COVID-19 Pandemic-Revealed Consistencies and Inconsistencies in Healthcare: A Medical and Organizational View, 2022, Araja et al

Abstract
The circumstances of the Coronavirus disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus (COVID-19) pandemic have had a significant impact on global and national developments, affecting the existence of society in all its expressions, as well as the lives of people themselves.

In the context of the pandemic, increased attention has been focused on acute measures, but the ending of the pandemic is expected as a resolution of the related healthcare problems. However, there are several indicators that the COVID-19 pandemic might induce long-term consequences for individual and public health. Some of the consequences are inferred and predictable, but there are also areas of medicine that have been indirectly affected by the pandemic, and these consequences have not yet been sufficiently explored.

This study is focused on drawing attention to some of the COVID-19 pandemic consistencies and the pandemic-revealed inconsistencies in healthcare. Content analysis and statistical analysis were applied to achieve the aim of the study.

The main findings of the study address chronic disease burden (particularly, myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS)), healthcare governance and organizational issues, and the synergy between health policy perspectives and innovative solutions in practice.

The study provides insight into the particular healthcare issues affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, such as the increase in mortality in some diagnoses besides COVID-19 and the possible emergence of a new type of resistance—vaccine-resistance—contemporaneously supporting the identification of the tendencies and currently unnoticed indirect consistencies and inconsistencies revealed by the pandemic.

https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9032/10/6/1018

 

Thank you for this posting @Sly Saint, and for the highlights, @Hutan.

From the article:

"ME/CFS may move from the rare disease category to a wide group of diseases with similar symptoms."


The idea of ME moving from a "rare" disease to a larger group of similar diseases is interesting.

Interesting in that this movement is seen as a possibility, and that ME is termed "rare".

Also interesting because historically, it was the BPS movement that presented ME as part of a larger group of health issues, as part of the wallpaper - "everyone feels like you do".

Not at all what the authors are suggesting here.


However, I question the description of ME as rare.

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) report counted 836,000 to 2.5 million Americans with ME: https://nap.nationalacademies.org/resource/19012/MECFS_ReportBrief.pdf

Statistics Canada reports that more than500,000 Canadians have ME:
https://cihr-irsc.gc.ca/e/51074.html

The Orphan Drug Act defines a rare disease as a disease or condition that affects less than 200,000 people in the United States.

https://www.fda.gov/patients/rare-d...s a rare disease?,people in the United States.