The evolving science of Long COVID and its far-reaching economic and social impacts, 2026, Emily Taylor, CEO SolveME

[John Mac]

Emily Taylor, President and Chief Executive Officer of Solve M.E., discusses the significant socioeconomic burden of Long COVID, highlighting advances in research that can improve understanding of Long COVID and enable targeted interventions and better treatment protocols

Long COVID is an increasingly serious burden to the US economy. Even by conservative calculations, existing cases of Long COVID could cost up to $6.6 billion (Bartsch et al., 2025).

Breakthroughs in Long COVID research shape how we understand, mitigate, and reduce the socioeconomic impact of the disease. Knowing who is more likely to develop Long Covid means interventions can be targeted — potentially reducing the proportion of people impacted.

Improved understanding of the mechanisms is leading to better treatment protocols and reinforcing the legitimacy of disability claims, workplace accommodation, and health-insurance coverage. Fewer people with chronic impairment means lower indirect costs (absenteeism, retraining) and less strain on social security or disability systems.

Here are five promising studies that could help reduce Long COVID’s socioeconomic burden through better diagnosis and treatment.

The evolving science of Long COVID and its far-reaching economic and social impacts

Emily Taylor, President and Chief Executive Officer of Solve M.E., discusses the significant socioeconomic burden of Long COVID

www.openaccessgovernment.org

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

Improved understanding of the mechanisms is leading to better treatment protocols

A little premature maybe.

 

[Utsikt]

Well, this reads like a LinkedIn post by an overzealous CEO.. Why would an advocate pretend like things are a lot better than they are? Surely that’s a bad strategy.

Breakthroughs in Long COVID research shape how we understand, mitigate, and reduce the socioeconomic impact of the disease. Knowing who is more likely to develop Long Covid means interventions can be targeted — potentially reducing the proportion of people impacted.

Nope, we are stilling doing the same thing we did six years ago. Nobody has learned much of anything, and most are in denial.

Improved understanding of the mechanisms is leading to better treatment protocols and reinforcing the legitimacy of disability claims, workplace accommodation, and health-insurance coverage. Fewer people with chronic impairment means lower indirect costs (absenteeism, retraining) and less strain on social security or disability systems.

Nothing of the kind is happening. The train wreck is still going on.

Genome-wide association study of Long COVID

Analyzing the genomes of two million people from countries around the world, Dr. Hanna Ollila (University of Helsinki) and Dr. Hugo Zeberg (Karolinska Institute) recently found that people with variants of the gene FOXP4have significantly greater risk of developing Long COVID. FOXP4 is a transcription factor expressed in most tissues, especially in the lungs. This work is important because it shows certain people are genetically predisposed to develop Long COVID; specifically, due to genetic variants that influence lung physiology.

Patient-reported treatment outcomes in ME/CFS and Long COVID

And how have they determined that they lungs are important?

Dr. Ronald Davis (Stanford) and Dr. Wenzhong Xiao (Harvard) recently surveyed thousands of people to compare the effects of over 150 treatment options for people with ME/CFS and those with Long COVID. They found people with ME/CFS and those with Long COVID shared similar symptoms and comorbidities; and, critically, the treatments affected individuals in one group as they did the other. The researchers categorized participants into four subgroups and found that different treatments worked best for individuals in each subgroup. This work is important because it shows that people with Long COVID can benefit from treatment experiences of people with ME/CFS and that they should consider their Long COVID subtypes when choosing treatments.

No, there is no proof of benefit in that study, or subtypes for that matter.

 

[BrightCandle]

Knowing who is more likely to develop Long Covid means interventions can be targeted — potentially reducing the proportion of people impacted.

Only if society is going to accept taking mitigations to protect those people who are more vulnerable to the condition and we all know already how that is going to go, its not happening.

They have no handle on the severity of what is happening with Long Covid and its growing prevalence. The science has been a complete mess so far and they have nothing that has shown any actual efficacy in a good trial format and all the money has been taken away. Its a pretty depressing picture really, no funding, no political will and a society extremely hostile to those trying to protect themselves that will not accept the science now no matter what you tell them.