The New England Journal of Medicine: Confronting Our Next National Health Disaster - Long-Haul Covid - Philips, Williams - 2021

Perspective: Confronting Our Next National Health Disaster - Long-Haul Covid
Stene Phillips, M.D., M.P.H., and Michelle A. Williams, Sc.D.

Quote:
To understand why long Covid represents a looming catastrophe, we need look no further than the historical antecedents: similar postinfection syndromes. Experience with conditions such as myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), fibromyalgia, post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome, chronic Epstein–Barr virus, and even the 19th-century diagnosis of neurasthenia could foreshadow the suffering of patients with long Covid in the months and years after infection.

The health care community, the media, and most people with long Covid have treated this syndrome as an unexpected new phenomenon. But given the long arc and enigmatic history of “new” postinfection syndromes, the emergence of long Covid should not be surprising.

Equally unsurprising has been the medical community’s ambivalence about recognizing long Covid as a legitimate disease or syndrome.

 

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