would say we didn’t go far enough. Fatigue and mood problems are just the beginning of the incredibly long list of symptoms now attributed to Long Covid. A paper in Nature Medicine from March, which called the condition “Post-acute Covid-19 Syndrome”, provided a review of all the potential organs that Covid might damage in the long-term: the lungs, the heart, the kidneys, the brain — even the skin.
This week, The Guardian produced a series of articles about Long Covid, relating harrowing tales of people who never fully recovered from a Covid infection, experiencing pain, “brain fog”, irritable bowel syndrome, and a huge range of other disorders with no end in sight. “Sufferers of chronic pain”, The Guardian wrote, “have long been told it’s all in their head. We now know that’s not true”. They interviewed a range of immunologists and other scientists who suggested plausible ways that the coronavirus, for example via its effects on the immune system, could be having all these effects. The NHS has set up many clinics across the country that are specifically for Long Covid, suggesting that they believe it could become a very big problem.
But it really is true that some sources are telling Long Covid sufferers that it’s all in their head. In a Wall Street Journal piece in March, the psychiatrist Jeremy Devine described Long Covid as “largely an invention of vocal patient activist groups”. The US National Institutes for Health committing to fund research into Long Covid was, Devine wrote, “a victory for pseudoscience” which would “further perpetuate patient denial of mental illness and psychosomatic symptoms” (the Journal also published a response piece a few days later).
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SubscribeLong influenza also exists. I had it about 20 yrs ago and it took me 8 months plus to recover. It had caused some damage in my lungs and made them more susceptible to any pollution, smoke etc. I kept coughing and the tail end was hard to shake off. So eventually I decided to exercise my lungs and make them stronger. I took up running. Not only did I recover, as expected, I have experienced multiple benefits from it. So I would say to all the long Covid sufferers. The best way is to strengthen yourself. Start slowly & build it up. This should have been the strategy for Covid too. But we were locked up and told to hide away which is hardly a fighting strategy and instilling poor spirit in the community . So (no disrespect to the sufferers intended) stop the whinging and go outside & improve your health. One’s health is generally in one’s own control. The less the medical intervention the better. Except when the scientists are playing god.
How about coming down hard on the tobacco industry? Smoking causes poor lungs, debilitating cancer (proven), heart diseases, the government had this opportunity to close down this industry but instead they chose to close down the whole country.
This is a great post. I can see all around me how people continue to be ill because they can’t be bothered to do anything.
I see people who are too lazy to walk using buggies to take them around supermarkets. Those same people jockey for parking spaces as close as possible to the doors of the store and afterwards drive another 40 yards to park in front of the next store.
In the USA particularly on internal flights, people book wheel chairs because they are too lazy to walk on and off the plane. As soon as they are wheeled past the crowds they get up and walk away.
The problem with these individuals is that there are people out there who are really ill and the lazy ones are stealing the scarce resources. An article a couple of days ago spoke about the problems of mental illness, where people don’t try hard enough to ‘tough it out’, meaning that they take resources from people who are truly ill.
I believe that every person should try as hard as possible to be fit for life. This removes the burden from their families and from the rest of society.
The people you see all around who can’t be bothered to do anything; how do you know they are not genuinely ill if you do not know them?
Yes, this is what my wife says and you don’t know. But if, say, 50% are real and 50% can’t be bothered we don’t have the resources to cope with everything – or hadn’t you noticed?
The columnist a couple of days ago talked about people taking children to A&E with common colds. Perhaps the parents had to be sure. But the system isn’t coping, or hadn’t you noticed?
It is the serious fault in most people that the people in authority have to be blamed for everything. If the system isn’t coping, they should do something about it. If people want to change sex, they should make sure that the facilities are available. They must do something. Familiar? It is time that people tried harder in order to free up the system for those who are really ill.
I was born in 1957 and in the following 20 odd ‘developmental’ years the prevailing orthodoxy was that you took responsibiity for yourself and the results of your own decisions-you did not automatically look out for who else to blame or towards who else should ‘fix’ it. In the 20-30 years after the ’70’s, early 80’s i noticed a shift via political parties vying for votes towards the ‘if you vote for us we will provide for all your needs ‘ type propaganda in conjunction with the ‘you can be whatever you want to be ‘ educational ‘ propaganda. So we appear to have bred a naive dependent type of individual vs the self reliant personality of pre early 1980’s (in New Zealand anyway). I think it is time to spread the word that “they’ will actually not be able to make everything ‘alright’ and it is time to get off your butt and start taking responsibilty for your own life and choices etc etc etc. Sounds radical and what? almost harsh or even kinda uncaring – hard to believe that it was the norm not so long ago !!
