Wyva
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
I don't have the energy to read this article today, so I can't say anything about its content but I'm sharing it as it looks interesting.
From Long Flu to Long COVID: A Brief History of Postviral Illness
Despite centuries of examples, long-term maladies after flu and other viruses remain absent from mainstream policy
A pattern woven throughout history reveals an unsettling truth: Although acute infections such as influenza and COVID-19 can devastate populations in the short term, their lingering effects—the so-called long flus of previous generations—have proven to be quiet killers.
Chronic conditions stemming from infections, whether labeled influenza nervosa, myalgic encephalomyelitis, chronic fatigue syndrome, or long COVID, haunt individuals well after the initial illness subsides. Time and again, society has failed to reckon with these conditions, relegating their sufferers to the fringes of medical understanding and societal concern.
This trend is ancient. In 412 BCE, Hippocrates documented the Cough of Perinthus in a port city in northern Greece—the first known long flu, entailing "impaired night vision" and "paralysis of limbs." Many at the time perceived these symptoms as spiritual in nature, but Hippocrates was convinced that they were the physical manifestations of imbalanced humors: black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood.
The article continues: https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/long-flu-long-covid-brief-history-postviral-illness
