Long Covid in the media and social media 2022

Rae Duncan appears to be a young NHS consultant cardiologist in Newcastle. She has published some stuff on diabetes about ten years ago and one or two cardiac papers recently but as far as I can see does not have an academic research programme of her own.

I watched her video, which is very emotive, but does not contain any real evidence to support her claims. She may be right that we are going to see an increasing amount of ill-health accumulating as a result of Covid but I don't see much evidence for the picture she is painting.

I note that she refers to an a academic in Oxford who seems to be working on clots as a colleague and I wonder if they are close.

I am afraid the give away is that her account of the vascular dysfunction, which she relates to clots and capillaries, indicates that she does not actually know much about the biology. She gets a number of basic things wrong. She at one point says 'we think that...' when I strongly suspect what she means is that the very few of us who've taken the micro clot story seriously and swallowed it, think that...

The politics of this are very strange because one or two prominent figures have got involved in the clot story. It makes no sense to me and all the haematologists I have asked (clots are haematology firstly and cardiology indirectly) either have not heard of the microclots or say things like 'there is a lot of rubbish about' (implying they would prefer not to criticise people who might be a bad idea to criticise maybe).

I strongly suspect that Dr Duncan has other reasons for being interested in Long Covid. She seems happy to diagnose POTs over the phone, and that rings alarm bells for me.

We live in a world where there are lots of people who rush in to express their views when angels might fear to say things that might be unhelpful! That can now go up on Twitter or YouTube the same day.Most of the stuff she claims is known is still outlier speculation.Major clotting problems occur during acute Covid and also at an increased rate in the convalescent period but I don't see that having anything at all to do with the sort of Long Covid we are interested in here. She seems to muddle it all together in her case example.

 

At least at the end she says 'I hope to god I am wrong'.
I am pretty sure that she is wrong about the biology. I also hope she is wrong about future problems post Covid but I actually wouldn't be surprised if she is right there. Just nothing to do with microclots (which, remember, as far as I can make out, are not actually something existing in the patients because the samples are centrifuged before the test is done).

 

CNBC did an article on the economic cost of long Covid:
Long Covid may be ‘the next public health disaster’ — with a $3.7 trillion economic impact rivaling the Great Recession

 

“Helping people is my passion, yet I can’t do that anymore”: how long COVID ended the career of a young paramedic

https://www.who.int/europe/news/ite...g-covid-ended-the-career-of-a-young-paramedic

 

Is long Covid overblown? You're MORE likely to suffer lingering symptoms with flu or other seasonal bugs than coronavirus, study suggests.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/...id-symptoms-common-illnesses-study-finds.html

The downplaying is gross.

It comes after a separate study found people who are unemployed and not looking for a job are more likely to have long Covid.

 

"Researchers at UCLA, who conducted the study admitted that their results may be biased because people who were severely ill were not able to take part in the study."

if you have LC it's highly likely that you are not fit to work.
(The dailymail article on 'a separate study' implies that you are more likely to get long covid if you are not working and not seeking work.)

 

The ironic thing about this is that since most people in the UK have been infected already, this is simply an invalid assertion, as there is no possibility to control anymore. And the actual conclusion from this should actually be that obviously this is a common thing after infectious diseases, therefore a much bigger problem than understood, but somehow in medicine common means doesn't exist. Somehow.

The entire basis for how medicine does everything they do, and it's no longer available as a result of a policy of mass constant reinfections. Very shmart.

 

For a change of pace, photos instead of the usual text, the main LC subreddit is having a "faces of LC" moment since yesterday and continuing today. Lots of before and after photos. It's easy to lose sight that there are millions of real people behind when we never really see them, see us.

Link to sub-reddit, since I don't want the forum to convert it to its thing that doesn't always work.

 

https://time.com/6238147/microclots-long-covid/

At the moment, Cuker says some of the studies on microclots are “hypothesis-generating,” but he has doubts about some of the ways that researchers are looking for microclots in the blood. For example, the protocol developed by Pretorius’ team involves drawing blood and adding a fluorescent agent. Researchers then compare the sample’s appearance under a microscope with fluorescent-treated samples from healthy control patients. “That’s a very artificial system,” Cuker says. “It’s very different from an autopsy, where you can see with your own eyes that there were clots in the body.”

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1598711398884061185

 

I don't see this as a weird criticism. I have my own personal experiences concerning lab result interpretations from doctors who have minimal understanding of blood biology.

Dr. Cuker, recognized by America's Top Doctors from 2017 to 2022. I'm glad he is questioning the process.

• Director, Penn Comprehensive and Hemophilia Thrombosis Program
  
• Clinical Director, Penn Blood Disorders Center
  
• Section Chief, Benign Hematology
  
• Associate Professor of Medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania
  
• Associate Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
  

 

The lead author of this study is saying in articles about this study that as the study shows that people are ill after a virus or other infections without a positive covid test it suggests ‘the experience of the pandemic itself, and related stress, may be playing a role in slowing peoples' recovery from any illness.’ She is clearly trying to minimise long covid and of course all illness after various infections. It’s depressing to see it but not surprising, sadly.

