News from Canada

[Chandelier]

Healthcare Workers With Long COVID Struggle to Find Support

Some healthcare workers fail to recognize the symptoms of long COVID in themselves, says one physician.

www.medscape.com

1100-word article.

Healthcare Workers With Long COVID Struggle to Find Support and Care in an Environment of Denial​

Alison Palkhivala
January 09, 2026

 

[rvallee]

Healthcare Workers With Long COVID Struggle to Find Support

Some healthcare workers fail to recognize the symptoms of long COVID in themselves, says one physician.

www.medscape.com

1100-word article.

Healthcare Workers With Long COVID Struggle to Find Support and Care in an Environment of Denial​

Alison Palkhivala
January 09, 2026

Hulme and other interested parties have tried to help build the infrastructure needed to provide care for patients with long COVID, but they have faced many barriers. Although the condition shares many features with fibromyalgia, myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, and postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, guidelines for those conditions could not mention long COVID by provincial government decree. “There are many, many political reasons as to why [long COVID] should not become a big deal,” said Hulme. “There are still little pockets of money for research, but they are very small.”

Health is political. Health care is political. Medicine is political.

“Historically, [healthcare workers] have denied the existence of conditions that do not have a biomarker and a treatment,” continued Hulme. “Until we have a biomarker and a treatment, the healthcare community will continue to be unexcited about this….Insurance companies and governments do not want to pay disability or structured paid leave, and healthcare systems do not want to pay their healthcare workers for paid leave. So, it is in nobody’s interest to accept this as a real condition. There is a lot of stigma around [long COVID. Physicians with it] have had a really hard time going off work. They have been made to feel very guilty and [risk] losing their practice.”

It's incredible how this perfectly captures the banality of evil. It describes throwing millions of people in the trash. There is no uncertainty as to what happens when sick people are denied all forms of help and support like this. And it's described with less emotion than a garbage collection strike.

 

[Sean]

So, it is in nobody’s interest to accept this as a real condition.

Besides patients. And their family. And friends. And community. And the national budget.

The bit I don't get in all this idiocy is just how short-sighted burying heads in the sand is. The best, and indeed only way, to solve this is to recognise how serious it is, how poorly understood it is and why that is so, and start funding proper research into it to find actual effective solutions.

How else can it be solved?

 

[ahimsa]

Quoting this bit again:

Although the condition shares many features with fibromyalgia, myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, and postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, guidelines for those conditions could not mention long COVID by provincial government decree.

Government guidelines for ME/CFS or POTS in Canada can't even mention Long Covid? Really? But patient organizations can, right?

I'm really confused about the idea that a guideline can't mention overlapping conditions, especially since a subset of Long Covid patients meet the ME/CFS diagnostic criteria.