Impacts of the 2024 change in US government on ME/CFS and Long Covid

Thanks for the detailed reply.

You know a lot more than me here, but since congress doesn’t have a strong republican majority, they’ll probably need to convince more moderate GOP senators too.

I could see a major NIH shakeup, and I could see RFK getting nominated, but in my intuition, it’ll be an either one of the other deal. I’m not convinced moderate republicans are willing to give RFK the power to completely restructure the largest health funder on earth.
 
Yeah several friends and family have asked me today about RFK’s likelihood on Senate approval and I just don’t even know anymore with where the moderates sit on this. This climate is just unpredictable right now.

5 days ago my answer would have been a strong no. With several (understatement) other risky Cabinet nominees, I think it may depend on where the moderates decide to fight their battle. That part I can’t really discern yet.
 
Last edited:
Yann04 said:
I don’t want him to fund a whole new batch of “healthy diet and exercise” type research which seems to be what he’s into.
Click to expand...
Yep, be careful what you wish for.

Besides, a lot of what he is proposing goes very much against entrenched corporate/donor interests, and it seems implausible that they or the incoming admin and their party will allow him to interfere in that cosy nexus of mutually very beneficial interests.

Big Food and Big Pharmacy will probably be safe.
 
Yann04 said:
He thinks money is wasted on things like COVID and infectious diseases because their impacts are overblown while chronic health issues caused by “chemicals and bad foods” and natural remedies like healthy food and exercise are ignored.

I think he also thinks reckless research into infectious disease is what caused the covid pandemic in the first place. (but not sure).
Click to expand...

Thanks for the explanation, Yann04.
 
My instinct is that rather little change will actually occur with this new administration. Most of what is being said is not because of 'beliefs'. It is just being said for the sake of sounding 'anti-elite', whatever that is supposed to mean if you are from a presidential family. And if there is change I think it may be difficult to predict what policy shifts actually occur. I don't think the politicians have got as far as thinking that through in any way that might be writable down.

What might well happen is that a cultural group that has had a stranglehold on medical science gets pushed out - maybe typified by Fauci. These are people who assume they know best but are actually quite second rate minds who just follow each other's fashions, intoning incantations like gene expression and big data and multi-omics. We have the same people in the UK. They have become much more like shamans high priests than scientific investigators. The hit rocks with sacred sticks and water comes out - or at least they claim that.

Creative science will re-establish itself at some point but it may not be in the USA for a decade or more for reasons that have little to do with party politics.
 
I found a quote from an article he wrote last year that touches on Long COVID. He minimises it’s impact and says it’s mainly “post ICU syndrome”

They think long COVID will be a mass disabling event, an ever-looming threat just around the corner. Though the symptoms and syndromes of long-COVID are often hard to define, they are convinced that repeated COVID infections dramatically increase the risk of becoming debilitated. This is not to say that there are not people who genuinely suffer for a long time after recovering from COVID. For instance, COVID patients who ended up in the ICU often have a very long recovery time. But this patient population is a small fraction of the overall population.
Click to expand...

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/the-covid-wars
 
Last edited:
Dakota15 said:
Yeah several friends and family have asked me today about RFK’s likelihood on Senate approval and I just don’t even know anymore with where the moderates sit on this. This climate is just unpredictable right now.

5 days ago my answer would have been a strong no. With several (understatement) other risky Cabinet nominees, I think it may depend on where the moderates decide to fight their battle. That part I can’t really discern yet.
Click to expand...
I don't think senate approval matters. They already signaled they'll push through anyone, and where recess appointments fail, 'acting' positions is how the last year unfolded last time. No one pushed back. Hell the AG and SecDef were replaced with 'actings' for the final months and no one batted an eye. It's safe to assume that anyone nominated will hold that position, unless something happens internally, between the nominee and T, and another toady gets nominated and pushed through.

It's not as if there's anything anyone can actually do about this. Governments operate on norms as much as they operate on written rules. And neither matter here. Unless there is an ego clash between them, RFK will head HHS, and whoever runs the NIH and the CDC will be just as awful. Which is little difference from a current state of awful, most likely some Koch-backed toadies who pushed for herd immunity. It will be bad, but the differences in outcomes will be much smaller than people expect. The current way of doing things is so extremely inefficient that it barely moves the needle and in the end everyone adopted the eugenics approach. Every country. Every single one of them, whoever is in charge.

It is true that the current system has failed us miserably, and whatever gets rebuilt out of throwing it all to the ground has a slim chance of working out, which can still be an improvement on the current intransigent gridlock. Worst case is just as bad as it ever was. Not much change, really. Basically the main change would be more people being subject to the same incompetence we have suffered. If only it could be expected that people would learn something out of this...
 
Last edited:
IMG_0448.png
Click to expand...

If he really becomes in charge of the NIH I will be devastated.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Not to be a debbie downer but I'd be prepared, if already speculated, that it's a likelihood it will happen (I could be proven wrong, so I'm not placing any bets).

I honestly don't really foresee that much change with how ME/LC are approached at NIH, but that's just how I feel how low the bar is. I don't really think it's that different than what's been there for leadership ever since the mid 80's. Kinda all feels the same from here. Leaders come in and out and the results all stay the same.

(ie, how did Collins / Tabak / Bertagnolli allow for $820 million to be spent on symptom observation in RECOVER? Mainly Collins / Tabak but still..)

Totally understand how it still feels disheartening though and can't blame anyone for that
 
Nature: 'Major biomedical funder NIH poised for massive reform under Trump 2.0'

'Sweeping changes and more research scrutiny could be on the way for the US National Institutes of Health'

'The NIH has been a frequent target of Trump...'

'NIH director Monica Bertagnolli, who will probably resign before Trump takes office, noted her disapproval with the proposals to collapse the number of institutes.'
 
One of the most important parts:
Several months later, Bhattacharya co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, a widely rebuked, discredited document calling on governments and scientists to reject large-scale COVID mitigation policies in favor of “focused protection” for the elderly.
Click to expand...
Although calling it widely rebuked or discredited is simply wrong, in the end every single country adopted those policies. Well, without the fake concern with 'focused protection', which was always complete BS. For sure it's wrong, but the current government embraced it just as every other government. So that's not much change here, it simply rewards the people who failed the worst. As is tradition. I have no doubt that people like Walitt will do very well in this new jungle. Bhattacharya's attitudes towards LC are very mainstream, in fact pretty much are the standard. In fact many MDs would rejoice if RECOVER is all cancelled out and ME/CFS funding is shut down, calling it a waste anyway.

Basically, now most medical research from the NIH will be terrible, and more of it will be neglected entirely. Instead of only some research. But for diseases affecting most people, progress has already been significant and will continue, so they won't notice much. It will simply slow progress to a crawl, but that won't be noticeable for at least a decade. By then AI will probably overtake much of the work anyway.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom