Long Covid in the media and social media 2023

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From the Leana Wen op-ed:
resources must shift from avoiding the coronavirus
We are literally well over a year into "everyone get infected quickly so we get it over with" and on the tail end of constant minimizing and hopium. Almost all measures to reduce incidence have ceased and the permanent ones, like better ventilation, were resisted completely and won't happen any time soon.

And of course there are zero effective treatments for this, those are also being resisted aggressively. So that focus is towards yet more disastrous hopium-fueled failure.

On the advice of people like Wen. Of all the things that are disastrous in the medical profession, the complete inability to accept responsibility is the killer shot, it negates everything else. Outside of work hours people can be all sorts of things, professionals are people. But this level of malfeasance and dishonor while on the clock is simply disqualifying.

No one in their right mind would ever pay an expert who lies in the conduct of their work. In fact this is the stuff that leads to lawsuits, loss of license and, sometimes if there is a pattern of misconduct, reforms.

Meanwhile the very people who pushed the mass reinfection still have a platform for their disinformation, and many are promoted and work in the major institutions, still continuing their disastrous work. Responsible for the disaster, and the failure to address the disaster.

I'm serious that moving forward, if we are to make healthcare better for all, it will be necessary to work entirely around this profession, a state of complete monopoly doesn't work with mass negligence and dishonesty like this. No wonder things are so awful and medicine is falling behind all the other expert disciplines.
 
Long-covid symptoms less likely after omicron

A study of 4.9 million people in the United States who had covid-19 between early 2020 and January 2022 shows a total of 7.2 percent sought care for symptoms typical of long covid. The rate declined with successive waves. The study found the symptoms can be common but are more frequent after the covid infection.

The capacity of the virus to induce LC in any given person may have reduced. The people predisposed to LC may have already developed it so fewer are "getting it again" after repeat infection. The indicator is "sought care for symptoms" not "developed symptoms", so with successive waves, relatively more people may have realised that there is no care available so were less inclined to seek it.
 
I will preface this by saying that I've been reading most of what is published on the /r/covidlonghaulers forum from the start, and that for the first 2 years there was a lot of hope about getting help from medicine. It is not a doctor-bashing forum, and it's a wide-access forum, not some disgruntled fringe minority.

It also started with a lot of positivity and some dislike for the doomsayers talking about how awful medicine is at chronic illness. There was a flurry of trying to figure out treatments and encouraging any bit of improvement.

There is no such hope anymore, but it started with a lot of it. Again, this is a not doctor-bashing disgruntled minority, Reddit is basically like the lobby of a huge conference, it's the first stop many people have, as "average user" as it gets. Despite all the gaslighting. There was a lot of tolerance for this being "new" and "research takes time".

This may be the strongest indictment of any group of professionals of any size ever, revealing failure of such depth and depravity it cannot be believed without living it. There is genuinely nothing else like this, even in minimally regulated professions. Those are the kinds of reviews that guarantee a short career in any profession, but it's not about specific people, it's about the entire system.

Has your experience with Long Covid changed your opinion of doctors/healthcare in general? How so?
 
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The captions in case you don't have the time or energy to watch:
Host: Do you feel understood?
Host: You have a medical background yourself.
Tom Molmans: Yeah, well that's starting to happen now. It's been a while. And I'm, I got sick quite late relative to people who have been sick since the start of the pandemic. But you look to the people who have been ill for years after an infection. People with chronic fatigue syndrome or with Lyme's disease or with other post-infectious conditions. They have somewhat been backed into a psychological corner.
Host: Yes. You're just imagining it. It's in your mind.
Tom Molmans: Yes, or at least that the mind has a lot to do with it. And, what we understand now is that this is not the case at all. And as a psychiatrist, a doctor who deals with the mind, I think I should say something about that. And for my taste that is, and for the taste of a whoel lot of patients that has happened to little. That's actually why I"m here, because I've noticed that people like it when I say that.
Host: And what is the main reason do you think, based on your own experiences, that this has happened too little?
Tom Molmans: What do you mean exactly?
Host: Well, look, Mark van Ranst says that one in five in America. One in eight in the Netherlands. You would say there are many patients similar to your complaints.
Tom Molmans Yes.
Host: And yet a large number feel, I also saw it when announcing the topic, a large number feel completely unseen, not heard or not understood. And if there are so many people with similar complaints, then I do no understand why it is not taken seriously. At least why you feel taht way. Where does that come from?
Tom Molmans: Well, one of the reasons I think is part of medicine. It has been thoroughly assumed that this is largely a psychological problem. A lot of doctors have been brought up with that. That's partly what I grew up with. And certainly the moment you get sick yourself, and you actually find out about all that history of a degree of neglect, of making people sick with treatments instead of making them better. Conventional medicine has done that. Charlatans have not done that. Yes, then you also understand why we still have so many steps to take. We have a lot of time to catch up actually on, yes, on overpsychologization and no medical research.

It's amazing there are now people on TV criticizing the BPS model. This never would have happened without long Covid.
Edit: no people -> now people. Sorry.
 
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Demystifying Long Covid and Long Covid Lockdown Syndrome on social media.

Long Covid is a physical, biological phenomenon. Long Lockdown, however, is psychosomatic. Easy.
I propose a new psychiatric disorder: Repetitive Re-Labeling Syndrome (ReReLaS).

Defined by the patient's obsession with generating an endless flow of new names and acronyms for currently unexplained diseases, in order to avoid facing up to their complete lack of understanding of those diseases.

Most commonly seen in the medical profession, primarily in psychiatry and psychology. But may also be observed in the general population.

