Long Covid in the media and social media 2022

At 9.13 minutes there's the subtitle "Long Covid and post-acute infection syndromes" where prof. Iwasaki says:

I believe that the ME/CFS is probably of the same disease that people with Long Covid are suffering from, but were caused by other infections. Prior to Long Covid there have been a number of infections, many many viruses, but sometimes bacteria and parasitic infection, that leads to long term consequences. It's only with the sheer number of people with Long Covid that really now is highlighting these other diseases such as ME/CFS that's been triggered by numerous other pathogens. But the symptoms are very similar to Long Covid such as chronic fatigue as well as some of these dysautonomia-like syndromes, cardiac issues, GI issues, many vasculature issues and just inability to control these heart rates or blood pressure or things that are very similar to what we are seeing in Long Covid. It's a wakeup call really for the society to start looking into other post acute infection syndromes, because we are going to be dealing with this going forward. Some of these Long Covid patients might develop in to ME/CFS if they cannot recover from the Long Covid stage of the disease.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lfGu_UA75A

 

In addition to the video, there's also the article
Knowable Magazine How long will it take to understand long Covid?

quote:
Some evidence suggests that prior infection with Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), which causes mononucleosis, puts people at higher risk for developing long Covid. The reactivation of dormant EBV has been linked to myalgic encephalomyelitis / chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), an illness with striking similarities to long Covid.

Michael VanElzakker, a neuroscientist at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, has hypothesized that viruses may cause ME/CFS and long Covid by triggering a malfunction in the almighty vagus nerve. This bundle of nerve fibers induces the “sickness response,” signaling the body to rest when it senses an infection somewhere in the body. VanElzakker contends that when the infection is located on the vagus nerve itself, this response is exaggerated, causing many of the debilitating symptoms seen in both conditions.

 

Thanks for transcribing that quote! I was just coming here to do that.

Screen shot from about 9:20 in the video:

 

Sweden continues to close down postcovid clinics, despite very long waiting lists.

Postcovidmottagningar stängs – trots kritik
https://www.svd.se/a/nW3Xgd/mottagningar-for-postcovid-stangs-besluten-kritiseras

Specialmottagningar för postcovid avvecklas
https://www.svd.se/a/nW3On5/specialmottagningar-for-postcovid-avvecklas

Trots högt söktryck – regioner stänger postcovid-mottagningar
https://sverigesradio.se/artikel/postcovidmottagningar-lagger-ner

Allt fler regioner lägger ner postcovidmottagningar
https://sverigesradio.se/artikel/allt-fler-regioner-lagger-ner-postcovidmottagningar

 

Have they said where patients will be sent instead?

 

Primary care services (GPs etc).

 

JAMA The US Now Has a Research Plan for Long COVID - Is It Enough?

Quote:

Meriquez Vázquez said that many primary care physicians, particularly those who serve the Medicaid population, aren’t aware that Long COVID can manifest as diagnosable conditions such as postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), and myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS).

“There’s definitely growing frustration that the information that does exist on these conditions is not being readily disseminated by public health out to clinicians, especially primary care,” she said. She noted that scientific efforts are also lagging: “For the most part big investments like the RECOVER Initiative are largely observational and not necessarily driving new research on ME/CFS, or POTS, or MCAS, which is really where I think the patient community wants the research to go in a much bigger way.”

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1557896187734155264

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1558190386463625217

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1558174498435760132

 

It does look as if HELP apheresis made a difference for Jasmine.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1556259305992736770

 

On the subject of circulating spike protein which has been seen in a couple studies of LC patients and potential impacts:
Here's a press release about a conference presentation on how SARS-2 spike protein causes inflammation in the heart in mice, while spike protein from NL63, another coronavirus, does not.

"To investigate the impact of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein on the heart, researchers cloned the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein and the NL63 spike protein into the AAV9 viral vector. The AAV9 viral vector was delivered into lab mice to activate the spike protein in the heart muscle cells. They found that the AAV9-mediated the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, and not the NL63 spike protein, caused heart dysfunction, hypertrophic remodeling (enlargement) and cardiac inflammation.

In lab testing of heart cells cultured in dishes, researchers also observed that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein made heart muscle cells much larger compared to cells without either spike protein. “We found direct evidence that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein is toxic to heart muscle cells,” Lin said."

 

It’s Not Just Long COVID
Society has been underestimating the long-term consequences of viruses, bacterial infections, and parasites for ages.
in the Atlantic by Hank Balfour and William Hoffman

Bizarre to talk about "long mono/EBV" and not mention ME/CFS.

"Most patients recover from mono in a few weeks, but some continue to have mono-like symptoms for years—or get over the initial illness only to suffer recurring bouts of sickness later on. This condition could be called “long mono/EBV” or “chronic mono.” Two prominent symptoms it shares with long COVID are brain fog and fatigue. And just as doctors didn’t believe long-COVID patients at first, chronic mono isn’t a widely accepted diagnosis among health-care professionals. That’s a shame. The similarities between long COVID and long mono/EBV, and the purported interactions between the two viruses during acute COVID or after COVID vaccination, demand further investigation."

 

About the authors: Hank Balfour is professor of laboratory medicine and pathology, as well as pediatrics, at the University of Minnesota. William Hoffman is a writer and editor with the University of Minnesota.

 

...and to specifically talk of post-accute infection syndrome without making it clear that this was originally described as a specific subset of CFS cases in which prior infection could be proved by laboratory test, but which might otherwise be indistinguishable.

One sometimes wonders about the extent to which these lapses are deliberate.

 

It is either deliberate, or the people talking about it are so ignorant that they stop doing so.

 

That was the whole point of inventing CFS, it completely separated the issue from its evidence base. Shows the asymmetry of bullshit is just as real in medicine as anywhere else. The biopsychosocial ideology just broke medicine completely.

 

The Sunday Times video is on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPWnHtk3s7E