Long Covid in the media and social media 2023

From the Leana Wen op-ed:

We are literally well over a year into "everyone get infected quickly so we get it over with" and on the tail end of constant minimizing and hopium. Almost all measures to reduce incidence have ceased and the permanent ones, like better ventilation, were resisted completely and won't happen any time soon.

And of course there are zero effective treatments for this, those are also being resisted aggressively. So that focus is towards yet more disastrous hopium-fueled failure.

On the advice of people like Wen. Of all the things that are disastrous in the medical profession, the complete inability to accept responsibility is the killer shot, it negates everything else. Outside of work hours people can be all sorts of things, professionals are people. But this level of malfeasance and dishonor while on the clock is simply disqualifying.

No one in their right mind would ever pay an expert who lies in the conduct of their work. In fact this is the stuff that leads to lawsuits, loss of license and, sometimes if there is a pattern of misconduct, reforms.

Meanwhile the very people who pushed the mass reinfection still have a platform for their disinformation, and many are promoted and work in the major institutions, still continuing their disastrous work. Responsible for the disaster, and the failure to address the disaster.

I'm serious that moving forward, if we are to make healthcare better for all, it will be necessary to work entirely around this profession, a state of complete monopoly doesn't work with mass negligence and dishonesty like this. No wonder things are so awful and medicine is falling behind all the other expert disciplines.

 

The capacity of the virus to induce LC in any given person may have reduced. The people predisposed to LC may have already developed it so fewer are "getting it again" after repeat infection. The indicator is "sought care for symptoms" not "developed symptoms", so with successive waves, relatively more people may have realised that there is no care available so were less inclined to seek it.

 

Two great reels from Imani Barbarin (crutches_and_spice), about how newly disabled people will do absolutely anything for a cure.

And here's a video clip of Gwyneth Paltrow talking to her doctor about her "wellness routine", that she has apparently been recommended to treat her long covid. (Content warning for ED/disordered eating.)

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMY9THA7r/

 

I will preface this by saying that I've been reading most of what is published on the /r/covidlonghaulers forum from the start, and that for the first 2 years there was a lot of hope about getting help from medicine. It is not a doctor-bashing forum, and it's a wide-access forum, not some disgruntled fringe minority.

It also started with a lot of positivity and some dislike for the doomsayers talking about how awful medicine is at chronic illness. There was a flurry of trying to figure out treatments and encouraging any bit of improvement.

There is no such hope anymore, but it started with a lot of it. Again, this is a not doctor-bashing disgruntled minority, Reddit is basically like the lobby of a huge conference, it's the first stop many people have, as "average user" as it gets. Despite all the gaslighting. There was a lot of tolerance for this being "new" and "research takes time".

This may be the strongest indictment of any group of professionals of any size ever, revealing failure of such depth and depravity it cannot be believed without living it. There is genuinely nothing else like this, even in minimally regulated professions. Those are the kinds of reviews that guarantee a short career in any profession, but it's not about specific people, it's about the entire system.

Has your experience with Long Covid changed your opinion of doctors/healthcare in general? How so?

 

Thanks @rvallee - that's a great summary. Appreciate the old.reddit link too! There are many great responses, though all pretty hard to read.

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1637619147361116163

 

The captions in case you don't have the time or energy to watch:

It's amazing there are now people on TV criticizing the BPS model. This never would have happened without long Covid.
Edit: no people -> now people. Sorry.

 

MEDICAL EXAMINER
Long COVID Comes Into the Light

Even before 2020’s first horrific wave of COVID-19 deaths subsided, reports surfaced warning of a brutal second punch: Instead of recovering quickly after a mild infection, some people were suffering from symptoms that lingered or even intensified in the weeks and months that followed.

Long COVID is an unusual condition not only in its kaleidoscope of symptoms but also in the fact that it hadn’t been identified initially by doctors who encountered similar sets of symptoms in their patients. It was, rather, described by COVID patients themselves who, in the early months of the pandemic, found themselves mysteriously unable to get better. The complaints of early “long-haulers” were then picked up and amplified by activists, whose lobbying persuaded the government to allocate more than $1 billion in research funds. “Long COVID has a strong claim to be the first illness created through patients finding one another on Twitter,” researchers Felicity Callard and Elisa Perego wrote in the journal Social Science & Medicine. (They both suffered from long COVID themselves.) Patients desperately searching for answers were understandably dismayed to find little clarity from the medical community about their strange illness.

https://slate.com/technology/2023/03/long-covid-symptoms-studies-research-variant.html

 

Is this the piece recently published by Jeff Wise, who wrote an abysmal and atrocious hit job on patients in NY Mag??

 

Yes.

 

two articles from the same website
An immunologist’s reflections on nine months of long COVID

https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/immunologists-reflections-nine-months-long-covid

then we have
#VaccinesWork’s top 10 Long COVID stories

(which includes the above story)

followed by Paul Garner.
https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/vaccinesworks-top-10-long-covid-stories

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1637450027458068480

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1637602732147195904

 

I've seen a few discussions of this on the bird app. It seems based on the WaPo study of health records showing that fewer people are seeking healthcare for LC.

This seems to be the new excuse. Even though all patient testimony reveal an almost universal pattern of negligence and discrimination leading to them no longer seeking healthcare because they get the loud message not to bother. In addition to most seeking care for it not being told anything by their physician, which then never gets recorded as anything other than possibly "worried well", or whatever.

Even by the standards of propaganda, this is impressive manufacturing consent. The very people who fail to record something are, yet again, pointing at their refusal to record things as evidence that those things don't exist.

Completely incompatible with professional expertise. Using their own failure to fail even worse. Without accountability. Without even any damn reasoning or looking at reality. Supply-side medicine that only looks down at its own navel.

 

This piece is being celebrated in predictable quarters. The narrative is that fear of a massive wave of disability was totally unfounded and the product of mass hysteria. Those who are disabled are also likely the products of mass hysteria. Jeff Wise is being heralded as the journalist we need in these polarizing times.

 

I guess that'll be just long covid as functional overlay over these "biological changes" then.

 

Saw this tweet from Dakota about a study finding a reduction of number of steps taken compared with before the pandemic among Americans with FitBits. I don't think Long Covid is mentioned as a possible explanation, but here's the tweet and link to study in case someone is interested

JAMA Daily Step Counts Before and After the COVID-19 Pandemic Among All of Us Research Participants

 

Some good replies on there.

 

I doubt the main cause was long Covid. The CDC estimates only 7% of adults have LC, and not all of those have symptoms that limit exercise.