A good point has been made by Chris as it is evident that millions of people (in the West) make very poor lifestyle choices.
So if 28% of people in the UK are obese and a further 36% are overweight, it is pretty easy to arrive at the fact that most of these people are simply making poor choices (not all because I acknowledge some difficult circumstances).
For years I ran between 30 and 40 miles a week then caught a bad case of flu that left me with nasal polyps and a cough that I have still not shaken. I still try and run twice a week but it run slowly 300m walk 300m.
I would like to say how wonderful our NHS was but they were worse than useless and plainly didn’t give a toss. I persisted with them for a couple of years but in the end I gave up
If it were Long Covid it would be in the media.
Look, at least you are trying & doing your best. That’s all one can ask. Those who give up easily & rely on medical intervention as the first port of call , that’s when things are on a downward descend. Having said that, medicine is great when it’s aiding you to get better. If it’s your life support….. I rather pack it all in. But that’s me.
Yes, many people seem to have delegated responsibility for their health to government. Lying on the sofa binge eating multi-packs of Dorritoes, slurping gallons of ‘diet’ cola while demanding that ‘something be done’ is a recipe for the demise of the species.
I sometimes don’t understand but it seems this country is a victim of its own success. I was born in South Asia and even there the success of medicine has meant, teeming millions, poor diet, growing girth, apathy towards ones own health. Success of medicine has become a curse. I guess it should be used sparingly and one’s first responsibility/ respect is towards one self. If you let yourself go, you clearly do not respect yourself. That is my outlook.
Careful about offering medical advice Alka…
I had long covid. I was one of the earliest cases, and it was like REALLY bad flu, but mine came on one week, got better 10 days but tired, and it hit again with a vengeance. I never needed medical attention, but 3 days at 103F.
I do construction, and although mid sixties, was very fit. After the second bout I was so rough just walking my place to feed the animals exhausted me – so I read on Post Viral Fatigue a lot. After SARS some Canadian doctors found this was quite prevalent, and Post Viral Fatigue has always been known, some viruses very prone, others not much at all.
It took 8 weeks to recover enough to go back to work, and worked light and half time, and then it took another couple months to be 100%. You just feel Fatigued – which is different to tired as it is a feel of weariness to the core, of feeling beaten down, to feel bad and depressed, one worries if one will ever get back.
But here is why I write this – from my experience, and what I read: DO NOT try to exercise your way out of post viral fatigue! It needs slow and easy rest. I believe it is an immune response so when you tire yourself it makes your immune system feel like it is attacked more, so it does more, and you get worse and worse the longer you push. I am a tough guy so my natural inclination is to work through pain and illness, this is BAD for this – you need to rest, get up though, the bed is the killer, but taking it very easy; good nutrition (I drank fresh citrus, zink, multi vitamin, good food, lots good liquids) and heal slowly – or you will make it worse. Then slow at work, focus on not exhausting yourself as that sets you back. I have a Special Forces friend who is 40, and he had the same thing, but not quite as bad – and he took a couple months – I told him to take it easy and read on post viral Fatigue, and he got back 100% after 10 weeks and could begin working out again – although 100% is hard to say as you lost so much fitness during the resting, but I mean the 100% to mean you feel TIRED after work, and not that FATIGUE, and can get going and regain your lost fitness by exercising or work.
When 100% recovered, then get fit, but not till then. Read on Chronic Fatigue, same thing, heal first, then get fit.
So you are taking responsibility for your situation, difficult as it is. Just the ‘advice’ Alka was giving. And sorry to hear you’ve had such a bad time. Fortunately with your reasoned and positive approach you will come back even stronger. Impressive.
Good advice thanks Sanford
just to add: apparently stopping meat helps a lot in ‘long covid’…
I noticed that you studiously avoided approval of any method of dealing with Covid such as lockdowns. Is ‘let it spread’ just another dig at those proposing shielding for the more vulnerable and no lockdown? Whatever the problems of long Covid they will be dwarfed by the uptick in deaths from untreated conditions due to policies of fear and lockdown, and the miseries coming from lost business and jobs.
Excellent observation
This is surely true. I would add: the loss of a generation of equality of opportunity for underprivileged children denied the resources of in-person schooling.
