The onslaught of long COVID could have been predicted as soon as it had been determined that the mysterious outbreak of a condition with pneumonia like symptoms in Wuhan, China at the end of 2019 was indeed a virus, says Jamie Seltzer. Seltzer is the director of scientific and medical outreach for #MEAction, a patient advocacy organization for people suffering from myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS).
Here’s something else she predicts. Long COVID will quadruple the number of people suffering from MC/CFS. She wants the National Institutes for Health (NIH) to make the battle against long COVID also the battle against ME/CFS.
Instead of starting from scratch in researching long COVID, Seltzer and her organization calls upon the NIH to tap into the years of research conducted by #MEAction.
For instance, ME/CFS experts have long known that the idea of having patients “push through” the malaise associated with ME/CFS with graded exercise is counterproductive. “There is now abundant research showing that pushing through this disease not only doesn’t work, but it appears to make patients worse off, possibly in the long term,” Seltzer tells Infection Control Today®. “Some of the long COVID clinics are pushing graded exercise because that’s simply what they’re familiar with.”
In addition, she worries that the absence of a virus in patients who’ve recovered from COVID-19 will imply that long COVID shouldn’t be a problem. “It’s the immune response itself that can cause the symptoms of the disease,” Seltzer tells ICT®. “And that does not require that the virus is still there or active at all.” She adds: “People with long COVID and people with ME/CFS need to join hands and advocacy and fight together.”
