News about Long Covid including its relationship to ME/CFS 2020 to 2021

Isn't this burnout an area of special interest for Gerada anyway?

I seem to recall something a couple of years ago where she was going on about GP burnout and how those pesky patients are causing significant stress and burnout in the medical profession.

 

I spotted the Telegraph article earlier today, the one with our friend SW offering to do research; hmmmm, not entirely confident that it will be helpful research.

Sorry but an image popped into my head:

‘Have no fear, Sir Simon is here,’ he says as he rides in to the rescue.... perhaps to the tune of the William Tell Overture.

 

Merged thread. Note - this is the same article already linked in this post.


Article : Coronavirus could cause secondary illnesses including chronic fatigue syndrome, experts warn

Subtitle : New medical papers suggest the contagion can get deep into our vascular system and even our brains

Link : https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-...-cause-secondary-illnesses-including-chronic/

Note that Weasley gets a mention near the end of the article. And the article is not popular on Twitter. Even PACE gets a mention :

https://twitter.com/user/status/1256643432522661889

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1257061132189097984

 

Moved post responding to Telegraph article

"Experts have warned"

Literally quotes the prime anti-expert on the topic, a failure on all counts, the very embodiment of the fact that self-proclaimed expertise is not the same thing as genuine expertise, something that requires expertise to understand.

Thing is, on the long term, no matter what he does here, his legacy as a failure, a saboteur, a monster, is guaranteed. Nothing he does meanwhile will change that, the legacy is cemented forever. But he may choose to further harm more people in exchange for making his spoils last a bit longer. Just for a few years of raising the stakes of his delusions, leaving off with an explosion of even more suffering.

Which he clearly did. Seriously this is worthy of study all by itself, the hubris is just off the scales here. Trading millions of lives for a mediocre career was not enough, more lives, more suffering, are needed to feed both the ego and the id, to remain a celebrity physician with an unearned reputation just a tad longer.

Then again, maybe he is simply that delusional and actually thinks he did a great job. I doubt it, but I'm not sure which is worse, the outcome is identical anyway. It's still far more disappointing that this nonsense is still treated as legitimate and valid by others, complete system breakdown.

 

I just clicked on the Reddit thread from Vastag's tweet. The first in that thread is just appalling. Person having difficulty breathing and requested a CT scan from GP. Who refused and said would refer to a Medical Unexplained Illness clinic. A lot more agreeing, one had a GP who did suggest ME/CFS.

It's a pretty sad thread - these were all young, fit and healthy. Some being pressured to go back to work too. One parent threatened to get offspring sectioned. Sorry, don't mean to be depressing, but am just horrified by all this.

 

Do you have a link?

 

Not sure if it will work or not as I went straight from the link in the tweet. But this is where I ended up:

I'm sick and tired...

Please be aware it's very sad and worrying, a lot of people not getting proper treatment.

Have some hugs to strengthen you!

(edited to remove large block of text that didn't intend to include)

 

Yes it just all sounds too familiar.
How many being given the wrong advice/treatment will it take before the NHS/NICE acknowledge that the symptoms are not MUS?
Interesting that the current NICE guidelines differentiate between the COvid-19 viral pneumonia and bacterial pneumonia:

the major difference being the existance or lack of pleuritic pain. Yet from what I have read so far most post-covid patients report chest pain?

Given all the evidence so far that it is highly likely that a fair percentage of these patients will go on to develop ME (particularly if they are given the wrong advice/treatment at an early stage) I would have thought that the new ME guidelines should be higher priority.............but then I wouldn't be surprised if Wessely and co have already started on proposed guidelines for "Post-Covid syndrome".

 

It's like watching a car crash in slow motion, while you stand there helpless.....

My heart goes out to these guys. It's far too soon to think they'll end up one of the millions missing but I reading tgeir posts brings back unwelcome memories for sure.

I'm staggered (& you really would think I'd know better by now) by the casual carelessness, the laziness of some doctors. This is a disease we know little about, had never even heard of pre 2020, are still finding atypical onset symptoms and yet a GP can say, with all certainty, someone who is less than two months in needs referral to IAPT or a MUS clinic.

