Incidence and Prevalence of Post-COVID-19 Myalgic Encephalomyelitis: A Report from the Observational RECOVER-Adult Study, 2024, Vernon +

and this puts an enormous question mark over the study.

The highest credible prevalence rates we have for ME/CFS, from the recent Samms/Ponting study, is 0.6%. Seems hard to believe they found the same rate of NEW cases a year in the non-Covid control group Something doesn’t add up. You would expect incidence to be so much lower than prevalence.

 

This seems to be getting a significant amount of traction in the media. I get Google Alerts for news that mentions "ME/CFS" and there have been a surprisingly high number of results for this the past few days. 23 articles in 5 days.

And this morning I heard it used as a question in a trivia game podcast on NPR. (47:20 in the January 18 episode)

"According to a new report, one in twenty people who caught *blank* suffer long term effects."

 

Commentary from Koroshetz on RECOVER ME/CFS publication with Healio:

https://www.healio.com/news/infecti...v2-infection-with-increase-in-chronic-fatigue

 

“Given the estimate of 20 million in the U.S. with long COVID, this translates into hundreds of thousands of persons in the U.S. developing ME/CFS due to the pandemic,” Koroshetz said. “Both research and health care should focus on ME/CFS as the numbers of new long COVID cases start to shrink.”

Do we know new cases of Long Covid are decreasing?

 

This study has reached us too, I have seen articles about it in two well-known news outlets here. This was also one of those extremely rare (or non-existent, rather) instances, when someone other than me used the word ME/CFS in an article, instead of just chronic fatigue syndrome.

So I would hazard a guess that it is picked up by the media in various different countries, even if we are talking about just a few articles here and there.

 

A Reddit post —

(Zurich)

 

If it’s the “Chronic Fatigue” clinic at Zürich university it is unfortunately “holistic” code word for psychobehavioural.

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1881394525966606551

 

People with ME/CFS meeting the IOM criteria (50% reducing in functioning) had too mild symptoms to qualify for a long COVID diagnosis. That seems weird to me.

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1881423359269024078

Leora Horwitz: “Yes, PASC algorithm includes symptom severity; for ME/CFS we required reduction in overall function but not every symptom mod/severe. So, possible to have overall disability + a mild symptom that counted for ME/CFS but potentially not for PASC. Again, 89% overlap: small subgroup.”