Turns out pathogens, whose survival depends on being able to evade and hide from the immune system, are actually good at it. Who knew?! https://twitter.com/user/status/1336830751287996419 https://twitter.com/user/status/1336831990503452672 https://twitter.com/user/status/1336832153733230597 https://twitter.com/user/status/1336832446713696258 https://twitter.com/user/status/1336833992696487936
We have known for decades. Nothing new here I am afraid. Hidden viruses were the explanation for everything when I was a kid sixty years ago.
We what the hell happened for the medical profession to loose that understanding? Why haven't we got the ability to track and trace what happens and why with our autoimmune system and how did all that get blamed on anxiety. I think there was a Canadian who was looking into tracking every virus you ever had which sounded to me like a jolly good idea but thought that would have been done decades before?
So there's a chance my brain could be harboring tomato spotted wilt virus? Just as I've long suspected.
It wasn't an understanding. Lots of viruses were found and most of them shown to be irrelevant. The mistake was to think that every unsolved problem was due to a virus - and that mistake keeps popping up every time someone has a new test they want to sell. We have the ability to track and trace, just incompetent administrators who allow pandemics that we know about to spread. None of this has anything much to do with autoimmunity as far as I am aware. The progress of the 1990s was to come to understand that there are other ways for things to go wrong apart from viruses.
People presenting with Long Covid symptoms have been assured, nay insisted, that it is impossible for this to happen, that if the virus is undetectable then it's gone and it's silly to worry about whether it could possibly ever linger around. Which we now know is possible, found so far in the gut, brain and nose. More controversial but I think just as relevant, the same is said to Lyme patients who experience the same, it's simply silly to even entertain the idea that pathogens could possibly survive a round of antibiotics (nevermind... hell, microbiology and the whole antibiotic resistance thing... but also the fact that most infected with Lyme are never detected and thus not given antibiotics to begin with). The fact above is not just disputed but subject to outright mockery. So as much as this is known, it is also considered laughable in fact when the possibility arises in individual cases. It's one of those weird things that everyone seems to know but is simply impossible. Which is really weird to be honest. This may be common knowledge but it has many interpretations and in common practice it may as well not exist, as Long Covid has adeptly demonstrated yet again. Or it's very selectively true anyway.