Long Covid in the media and social media 2022

"In many regards, long Covid has echoes of existing autoimmune diseases and (usually post-viral) conditions such as ME/CFS, which are complex, poorly understood, hard to diagnose and tough to treat. The biggest difference may be that Covid’s seriousness and its spread have ensured greater attention and resources this time; patients with ME/CFS and some autoimmune illnesses who have long complained about the lack of interest and investment in research hope that it may lead to breakthroughs that could help them."

 

Not for some in the Comments it appears. Not content with gaslighting themselves, one commenter is patronisingly gaslighting us too:

"physical symptoms may break your body but the catalyst was always psychological.

The brain will always work to keep your body safe

ie my brain decided I needed taken out to ensure I couldn’t keep going at the rate I was. So that meant ensuring I lost my ability to walk for a few weeks: that kept me in bed: when I tried I was knocked back, my brain was stopping me returning to the expected level of support to my family and to the stressful environment at work.

It was only when I could work out the exact psychological issues that gave me agony and took me out that I was able to start healing.

It’s psychologically based. Face up to what you’re scared of, what your clever brain is trying to stop you from doing. Then as best as you can, work on your wellbeing and accept you’ll have knock backs.

These conditions are all in your head but not in the way that sounds, remember your brain is trying to save you.....
to deny the interaction of (well buried) psychological impacts on physical ailments is amazingly naïve

..... Remember I have been suffering exactly what you believe only you special people have got for over 7 years now".


Gobsmackingly arrogant.

 

An Australian news story about a "post-covid clinic" in a private hospital (from what I could tell from the story, the public hospitals in Queensland don't have LC clinics as yet).

As expected, there's a "multidisciplinary team" comprised of various quack specialities recommending what looks very much like graded exercise and other pointless idiocy:

Inside Brisbane's post-COVID clinic | 7NEWS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGgJ7uM1OVg

Note the first "graduate" of the course at the end of the story. She doesn't look at all well to me. Although I'm sure that the team will claim her as a patient who has successfully recovered.

 

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/government-reports-long-covid-lay-existing/story?id=87824116

Post copied to a new thread:United States: Government Memorandum on Addressing the Long-Term Effects of COVID-19

 

NIH tweet for what it is worth:

 

I was under the impression that being fully vaccinated/boostered up had been shown to provide absolutely no protection against long covid.

I'm also under the impression that being fully vaccinated/boostered up provides no protection against catching covid, only against hospitalisation.

Maybe I'm out of date?

 

In round numbers, I think the latest data shows about 50% protection against infection from a recent booster. Protection against Long Covid is harder to quantify, but probably around 50% according to ONS data. Some studies have shown a lot lower protection against LC (particularly the Al-Aly VA paper), but most of those papers don't seem to be measuring Long Covid very well, so it's a stretch to draw any conclusions about vaccine protection from them. I think some people think LC will get more attention if they claim that vaccines don't help, so they tend to amplify studies that don't show any benefit, even if those studies are not very good.

Combining the two, the risk of Long Covid is probably reduced by about 75% with a recent booster. Not amazing, but a lot better than nothing.

 

"Long COVID" by The Pennsylvania Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine

https://www.pamda.org/longcovid.html

 

Tragicomic responses in this Twitter thread that will be familiar ground for the forum. Some examples —

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1554986303682379777

Katy Bach on Twitter: Important note on the new White House long Covid report! It mentions that ~1M ppl may be out of work due to LC. That is based on a Brookings Institute report I wrote 8 months ago. I am currently updating the figures — now that we have more data, we know it’s actually 2-4M+

 

That thing about people thinking they're recovered..... .

https://twitter.com/user/status/1555679560557121536

 

Here in Hungary you couldn't read literally anything about people being out of work long-term due to long covid until now. The media is really not that much interested in long covid here. But now a few days ago I saw an article about our healthcare system being on the brink of collapse due to a shortage of doctors (to be honest, it is always on the brink of collapse, but I guess now even more so).

There were actually three main reasons for this shortage but one thing mentioned was the doctors and healthcare workers who are missing from healthcare now due to long-term covid problems (and also who died of covid). Unfortunately this was more like a mere footnote and the Chamber of Doctors was asking for things like reorganization to better fill these gaps and higher salaries in certain fields etc. The problem of not being able to work was not addressed at all even by them. It was quite disappointing.

But now at least there are some signs even here that things are not right.

My "dream" would be to see a doctor with long covid to step up and start talking about their experiences. But I guess they don't due to the same reason why they don't step up if they have ME/CFS (not even within my own group, but they are there).

 

Most likely they're in denial about it being a long-term condition - they think their recovery is just around the corner and they don't want all the nonsense that comes with a functional diagnosis.

 

Yesterday, my hairdresser told me she's had 7 clients with long covid who are experiencing noticeable hair loss. What an excellent extra motivation for doing everything possible not to contract covid!

 

Could that be a pointer to micro blood clots or at least poor blood flow in the capillaries?
Treatments for hair loss include Minoxidil which is a vasodilator.

 

I don't know the cause, but what the possibilities you mentioned sound plausible. My hairdresser's clients who've experienced significant hair loss are all women with long covid. I'll ask her if any have improved and, if so, how long it took.

 

There have been some dramatic TikTok videos posted. The actress Alyssa Milano posted a video in 2020 and it was discussed a few months ago on Good Morning America.

 

Merged thread.

full article
https://www.wbur.org/news/2022/08/08/mystery-long-covid-chronic-fatigue-research