News from Australia

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ABC News: Queensland's Chief Health Officer says it's time to stop using the term 'long COVID'

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03...d-chief-health-officer-john-gerrard/103587836

(Does not mention "ME/CFS")

The term "long COVID" should be scrapped, according to Queensland's Chief Health Officer, because it creates unnecessary fear — and is "probably harmful".

John Gerrard said the description wrongly implied long-term post-COVID viral symptoms were "somehow unique and exceptional" to other viral infections, but new research suggested they were indistinguishable.
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After 12 months, 16 per cent of respondents reported ongoing symptoms, regardless of whether they had COVID-19, the flu, or another respiratory infection.

The survey also found three per cent of the COVID-19 patients said they had moderate to severe functional impairment — compared with 4.1 per cent of the non-COVID participants.
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Dr Gerrard said 94 per cent of participants who reported the moderate to severe level of functional limitations experienced fatigue, post-exertion symptom exacerbation, brain fog and changes to taste and smell a year after their infection.
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Given the study results, Dr Gerrard described long COVID as "probably a harmful term", given its potential to make some people hypervigilant to symptoms in the months after their infection, which could be detrimental to recovery.
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However, he stressed he was not questioning the validity of long COVID.

"Post-viral syndromes do occur. We're absolutely saying that it does exist," Dr Gerrard said.
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Sydney Morning Herald goes with: `Long COVID’ doesn’t exist as we know it, according to new research

Gerrard said long COVID appeared to be a severe and distinct disease simply because of the huge number of infections during the pandemic.

“We believe it is time to stop using terms like ‘long COVID’,” Gerrard said. “They wrongly imply there is something unique and exceptional about longer-term symptoms associated with this virus.
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“This terminology can cause unnecessary fear, and in some cases, hypervigilance to longer symptoms that can impede recovery.”
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Fortunately they sought comment from Jeremy Nicholson.

Jeremy Nicholson, Professor of Medicine at Murdoch University, said the question at hand was whether long COVID was truly a unique condition worthy of its own name, or just another syndrome caused by a range of viruses.

“Unfortunately, this question cannot be simply answered in this work,” Nicholson said. “The study is observational, based on reported symptoms with no physiological or detailed functional follow-up data.”
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Without lab analysis of the patients, and without knowing for sure that long COVID isn’t physiologically different to other post-viral syndromes, the evidence to dismiss it isn’t there, he argued.

“Until this is resolved, we should still use the long COVID term because it pinpoints exactly the underlying viral cause for a given individual,” which may be relevant to future treatments, Nicholson said.
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An alternative way of framing this would have been "Influenza and other viruses are just as likely as SARS-CoV-2 in causing potentially lifelong disabling chronic illness. 3-4% of people have moderate to severe functional impairment, lasting at least a year following infection."
 
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For those outside Australia, the Queensland state health department, under Dr Gerrard, is probably the worst psychosomatic offender in any of our governments, certainly since the Covid pandemic started. Their position is extreme, to put it politely.

They do not represent the broader story here.
 
Also in the Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/mar/15/long-covid-symptoms-flu-cold

Why do they have to say 'study finds' when they should be saying 'study says'. The usual infantile Guardian health reporting.

But again, at least a few sceptics get reported.


As far as I can see the end point is symptoms a year later. Most LC probably goes by a year and after a year most people have had Covid at some other time point anyway so it seems a pretty stupid study.
 
This was a remarkably cynical move. The study was released as a pre-print a month ago, but the public health director chose today - Long Covid Awareness Day - to do a highly polemical press release about it. Australian Long Covid advocates have organised a campaign where they light up key bridges and buildings using the Long Covid awareness colours. John Gerrard must have known about this and decided that he needed to take control of the narrative.
 
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RaviHVJ said:
This was a remarkably cynical move. The study was released as a pre-print a month ago, but the public health director chose today - Long Covid Awareness Day - to do a highly polemical press release about it. Australian Long Covid advocates have organised a campaign where they light up key bridges and buildings using the Long Covid awareness colours. John Gerrard must have known about this and decided that he needed to take control of the narrative.
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That kind of timing is typical. I can remember at least once when the BPS crowd launched something strong here to time with ME Awareness Day.
 
Merged thread

Science Media Centre: expert reaction to unpublished conference abstract

Full title:
expert reaction to unpublished conference abstract reporting that after a year, long-COVID is indistinguishable from other respiratory post-viral syndromes

Scientists react to a conference abstract which reports that long-COVID is indistinguishable from other respiratory post-viral syndromes.


Dr Aimee Hanson, Senior Research Associate, MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit, University of Bristol, said:

“Inflammation, whatever its cause, can disrupt many of the body’s physiological processes. The consequences of inflammation triggered by SARS-CoV-2 infection are unlikely to be entirely unique to this specific virus. Similarly, long-term symptoms following COVID-19 are likely driven by similar processes to those at play in other post-viral syndromes. The COVID-19 pandemic has provided a rare opportunity to study SARS-CoV-2 infection and its consequences in intense detail, but this collective research may inform treatment strategies to prevent or lessen the severity of symptoms that linger for months to years following viral infection more broadly.”