As an aside, I know two people who have reported ‘long COVID’ (of the dozens and dozens I know who have tested postive and recovered – zero deaths known to me personally). In one case, it is a relative who I am almost sure was looking for an excuse to get out of having to work – one might say she had been waiting all her life for Long Covid; she wrote an article for the main Irish newspaper and it got published. The other, my daughter’s preschool teacher, genuinely had the illness and has suffered some symptoms for months now. That said, she smiles, works and lives her life. But her sense of smell has not fully returned, even 7 months later.
The politicisation of “long covid” is coming from the lockdown-forever-brigade who seem to want restrictions to be in place permanently.
Do not forget that these people are either independently wealthy, working from home or drawing furlough or benefits.
There does seem to be that current in society. I’m always surprised, when, for example, I report to someone that the latest research indicates prior infection provides long-lasting immunity. They seem to recoil, as if they don’t want this to be true. As if they want us to live in this nightmarish dystopia forever. Strange.
It’s a desire to outsource responsibility to an external protecting authority. To relinquish personal control. This has to be dressed up as either a disease (I can’t help it) or as a virtuous concern for others (it’s selfish to think of yourself). Either way it makes people angry when it’s exposed. The psychological underpinning of tyranny is the willing compliance of a vast section of the people. Both Soviet and German camps were policed by willing prisoners, eager to turn on their comrades in return for small privileges. No doubt it will be the same here when the thought crime camps get set up. Shalakov says there’s two kinds of prisoners in such places: they all of course believe themselves innocent, but some believe everyone else to be guilty, that their case is just a mistake in an otherwise fair system, while the rest know it’s a set up for everyone. Which one will I be I wonder
The problem we have with Long-Covid in healthcare is that we have no clear definition of the problem. Let us assume first that to have the condition, the patient needs to have had a confirmed coronavirus infection. As a clinician, I have seen several patients presenting with normal health conditions that they have attributed to long-covid without actually showing that they have had the infection. Secondly, before there was Covid, we had post-viral fatigue syndrome, Perrin et al.; 2020 published a clear explanation of the problem in a letter titled ‘Into the looking glass: Post-viral syndrome post COVID-19’. Thirdly, with any severe systemic infection, the body will have suffered a degree of reversible and irreversible damage either to single or multiple organs. In fact, some of this damage is also going to be a function of the life-saving treatment. For many, the healing process will take time both physically and mentally; some however, may never return to their previous level of health. As you say in your conclusion, the situation is not binary but spread along a complex continuum. We need a high-quality consensus in the science community defining Long-Covid to avoid confusion, misdiagnosis and research waste.
Long Covid is obviously all in the mind. We should ignore it and spend the money we save by focussing on real problems like those of men children who truly want to be women children.
I think some downvoters missed the irony of your post!
Appreciated.
Long covid is very real, it may be a number of things that are unrelated and just happened to an infected person as Chronic Fatigue does happen for no known reason mostly, but some get it from their covid bout – I think it is the cytokine storm syndrome and if you do get the post viral fatigue, when you push to fatigue by working before recovery, your immune system goes back into overdrive and you get the storm again – and worse. It needs slow recovery with great nutrition and out of bed rest.
But I began by searching on ‘A 2011 study of 109 SARS patients in Toronto’ when I failed to recover, and then into many other Post Viral Fatigue studies of other viruses – AND good I did as it gave me the plan to recover, slow and easy as overstimulating your self sets you way back….
This has become such a heated discussion that any attempt to understand it is met with aggressive pushback. An astonishing array of symptoms are being attributed to long covid, with support groups including everything and everyone without question. But we have to question.
There seems to be several subgroups, and IMO we need to start calling these by different names. First of all, the seriously ill at the start group, who had covid pneumonia, were hospitalised etc. PICS is well understood, and may take a long time to recover from: but tends to be slow and steady.
Then you have those who had a mild disease, but are hit be a bus later. Similar to glandular fever and other viral illnesses, this seems to be caused by autonomic disregulation. Basically the pacemaker that controls your autonomic system gets out of kilter, particularly if you don’t rest early in the disease and allow the virus to clear properly. This can result in relapsing / remitting illness with severe post exercise symptom exacerbation.
I had long covid, as is defined, and I couldn’t get going properly for about 7 months: but then I turned a corner and didn’t get post exercise crashes. I put this down to prolonged clearing of the virus.
