"There were sustained high levels of presentation [at emergency depts]...the majority of whom were older people who were “deconditioned”"-Health boss

Probably not that important but I found the phrasing of the following interesting:

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The continuing rise in the length of time people are waiting in emergency departments (ED) was “very troubling”. There were sustained high levels of presentation – 29,000 per week, the majority of whom were older people who were “deconditioned”. They were staying longer in hospital with more complicated treatment and discharge, Dr Henry said.
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https://www.irishtimes.com/health/2...sidered-amid-troubling-rise-in-covid-19-cases

I don't recall seeing “deconditioned” being used with regard to older people in the past. I can't imagine that explains all of the reasons older people are frail and the like. The deconditioning hypothesis has caused a lot of problems in the ME world.

 

No shortage of relevant papers from a Google Scholar search on "deconditioning in older people", the term has been in use for at least 20 years. Deconditioning in old age seems fairly well defined, and has a clear association with 'frailty'.

 

Broadly there are four domains where 'deconditioning' is a valid term - old age, prolonged immobilisation, athletic injury and space flight. In the case of athletic injury unless the athlete suffers prolonged immobilisation, deconditioning is a purely relative process and there is no consequential health impact. In the other domains health impacts encompassed by the term deconditioning are potentially serious, are demonstrable and are open to treatment.

The proposition (it hardly deserves to be described as an hypothesis) that deconditioning has a pathological role in ME/CFS produces a logical fallacy, it is comparable to saying that deconditioning is the cause of spaceflight. The way out of this fallacy for the the proponents is to invoke a prior state - a deconditioning illness despite the fact that none of the major features of deconditioning such as sarcopenia are present. It's like diagnosing a patient having experienced a prolonged space flight without any evidence they've left the ground. In essence it's a Just So Story .

This is not to say that ME/CFS patients are immune from deconditioning - patently we are all aging and at some point every PwME will begin to lose muscle mass just as every other aging human does:
Sarcopenia in older adults However there's an open and important question about what pathological deconditioning actually means for all PwME of whatever age and who have substantially reduced physical capacity, resolving that will require intelligent and sympathetic research that is far removed from the causation proposition.