Why are the doctors being consulted here not demanding post covid clinics for patients? That way the patients could be given some relevant support and the medical profession could continue to learn more, not only about covid but also the immune system. Let there be psych support as an add on for those that want it.

There is no care for the long term health of these patients. No concern for the iatrogenic harm of being dismissed and ignored. There is no curiosity about the disease and anything we could possibly learn about immune response and long term effects.

All this in a wealthy first world nation.

Where would we be if army surgeons, Lister, Marie Curie and so on had shown the same disinterest.

Mental midgets snoozing lazily on the shoulders on giants.

 

Sorry if this has been mentioned but I was also concerned to see Wessley’s comments in the New Scientist article the other week talking about a possible post CoVid illness. He refers to CFS as having “other factors contributing to longer term disability”. What other factors does he have in mind? Unhelpful beliefs and deconditioning? Is he planting the seed that if some post CoVid patients get ill long term it is the ‘other factors’ that contribute most to this even if mentions some biomedical stuff such as infection getting into the CNS, a sleight of hand slipping in one biomedical term?

From the article:

“Other viruses are known to trigger CFS after infection, such as the Epstein-Barr virus, says Simon Wessely, former president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. “We don’t know about corona, but I think it will lead to many, many cases of post-infective fatigue syndrome.”

“There is a long history of infections as a trigger but other factors contributing to longer term disability,” adds Wessely. “If the virus is found to enter the brain, this might increase the risk.”

Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/articl...r-post-viral-fatigue-syndromes/#ixzz6LNQ9dNU1

 

Of course he is.

 

I share the concerns by Colleen Steckel on this issue -



Edited to add, I see Colleen’s Facebook note has been put up on this thread already. I agree with Colleen the harmful narrative that could develop if it is assumed from the start post CoVid patients have ME and yet it turns out they are not the same. The post CoVid patients may develop some post viral fatigue state that may be long lasting but ultimately self limiting. And also agree with Colleen’s addendum that research that is careful to not group post CoVid patients as the same patient group as ME but compare and contrast the two patient groups would be helpful.

 

‘False Dawn’ Recovery Haunts Virus Survivors Who Fall Sick Again
https://twitter.com/user/status/1257358271565922306

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...ry-haunts-virus-survivors-who-fall-sick-again

This is a great example of how utterly FUBAR the whole situation has been in regards to ME, PVFS and chronic illnesses in general.

This is clearly PVFS, always different depending on the specific pathogen and circumstances but nevertheless the overarching concept. But because of the exclusive focus and misplaced obsession with fatigue, misrepresented as lack of motivation no less, using the term is confusing when the claims aren't met with the usual disbelief of "this is not possible". It's clearly not just fatigue. Which ME, PVFS and related patient populations have been screaming for decades.

But because the terminology has been deliberately confused and obfuscated to push the ideology of psychosomatic models to post-viral chronic illness, here where it matters the most, people have to use another term entirely, a new term for an old concept that has been destroyed beyond all recognition. Complete dumpster fire.

I expect lots of physicians will reject calling this PVFS because it's clearly more than fatigue. Which, yeah, WE TOLD YOU SO! Past failure, most of which are still current failures, are creating all new failures, making existing failures worse and, worst of all, making clarity impossible.

The book of the germ theory of disease has to be rewritten, extended a few chapters anyway. Germs don't only cause problems when they are in outbreak mode. They keep causing problems in the body, they have an impact on the host. This has been denied and buried for decades, preferring instead the mediocre absurdity of angels dancing on hairpins.

Medicine could already have had lots to offer those people. Instead there's nothing but confusion. And of course the BPSers will give it all to try and keep their hands in a choking handle on our necks.

 

@rvallee, may I ask do you recognise that there can be a post viral fatigue syndrome that can be long lasting, say even up to 2 years, but ultimately self limiting?

 

I don't understand the question.

 

When I studied microbiology in the early 70s, it was accepted as fact that some infections could take a long time to recover from, two or three years in some cases. Flu, especially was considered to have a long time to resolve in some patients.

This was different from ME which was a separate illness in the same way MS is a separate illness.

The term used was often post viral syndrome. When they renamed ME as post viral fatigue syndrome for what seemed like a few months before MS and SW came in with CFS we were left with confusion between a synonym for ME and the name for a protracted weakness after an infection. Typical BPS folly.