Includes Long COVID Studies Around the Globe https://www.the-scientist.com/featu...-remain-unknown-but-data-are-rolling-in-69066
Just look at the number of studies, their sample sizes, time spans, hard physiological basis, and how quickly they got up and running. Compare and contrast with the situation for us over the last 60 years. I mean, I am very happy that LC is getting serious attention, because it should and is also likely to pay off for us too. And we do get a decent mention: But it is more than a little depressing and angering at how quickly medicine can move in the right direction when they feel like it.
So far I have felt frustrated by how poor quality many of these Long Covid studies are, that too many are repeating the failures of previous ME research and, though I hope not, I feel there is a possibility that people with Long Covid in a few years time will be no better off than we are now. Having said that it is distinctly possible that there are good studies happening, that there are good researchers who have sought to learn from the ME/CFS literature, just that they are not the ones that have rushed to publish as soon as possible.
To me, and I haven't looked at much, only what pops up on here, it looks like LC is simply being used as an opportunity to gain grants for old recycled and failed pet theories. In some cases to be used as marketing for what would seem to be warehouses full of 'treatments' that didn't work, for anything. A distressing number of things seem to be virtually identical to things that were marketed, and pushed, as 'treatments' for ME over the last 30 years, with the same 'research' and claims being made. It doesn't look like any serious attempt is being made, by most, to achieve anything, other than gaining grants and or making money from the marketing of supplements. Or, of course, to promote the idea that LC is a psychological issue and should be treated with....... Agenda driven research, whatever the agenda may be, just as long as it's not to help patients, seems to be the 'thing'. Of course I may be wrong, I have largely given up looking at such stuff after becoming somewhat despondent at the 'quality' and areas of 'research' that makes it on to various threads here for discussion.
It would be great if alongside reports of the $1.15B funding there were maybe some follow-up, or just a simple notice, of the fact that there has been no apparent work done at all, nothing has been made public, it's not even clear if anyone is actually working on it. It's been 6 months and not a single word or hint of a plan. Because the idea of spending $1B+ on research won't do a damn thing, it's actually doing the work that will. The lack of criticism journalists lay on medicine is very disappointing, it's so damn naïve, no one ever seems to think that medicine has to be held accountable, so no ever even tries.