Edited to add - I saw the same quote by the lead author in another article about the study so presume it is in a press release. The full quote is:

“Many diseases, including COVID, can lead to symptoms negatively impacting one’s sense of well-being lasting months after initial infection, which is what we saw here," said lead author Lauren Wisk, an assistant professor of medicine in the division of general internal medicine and health services research at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

"Because these changes look similar for COVID-negative and COVID-positive participants, this suggests the experience of the pandemic itself, and related stress, may be playing a role in slowing people’s recovery from any illness."

Another better article pointed out the limitations of the study including that they only looked at symptoms in both groups at the end of 3 months of symptoms. People can take a while to recover from various conditions, 3 months isn’t long. Also the metric they used just looked at pain, sleep and fatigue for physical symptoms, so v broad. The study recruited participants between December 2020 through to September 2021.

Daily Mail is a right wing U.K. newspaper and you can see they have written it up as a way to try and throw doubt on the existence of long covid. I fear we are going to see a lot of this as various interests and a lot of the public don’t want to face what covid can do and is still doing. Long Covid patients being gaslighted as those of us with ME have been.

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1599094101697527808

 

Article: Potent Antiviral Activity against HSV-1 and SARS-CoV-2 by Antimicrobial Peptoids

https://twitter.com/user/status/1599104594411282432

 

Sterling performance by New Zealand authorities in the category of 'if we don't look we won't see and what we don't see doesn't exist'

https://www.newsroom.co.nz/govt-flying-blind-on-long-covid

 

That's bad, but it's good to see a paper calling them out.

 

An 'interesting' added political agenda in the UK is those (I'd say right wing but there are also left wingers and others so it isn't purely that even tho the politicians and papers I've seen recently have been right wing) who are really anti-lockdown and very keen to rewrite the pandemic as 'lockdowns that were unnecessary'.

This all tends to marry with the same people who want people back in offices, work from home disappearing etc.

I wouldn't be surprised if this is what is behind it being picked up and used, if not reason for being written. ie anything harm-wise they can turn into 'being caused by lockdowns' instead of covid is fair game here

An interesting stat in debunking this a bit is that people predicted the % who would end up with long long covid (I get the 3months or whatever the shortened criteria were from the point of sickpay and rest and good advice, but there are many in ME/CFS who then if they get that recover within 6months or a year so it probably needs an interim term to emphasise the rest part being necessary) or ME type illness simply based on the stats before covid even existed from other viruses.

The only thing 'novel' is they all happened in a tight timeframe. I suspect it would be interesting as a retrospective to compare not just jobs but whether their employment meant they were the workhorse who stepped up despite being ill, or one of the ones who were either treated well or knew how to keep a low profile and reduce their work vs others in the 6month or 1yr recovery group.

There were such huge disparities between different individuals' lot during covid depending on whether they were someone whose job transformed only in being wfh (and load didn't increase) or had a role where they were maybe wfh but doing bonkers hours and workload or where they were dragging themselves into a supermarket work, office, shop, factory and so on when ill.

I hate the term 'stress' getting warped to claim a 'holistic' thing of 'yes all, physical and the rest' then when it comes to recommendations turns out it was only mindset and attitude they plan to treat in one way - which rarely matches to the situation or cause. Exertion is a term that is more accurate and hopefully less manipulable.

 

In Switzerland some people noted that a lot of people are out of work because of Long Covid/chronic illness and simply asserted it is a mental health crisis. So basically blind twice over: blind about what's happening, and blind about why it's happening. With experts like this, of course everything is broken. Medicine is turning out to be a paper tiger whose best work is behind them and looks more like, aside from the general pace of science and technology, is the product of sheer brute force than anything. This is simply not an expert profession, experts are not major screw-ups.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1599304564036972544


There is no war in Ba-Sing-Se. We've always been at war with North Asia. Sickness is health. Poverty is wealth. Submission is freedom.

 

@rvallee, so true. All v 1984.

@bobbler, I agree with all the points you made in your comment. Anti lockdown at any stage, anti masks and general anti zero protections groups are using this study to support their stance (a stance I don’t share) not only in the U.K. but other countries. This week a US doctor who has been anti lockdown and masks throughout apparently did a video on this study and used it to argue that it showed long covid in people who had initial mild acute covid infections was just the effects of living through the restrictions during the pandemic.

He scoffs in the video at the preliminary studies showing brain damage in people who had initial mild covid infections. They all as has been said on this thread never consider that perhaps medicine should be looking at how some people become either long term or chronically ill after various infections including covid. The various forms of long covid - I know it is an umbrella term - is inconvenient to him when he advocates a let it rip policy and zero protections during different stages of this covid pandemic and I expect any future pandemics.

This is the video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4tlmsQFyxg