IMO to serve patients well, a long covid diagnosis should be reserved for those with either lung symptoms, and / or post exercise crashes. There is too much crossover with symptoms from the constant worry of living through a pandemic and changes to our social interaction and physical activity otherwise. If you have one of these two symptoms, then of course you take other things into consideration: as you would for any patient using the biopsychosocial model.
By including everything, without a control group, you can’t see the wood for the trees otherwise. And since nobody will get ethical approval for controls to have brain or other organ scans, these are not convincing either: there is an astonishing variation of ‘normal’ results on scans that bear no relation to the symptoms patients experience. Treat the man, not the scan. Unfortunately, I fear that ‘seek and ye shall find’ will be more likely, and we shall blunder down a cascade of interventions that will ultimately be damaging for the patients.
Good for you – and I had that panting from any effort for weeks – although I was very fit. I also did these breath exercises for lung issues (I read about), Fill your lungs full, hold your breath as long as tolerable, me was a minute, exhale with a little pressure resistance, totally fully. You find your lung capacity is still good, but still pant and breathless from effort – but these exercises are supposed to do good things for this lung issue, and I did them – and it lets you know your lung capacity and oxygen situation, in case there are changes. (NOT OVER DOING IT _ JUST staying in your comfort range)
BUT YES< REST and heal before pushing back to normal life. Good nutrition.
Ha yes! I didn’t have the shortness of breath. I’m a physio, and a trained singer. So when I felt I had a tight chest, I knew what to do.
persuading people to rest and recover is much more difficult than persuading them to exercise, in my experience. Most people do the latter automatically, of only to get back to their previous lives.
Since almost everything to do with COVID19 has become politicized, so has the legitimacy of Long Covid. I think your explanation is one of the best I have read – I completely accept that Long Covid exists, but nailing down true cases vs people who “feel” they must have it will be difficult given that we live now in a time where “feelings” often override evidence. Much like the gender debate, rational discussion and the desire to have actual criteria and testing for a diagnoses will trigger those who don’t want scrutiny when they choose to “identify” as something.
Thank you.
Yes, there is definitely a nocebo effect from reading the side effects of covid. None of this is helpful, least of all for those who suffer from those with serious issues: who will find that due to the ludicrousness of other people’s claims, their illnesses are marked as psychological by association.
Throughout the whole Covid19 thing, the media has regularly and repeatedly reported things along the lines of “scientist’s discover X about Covid19 and it is awful”; and the scientists may be correct and X may well be awful. But, there is a paucity of context. It always reads as if Covid19 is uniquely awful on account of X.
But, how many of those awful-about-Covid19 things are true about other conditions (as Alka Hughes-Hallett describes in another comment)? If so, are we going to ignore those other conditions because Covid19 is *SO* much worse, when really it is not.
Also, the 99.5% survival rate meaning a lot of deaths. Well, overall survival rate is about 99% (about 1% die each year) and there is an awful lot of overlap between those deaths. So while death from Covid19 is bad at a personal level, at a societal level it really is not a big deal (other than, perhaps, that the deaths are bunched up into short periods),
Right. For context: Life expectancy is 82 years. This means that the survival rate from COVID (99.5%) is greater than the survival rate from life (98.8%).
Well yes, but a huge percentage of those that died are old and/or have serious co-morbidities. This makes percentages of deaths look skewed, especially as the whole of society is being severely punished and impacted by ongoing lockdowns, masks, endless fear-mongering and the like. All for measures that have been proven not to ultimately work.
Then the argument that long Covid could be the rationale for allowing crazy damaging policies to be rolled out is also flawed. What is the percentage of the percentage infected that survive severely damaged – bearing in mind that post viral syndrome has always existed? I have had a perhaps mild version of it for about 4 months and it wasn’t discussed and I just soldiered on, went to work etc before getting put into a cortisone tent so that I could breathe properly without coughing.
This is not to say that I am not sympathetic, but I do not expect people to lose their livelihoods and futures because I am old.
Apparently some people read the Guardian without noticing it is a foaming, gnashing, whinging lie-sheet like its eugenicist stable mate from the 30s – the Volkischer Beobachter. These people are already likely to suffer from brain fog and irritablility, and have been long before SARS-CoV2 was a thing. So please remove this “evidence” of long covid from the piece.
I shake my head at this long Covid nonsense. Does it exist, yes. Is it confined to post Covid illness , absolutley fricking NOT, reality check time.
I have :
Long Measles
My right ear was affected when I was a child. Discovered later the frequency response to high and low frequencies is degraded which makes it my preferred ear for phone calls! (think about it….)