There is no know treatment or cure. Patients must be removed from any positions of power and influence for the protection of broader society.
Appreciate the old.reddit link too!
This.

Please, good people, use the old.reddit form of link, instead of the new www.reddit form. So much less visual clutter.
 
MEDICAL EXAMINER
Long COVID Comes Into the Light

Even before 2020’s first horrific wave of COVID-19 deaths subsided, reports surfaced warning of a brutal second punch: Instead of recovering quickly after a mild infection, some people were suffering from symptoms that lingered or even intensified in the weeks and months that followed.


Long COVID is an unusual condition not only in its kaleidoscope of symptoms but also in the fact that it hadn’t been identified initially by doctors who encountered similar sets of symptoms in their patients. It was, rather, described by COVID patients themselves who, in the early months of the pandemic, found themselves mysteriously unable to get better. The complaints of early “long-haulers” were then picked up and amplified by activists, whose lobbying persuaded the government to allocate more than $1 billion in research funds. “Long COVID has a strong claim to be the first illness created through patients finding one another on Twitter,” researchers Felicity Callard and Elisa Perego wrote in the journal Social Science & Medicine. (They both suffered from long COVID themselves.) Patients desperately searching for answers were understandably dismayed to find little clarity from the medical community about their strange illness.

https://slate.com/technology/2023/03/long-covid-symptoms-studies-research-variant.html
 
MEDICAL EXAMINER
Long COVID Comes Into the Light

Even before 2020’s first horrific wave of COVID-19 deaths subsided, reports surfaced warning of a brutal second punch: Instead of recovering quickly after a mild infection, some people were suffering from symptoms that lingered or even intensified in the weeks and months that followed.


Long COVID is an unusual condition not only in its kaleidoscope of symptoms but also in the fact that it hadn’t been identified initially by doctors who encountered similar sets of symptoms in their patients. It was, rather, described by COVID patients themselves who, in the early months of the pandemic, found themselves mysteriously unable to get better. The complaints of early “long-haulers” were then picked up and amplified by activists, whose lobbying persuaded the government to allocate more than $1 billion in research funds. “Long COVID has a strong claim to be the first illness created through patients finding one another on Twitter,” researchers Felicity Callard and Elisa Perego wrote in the journal Social Science & Medicine. (They both suffered from long COVID themselves.) Patients desperately searching for answers were understandably dismayed to find little clarity from the medical community about their strange illness.

https://slate.com/technology/2023/03/long-covid-symptoms-studies-research-variant.html

Is this the piece recently published by Jeff Wise, who wrote an abysmal and atrocious hit job on patients in NY Mag??
 
two articles from the same website
An immunologist’s reflections on nine months of long COVID
In 2022, Dr Stéphanie Longet got COVID-19 and then Long COVID. Here, Longet, who studies vaccine-induced immunity, talks to VaccinesWork about her mission to understand the condition better.

Dr Stephanie Longet, who moved recently from the University of Oxford, UK, to be an assistant professor at the University of Saint-Etienne in France, had studied how to trigger immunity in the mucous membranes such as inside the mouth and nose long before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. When she became sick with Long COVID in June 2022, from which she has still not fully recovered, her work took on a new personal relevance. Now, she is working on how to induce mucosal immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 infection through vaccines targeted at the nose and throat, where the virus enters the body.
https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/immunologists-reflections-nine-months-long-covid

then we have
#VaccinesWork’s top 10 Long COVID stories

(which includes the above story)
Five things to know about Long COVID and chronic fatigue syndrome


Long COVID shares similarities with other post-viral conditions, and one of the most talked about crossovers is with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) – also known as myalgic encephalitis (ME). Here is what we know so far, including that half of Long COVID patients have CFS, that COVID-19 could reactivate CFS symptoms, and antivirals could help prevent Long COVID and treat CFS.

followed by Paul Garner.
https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/vaccinesworks-top-10-long-covid-stories
 

I've seen a few discussions of this on the bird app. It seems based on the WaPo study of health records showing that fewer people are seeking healthcare for LC.

This seems to be the new excuse. Even though all patient testimony reveal an almost universal pattern of negligence and discrimination leading to them no longer seeking healthcare because they get the loud message not to bother. In addition to most seeking care for it not being told anything by their physician, which then never gets recorded as anything other than possibly "worried well", or whatever.

Even by the standards of propaganda, this is impressive manufacturing consent. The very people who fail to record something are, yet again, pointing at their refusal to record things as evidence that those things don't exist.

Completely incompatible with professional expertise. Using their own failure to fail even worse. Without accountability. Without even any damn reasoning or looking at reality. Supply-side medicine that only looks down at its own navel.
 
I've seen a few discussions of this on the bird app. It seems based on the WaPo study of health records showing that fewer people are seeking healthcare for LC.

This seems to be the new excuse. Even though all patient testimony reveal an almost universal pattern of negligence and discrimination leading to them no longer seeking healthcare because they get the loud message not to bother. In addition to most seeking care for it not being told anything by their physician, which then never gets recorded as anything other than possibly "worried well", or whatever.

Even by the standards of propaganda, this is impressive manufacturing consent. The very people who fail to record something are, yet again, pointing at their refusal to record things as evidence that those things don't exist.

Completely incompatible with professional expertise. Using their own failure to fail even worse. Without accountability. Without even any damn reasoning or looking at reality. Supply-side medicine that only looks down at its own navel.

This piece is being celebrated in predictable quarters. The narrative is that fear of a massive wave of disability was totally unfounded and the product of mass hysteria. Those who are disabled are also likely the products of mass hysteria. Jeff Wise is being heralded as the journalist we need in these polarizing times.
 
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