Dr. Anthony Fauci on Long Covid and ME/CFS

Is anyone concerned that Fauci says in laying out a road map for how to approach ME/CFS, ‘first, stick with only post-COVID patients; do not dilute your sample with other post-viral conditions’?

Yes, even now that the reality of postviral syndromes can no longer be denied, with millions of previously normally functioning individuals succumbing to disability en masse, he finds a way to exclude us.
 
I really don't know on what basis Fauci is saying this anyway, that window has passed by completely. In the very first months it would have been smart, but actually COVID is now a less viable pathogen to study because there are almost no controls left, whereas for all of the other pathogens there usually are plenty of controls left.

And even in the ongoing Covid pandemic, you can't assume that all new cases of ME/CFS are from SC2. The other causative pathogens (+/- non-pathogen triggers) haven't gone away.
 
THe record can't be changed and grown-up conversations can't be had whilst some won't do anything other than stick their fingers in their ears. You acknowledge, apologise and move past.
It will need more than that. There are some who have behaved so atrociously and disreputably, and are clearly hell bent on continuing to do so, that they have forfeited their credibility and authority and must be removed from the entire game.

It is more than just for moral accountability alone, though that is certainly sufficient reason. It is now indisputable that they are doing everything they can to continue hijacking and perverting any progress on this issue.

Their continued active presence is both a major impediment to progress, and an utter fucking disgrace to the entire profession.
The consultation on the interim plan suggesting we need to compromise and give wording suggesting 'both sides' says it all really, where in essence it claims that requires us to take the blame in order for people to carry on doing the same and apparently be less antagonistic towards us
Exactly. We have no room left to compromise, and no reason whatsoever to do so. We will gain nothing by it.

Don't know about the rest of you, but I sure as shit didn't come this far just to accept this crap at the last minute.
 
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The caption under the picture in the article that this thread is about
Anthony Fauci and unlocking the biggest mystery in medicine
https://www.inquirer.com/health/expert-opinions/expert-opinion-long-covid-20240106.html says:
Anthony Fauci in a scene from the PBS documentary “American Masters: Dr. Tony Fauci." Fauci has laid out a road map for how to approach chronic fatigue syndrome, a symptom of long COVID.


Here is the link to the PBS documentary:
https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/anthony-fauci-documentary/23072/
S37 Ep2
Dr. Tony Fauci
Premiere: 3/21/2023 | 01:53:11 | TV-14 |
Follow Dr. Anthony Fauci as he grapples with the COVID-19 pandemic and his 50-year career as the nation’s leading public health advocate. American Masters: Dr. Tony Fauci reveals a rarely seen side of the physician, husband and father as he confronts political backlash, a new administration and questions of the future.
Streaming until: 1/31/2024 @ 11:59 PM EST

This was filmed over 23 months beginning in January 2021.

I haven't watched it. I did some very quick skimming to see if I could find a segment I wanted to watch but I couldn't find anything so I don't know if Fauci mentions ME/CFS or even Long Covid for that matter.
 
I copied this the best I could from the closed captioning on the screenshots I took. https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/anthony-fauci-documentary/23072/
23:41

You get up 5.00 in the morning, you get in, you know, 6:30 or 6:45. You start off with the first meeting is at 7:30 and you get maybe a couple of thousand – truly no hyperbole – couple of thousand e-mails a day. It’s just so much freaking work! I mean, it’s just – it’s a big cluster.

Let’s get everything back the way it was, okay? I’m going to be doing twice the amount of work now because the Biden administration is calling me to do everything. I mean, they don’t approve anything unless I say yes.

My day job is to run a big organization. The NIAID is the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. It’s one of the 27 institutes of the NIH, the National Institutes of Health. I’ve been doing that for 37 years.

I’m a scientist and a physician, not only because it’s an important part of my identity, but because you get a better feel for the bigger picture of a disease. I have trained and picked everybody who works for me right now. They know my goal. They know my vision, which is deeply steeped in science, clinical medicine, public health.

It isn’t only COVID-19. It’s malaria, tuberculosis, influenza, AIDS. This is the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. We do the research to understand a disease and importantly, to develop diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines.
Fauci’s wife:
1:43:02

I’ve watched him for 38 years now. And I have been – persistently, actually – begging for some time off, an afternoon or an evening or a weekend or something. Just take some time to relax and do something else. He won’t do it. And so, you know, that’s – I think that’s where the toll is gonna be.

DR. CHRISTINE GRADY
WIFE & CHIEF OF BIOETHICS DIVISION, NIH
 
Moved post

Thread on X I don't know the context that has prompted this



Todd Davenport:
Funny how it took (1) an ongoing uncontrolled pandemic of a new virus creating innumerable new cases of ME/CFS or ME/CFS-like complex chronic disease and (2) leaving government for all these government types to finally take ME/CFS seriously.

And by funny, I mean deeply unfunny.

If you’re out of the game and talking about something you might have been in position to do something about years ago as something we should have done years ago without explaining why that didn’t happen years ago, I guess I have some questions about why you’re bringing it up now.

It all feels less like refreshing new candor and more like icky reputation laundering. Maybe that’s just a reflection of my general attitude of being uneasily impressed. But I don’t think so.

If you tell me it’s healing to hear from former government officials that mistakes were made and they should’ve done better, I won’t begrudge you of that. But without actual accountability will come no change in action, and I think that should be the goal.

Watch what they do.

ETA last line
 
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Also in the same vein of "former officials who speak out now that they're out of official positions" is former White House COVID response coordinator Deborah Birx. Here she is in an interview with Chris Cuomo, and saying many right things, including that if ME/CFS hadn't been ignored, there would be answers to Long Covid.

But always it's from people who are retired from a position in which they were uniquely capable of doing something about it. There is something deeply broken about the culture of the medical profession that makes it impossible to work on some problems because there is too much hostility to them, even when the people in charge know better.

I would really love if someone could ask that question to Fauci: why is it that he couldn't do it as director of the NIH institute best-placed to do this? What resistance was he facing against it?

 
Were Fauci’s comments in an article I read in December some kind of admission:

“Fauci said, however, that he and other infectious disease physician-scientists were soon swooped up into the still-ongoing global emergency of HIV/ AIDS, leaving relatively less time and resources to devote to chronic, debilitating but non-fatal conditions.”

Most of us with ME don’t die or not for ages - and can be a living death of course - so they prioritised AIDS? So they didn’t want to spend any more money? Hilary Johnson claims Fauci back in 90s (I think) told Congress ME was nothing to worry about.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/...ut-long-covid-and-other-postviral-illnesses1/
 

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WYNC, 8/20: 'Dr. Fauci On A Life Of Medical Research And Public Service'

Host (on COVID being endemic): '..that means we're going to still being seeing more cases of Long COVID, and isn't that the dangerous part of this..?

Fauci: "That is true..."

Host: "So, is there anything we can do about Long COVID? What do we know about it?"

Fauci: "We don't know a lot about it. There's a lot of people working on it, there's a lot of money being poured into. It looks like it's an aberrant, uncontrolled, inflammatory immunological response to what is likely fragments of virus that persist even after the acute infection, but it's not certain. There a lot of the theories, some are more convincing than others. One of the things that's a common dominator, is that the aberrant hyperimmune response that doesn't calm down after the acute phase of the viral infection."
 
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