Long Blocked Ears
I was given a nasal spray to clear this, which it did, but it also stripped the lining from the back of my throat (a known side effect). Ever since I have a re-occurring tickly cough. Great for clearing a room in this Covid era 😉
Long CollarBone
Broke my collar bone but it did not mend straight. The hospital said they could break it and try again! I refused so now my right shoulder is smaller than the left and just recently aches when the weather is bad.
Long Middle Finger
Broke my finger whilst pished (it was pointing backwards) so I snapped it back then wrapped it up soaked in t-tree oil, I did not get medical treatment. It’s now a little bent.
Long Cellulitis
Bacterial infection of the leg, my shin is now red. I was give creams but they merely made my skin very soft and prone to breaking and thus prone to re-infection, so I stopped. It only affected my modelling career (kidding).
Long Sciatica
Back snapped playing badminton in my 20’s, ever since now and then, I get back pain which when really bad makes me walk as if I’ve a had a “toilet” accident
You have lived a bit! I realise this wasn’t the point – a good point worth making. But still!
I have a minor stab scar in my right foot (accident), a keyhole op scar very like a bullethole to secure a loosely dislocating shoulder – and a white scar on my head from nutting a cupboard by accident. Not terrible, but could do better!
Would be useful to mention the fact that there are antiviral drugs which have been shown in clinical trials to be effective in treating Long COVID, most notably Ivermectin.
This changes the calculus. As treatments improve, the logic both for lockdowns and mass vaccination campaigns quickly erodes. In this context, it is breathtaking the lengths to which Western medical powers seem prepared to go to limit the application of this treatment. What’s worse, the conventional systems through which plurocratic societies arrive at rational decisions seem no longer to function.
What’s left is revolution.
Obviously people who have been in hospital on ventilators or otherwise seriously ill are not going to recover overnight. Their bodies, which probably weren’t healthy before, have been subjected to too much trauma. It would seem necessary, as the writer says, to filter those out from those who don’t know whether they actually had the virus, and have the same symptoms that seem to go with other dubious syndromes such as ‘fibromyalgia’ and ‘ME’.
The salient phrase in the article for me is the reference to ‘identifying as having Long Covid’. At one time, people didn’t ‘identify’ as having medical conditions; they were diagnosed as having them by doctors. Now people apparently diagnose themselves from the internet and announce what they are suffering from; and it goes in fashionable waves; ‘ME’ first, then ‘food intolerances’, then ‘fibromyalgia’ and now ‘Long Covid’. I wonder how many of these ‘sufferers’ have been reduced to such a state of anxiety by government fear-mongering that the possibility that they might actually have The Plague has left them with a form of PTSD. Constant mask-wearing probably isn’t helping them either!
Self identifying may have been their only option. GPS hiding from patients,many still not normalised in working. Bourses were the only ones seeing patients and doing tests.
I think this is an interesting idea, I wonder if there’s been any research done on the previous medical histories of those who’ve been reported as suffering from long covid. I think such research should include diet too. Although downplayed at the time, its clear that poor diet & low vitamin D played a huge part in whether someone would become ill or possibly die from Covid (especially people over 50)
Post Viral Fatigue Syndrome, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, ME. These are all diagnosable conditions that split opinion in the medical world and are difficult to attribute causally. My entirely unqualified observation is that long COVID will likely be another such condition (if it’s not just another flavour of PVFS).
A man who does have a scientific and medical theory with success rates from his treatments to match is Dr Raymond Perrin. His therapy has shown that by fixing or improving lymphatic drainage from the the brain (previously believed not to be connected to the lymphatic system) and spinal chord, long suffering patients can be fully relieved of all symptoms. The technique has also been very successful for cases of Lyme disease that conventional medicine was unable to cure.
My son was born by ventouse delivery and suffered with ME like symptoms for many years in his teens. He was diagnosed with depression, ME and even high functioning autism. 2 months into treatment using the Perrin Technique and the changes are stark, we’re incredibly hopeful that the nightmare of his last 5 years at the hands of the NHS et al are well and truly behind him.
This is a very good article. Ritchie is very honest about the temptations involved, which is commendable.
The anti-sceptic talking point about how 99.5% is still a lot of death is not that strong though. This assumes a world in which everyone gets infected. That’s a common model assumption because the ultra-simple theories on which those models are built provide no way for an epidemic to end except by infecting everyone up to a herd immunity threshold. But those models have been shown repeatedly to be invalid – in reality, of course, the world is full of infectious diseases that haven’t infected everyone.
