Long Covid in the media and social media 2022

I haven’t read it myself so far

 

I imagine Swiss Re insurance et al are wheeling out the usual responses.

 

The Venn diagram between what psychosomatic ideologues are saying about the chronically ill and what Internet trolls are saying is a perfect circle.

Whatever happens in the future, as we get closer to recognition, there will be more pushback to meet it. It's demoralizing but it's not a bad sign, it's pretty much expected.

It will be worse at the finish line, there is an entire sham industry built on this, representing tens of thousands of jobs and billions wasted. It will get very ugly, but one benefit is that it's the kind of ugliness that looks especially awful in sunlight. It wins in secret behind closed doors, not under spotlights.

 

It looks like they have changed the headline on this opinion piece. Same author, same date, but the new headline is, If You’re Suffering After Being Sick With Covid, It’s Not Just in Your Head

The author posted a gift link (no paywall link) on twitter today:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/25/...T3pdEtlmZmGuGyviL8RyRyhUDd0Wt0&smid=share-url

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1555921129184940032

 

A Dublin triathlete says dealing with Long COVID isn't living, but "just literally coping".
13-minute interview on Newstalk (an Irish national radio station).
There is also a written summary at the link: https://www.newstalk.com/news/this-...riathlete-grainne-kelly-on-long-covid-1376101

This woman went back exercising after having Covid and this appeared to prompt a relapse in February. She isn't able to work full time now and has many ongoing symptoms. This type of relapse brought on by exercise is quite common in ME/CFS.

There was no mention of ME, CFS or even "postviral" that I recall.

 

Has Long Covid been exaggerated?
New data suggests that real numbers may be much smaller than claimed
https://unherd.com/thepost/has-long-covid-been-exaggerated/?mc_cid=26471d2c61&mc_eid=e2003ce5d7

 

The first sentence of this tripe (IMO);

erm....no, it wasn't, and it never has been, still isn't.

There seems little point in reading further as it's obvious where the authors stand, somewhere slightly to the right of reality.

 

In general, isn't recovery from PVFS higher for children and adolescents?

 

Well...most children recover (and stop being children with PVFS) within 21 years, most adolescents recover (and stop being adolescents with PVFS) even more rapidly.

Of course some of them may well end up being adults with PVFS but, of being children or adolescents with PVFS, they are totally cured.

As for what I suspect your question may have intended...who knows, no one can be arsed to seriously research such things in any meaningful way (i.e. without an agenda), at least that I have noticed.

 

An "educational" program where the people "teaching" understand far less about this issue than the people they think they are teaching to, it will usually be the only way around except they won't learn anything from it. What a mess, the death of expertise is running deep here.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1563359601516457986

 

"I was so desperate that I didn’t care if it killed me": Long COVID sufferers are turning to expensive, unproven treatments to cure their mysterious symptoms.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/long-covid-17401510.php

Shoot, you have to subscribe.

You can follow the thread on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/user/status/1563544071896907776

 

Her savior wasn’t a doctor. It was the Costco vendor who sold her an elixir of turmeric, on sale for $20.

Treatments long COVID sufferers are using read like cure-alls touted by 19th-century hucksters: Hyperbaric oxygen, intravenous ozone, the Patterson Protocol. Some are under serious study by scientists. Others could be quackery, or even harmful:

One man has already spent a remarkable $100,000 on untested therapies and do-it-yourself remedies in hopes of conquering long COVID. The barrage of post-viral symptoms turned the financial analyst into a de facto old man since he got the virus a year ago

 

None of this is any less scientific than the pseudoscience medicine puts out. It's not more, either. Just the same. Useless is useless, whether it's a chant, a spice or a healing crystal.

With healthcare services routinely dispensing blatant pseudoscientific nonsense, which a strong majority of patients see through, there's basically no separation anymore with alternative medicine. Neither are accountable, that difference doesn't apply here. Neither is informed by science, the real difference medicine is supposed to do, so again same thing, same outcome.

So of course people will pursue fringe treatments, it's what the professionals are doing anyway, there is no real difference.

 

Includes several countries


The world is moving on from the pandemic. Not these covid long-haulers. WAPO

https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...Ztz6TIU3UFvkn883NcOdR-gHU4F3_boR8vc&itid=gfta

 

Anyone know what the acronym FBLC stand for in the hashtag #FBLC? The LC seems to be for long Covid. A guess is full-blown long Covid.

ETA: ignore that, it seems to represent “follow back, long Covid”

 

#FBLC. Yes: "I'll follow you back and we'll expand the Twitter network of pwLC." Others I've seen used relate to political positions, eg the EU. Confession though, when I first saw it I added it my bio too — thinking it stood for "F'ed by long COVID".

 

If anyone is wondering whether the average physician is even minimally aware of Long Covid: nope. Not linking to the thread, comments have said it's as bad and insulting as could be expected. After 2.5 years it's still systemic dysfunction and failure, the entire profession appears oblivious to the issue. Not surprising given they are not properly informed and learning from experience doesn't work in medicine unless the problem is obvious.

If anything, most of my criticism is frankly not merely harsh enough. The scope of this failure, affecting millions of lives, is just staggering. It would be almost comical if it wasn't that this is about life and death for millions, causing needless suffering. This is true death of expertise stuff, just faceplanting all over the place.

What it does say about the last few decades is that this failure was not really the product of a fringe group of charlatans. Rather it was an entire profession loving charlatanism too much. More and more I find less blame to be directed at the BPS gang, they gave medicine something they so badly wanted that they were willing to overlook everything, even their most prominent so-called principles. It could all have been a single doodle on a napkin for all that medicine cares about evidence here.

 

(Off topic)
For a short period, I thought BFF* stood for Best F***ing Friend. I was a bit surprised about all the people using it!

*not used here when I was growing up