Thanks NellieWelcome to the forum @Tom123
Not sure why this is gaining traction now, the paper came out a couple of months ago (and it's a hypothesis paper, not "new research").article:
New research provides insight into Long COVID and ME
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/958531
eta: also https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-07-insight-covid.html
https://www.otago.ac.nz/news/news/otago228700.html
loads of others on the same
I don't know where they learned anatomy, but I'm fairly sure that not only is the brain part of the body, the body generally doesn't function without a brain, a very important part of itself. It's like my body and my body-hand, or my body and my body-liver.
This is a lot like the drugs and alcohol nonsense. Buddy, alcohol is very much a drug, this distinction is entirely political.
Can't say I understand the value of doing that anymore than doing the same with the vascular system. Or the immune system. Or the lymphatic system. Just because modern medicine gives magical properties to high-level thinking, intelligence, doesn't make it so, the same issues seem to exist in animals with extremely simple nervous systems, far too simple to have any of that psychosocial woo.That is true but it poses an intersting dilemma. What word could be used to describe the body excluding the brain and any parts of the central nervous system considered relevant. We may just have to accept this usage.