Moreover, viruses evolve. This immediately complicates the question of how many people “the virus” can infect, because it may be that by the time enough seasons have passed that “everyone” has been infected (if that ever happens at all), the virus has changed so much that it’s not really the same virus as in the beginning. We are already seeing this with claims that the delta variant is more infectious but less deadly.
Epidemiology has no answers to any of this: just blithe overly-simple assumptions and a “trust us, we’re the experts” attitude. It’s safe to say we really don’t know how many people current SARS-CoV-2 strains will be able to eventually infect, thus any argument of the form “IFR * population size > acceptable death tolerances” is on very shaky ground before even getting to the right hand side.
I think he hits several nails on the head very well. In addition to Covid being a novel illness without much research relating to it, Long Covid is obviously extremely variable.
I have DM2; it is not in my mind, it is in my genes! I am fortunate to only have a couple of symptoms of which one, the cataracts, is over and done with. Other members of my family have had to stop such activities as running marathans or running at all, some use their hands to go up stairs and other symptoms vary both in nature and severity in the family.
I think there are some rather unqualified comments below.
Obviously, there are many people like yourself with real medical problems. But can you not see that if there is a Judy Johnson clone standing next to you with minor, self-inflicted problems, then it detracts a little from your concerns. The system blows up and seriously ill people have to wait for years for treatment.
“But Long Covid patients aren’t mere pawns in our debates over pandemic policy. They’re people with terribly debilitating symptoms who deserve far better from scientists than a fruitless — and oddly dualistic — debate about whether those symptoms can be put into the “physical” or the “psychological” box.”
In other parts of the world, health care providers are falling over themselves to offer care and treatment to anyone who believes they need it, whether for Long Covid or similar. As long as we have a medical care system based on rationing and gatekeeping in the UK, the system has a built in rationale for seeking to minimise the number of people eligible for care.
We really need reform. My sister who lives in the Netherlands pays a modest health insurance fee and the government pays the rest. Doctors there continued to see patients with appropriate safety precautions and dentists invested in special UV virus killing lights and continued to treat patients. Here the situation has been a horror story for far too many. We pay for the NHS through taxes but are treated as if we have no rights and must put up with whatever they are willing/able to offer. Far too much bureaucracy!
Our bodies and minds are complicated things and there is a fairly delicate balance that keeps us well and sane. Almost any illness or accident has the potential to undo that balance. A virus that has infected a huge number of people is likely to cause ongoing problems in a proportion of those infected. This happens each year with flue which is the reason the NHS offers vaccines to the vulnerable. “Long COVID” has unfortunately become a loaded political thing. It shouldn’t be, our experience of other illnesses leaving residual effects makes it unlikely it’s some sort of mass hysteria. However I’m sure some people who have self diagnosed themselves with “long COVID” are mistaken. It is a fashionable condition.
Dear Stuart,
you are like most modern doctors stuck in a thinking method that needs to find and prove the cause of the disease coming from ‘outside of the patient’. You need this for a number of reasons: rationale, evidence, and more so the possibility to put patients in boxes. Makes you look scientific….but maybe you have noted by now that the reality of medicine does not adapt to the wish of modern society to prove every illness and classify every disease and that each individual patient has their own illness experience. Of course admitting this a little is possible to get by but admitting it wholly or fully …. creates some issues as you will become an outcast of the medical world…
In short: chronic illness exists, and being able or not to classify or name chronic illness will not change this. Further the medical community should be ashamed of doubting of the illness of any patient who seeks help. The illness of the patient may be ‘meaningless for you’ but will be very meaningful for the patient…. who is the more important subject in this relation between the medic and the patient?
Time to step back and look at medicine from a different perspective….
The Long Covid issue is really vexing
On one hand, media and Covid Taliban go on that 10-30% of people infected with COV-2 go on to develop lingering symptons as long as 6 months later – even asymptomatics (the contradiction in that statement lost on them)
Long Covid clearly exists. I don’t doubt the sincerity of those who report their issues. But is it as prevalent as stated? I feel the threat of Long Covid is being weaponized to maintain some level of lockdown / restriction etc. There is no way that even 10% of people have Long Covid; there would be millions upon million upon millions of people all over the world who are suffering and every single one of us would know multiple people who are not able to go back to their regular life.
Anecdotally, as of this writing, of the 30+ people I know who have had covid; confirmed with a PCR, not a single one has any issues beyond 2 months
So, my question is, why?