Dr Janet Scott, Clinical Lecturer in Infectious Diseases, University of Glasgow, said:

“This looks like an interesting study, and I will look forward to seeing this presented in more detail at ECCMID at the end of April. Many infections cause post infection syndromes, and it may be that ‘Long COVID’ is indeed not markedly different from other post -respiratory virus syndromes. It is important however not to minimise the huge personal and economic impact the long COVID have on individuals. The big difference with Long COVID is the sheer number of people infected with the same virus in a short space of time – which has facilitated more coordinated research in the area – which I hope will benefit all sufferers of post Infection syndromes.

“It would be useful in my opinion, if we could offer rehabilitation services to all who need them, irrespective of the initial infection they contracted – for example, in my own area – the Highlands of Scotland, many people suffer from post Treatment Lyme Disease, which is clinically indistinguishable from Long COVID, and yet we are not funded to support them in the same way as we do long COVID patients.

“The title is perhaps a little off the mark – I think that Long COVID is different from some other post infection syndromes – for example post Ebola syndrome (PES) , which is predominantly a pain syndrome (whereas long COVID is predominantly a Fatigue syndrome), PES sufferers notably also get eye conditions like white cataracts and anterior uveitis (an inflammation inside the eye), which we do not see in Long COVID. This paper has focused on respiratory viruses – and perhaps the title should better be ‘indistinguishable from common respiratory viruses in Queensland’.”

This press release is based on poster abstract P327 to be presented at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) in Barcelona (27-30 April). The research is being prepared for submission to a medical journal ahead of the conference in April 2024.

https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/...-from-other-respiratory-post-viral-syndromes/
 
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The team from which this leaked conference abstract came from published Ongoing symptoms and functional impairment 12 weeks after testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 or influenza in Australia: an observational cohort study.

The only thing that study told us, was that useless and senseless definitions are indeed useless and senselesss. Which is what anybody with any common sense would have known 4 years ago.

I'd be surprised if this study was in any way different, but they certainly did manage to somehow get a lot of media attention by just leaking a conference abstract.
 
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However, he stressed he was not questioning the validity of long COVID.

"Post-viral syndromes do occur. We're absolutely saying that it does exist," Dr Gerrard said.
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https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/15/doctors-no-such-thing-as-long-covid/
There is no such thing as long Covid, say health officials
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They know this is how it will be reported. They obviously are questioning that it exists, we've seen this play out for decades. In fact they're explicitly saying to do nothing about it, since nothing is what's always been done about post-viral syndromes. And they know this. I doubt that they care, or that they understand what it means, but they know that it's treated with contempt and mockery by the medical profession.

The takeaway from this is that post-infectious chronic illness is a major health and medical issue, and there is absolutely nothing useful or effective being done about it. This is scandalous, it proves that we were always right and medicine screwed up completely. But these geniuses' take is to do keep on doing nothing about it and cover it up further. This is death of expertise stuff, experts are never, ever, supposed to be this bad about their job, and in most professions never are, since if it ever happens they are fired, disciplined and face legal action.

Although I doubt that this has anything to do with LC awareness day. I doubt that any one of these hacks are aware that there is such a thing. It's not the first awful thing that's been published to cover up LC, and it won't be the last.
 
For what it is worth, I have been sharing this on social media:

Press release that is getting a lot of coverage:
#LongCOVID ‘indistinguishable’ from other post-viral syndromes a year after infection
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1037611

I think diagnoses like #LC & #MECFS are important for those ill after an infection to help adapt to the impairments, not get worse from pushing/having to push, etc.

I speak from bitter personal experience. I became ill an infection age 16 but was given no name for it. Initially I was fairly mildly affected. Unfortunately without a diagnosis I deteriorated until I was diagnosed aged 22 & remain severely affected 29 years later https://www.independent.ie/life/hea...thing-changed-when-i-became-ill/34153140.html

The CDC found in their research that an earlier diagnosis led to a better prognosis in #CFS. This prompted them to run a multi-million dollar awareness campaign in the 2000s aimed at professionals & the general public to highlight the issue.

The ME Association have produced a free booklet "The Importance of Early & Accurate Diagnosis in ME/CFS" https://meassociation.org.uk/2022/0...rtance-of-early-accurate-diagnosis-in-me-cfs/

https://twitter.com/user/status/1768675937120407965

https://twitter.com/user/status/1768678877822398884

https://twitter.com/user/status/1768680871060553954

https://twitter.com/user/status/1768682569669730634
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Tom Kindlon said:
For what it is worth, I have been sharing this on social media:

Press release that is getting a lot of coverage:
#LongCOVID ‘indistinguishable’ from other post-viral syndromes a year after infection
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1037611
Click to expand...

I'm confused!
Is this 'latest' press release, (clearly timed to run on on #LongCovidAwarenessDay) actually related to this (dated April 16, 2023):

https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/...s-compared-with-outcomes-following-influenza/
 
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