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I sincerely appreciate that you acknowledged this mistake.Recognizing errors publicly is not easy, and I respect that.
But I also think this is why I have to ask you to look again at the much bigger issue: the WIRED article itself.
Because the problem is not only one misread study. The broader framing of that article is already causing real harm.
I say this sincerely: I know there is a person behind every account, with their own intentions, limits, mistakes and blind spots. We can all get things wrong. I do not believe the right response is to destroy someone when they are willing to correct mistakes.
But the article needs correction.
Over the last few days, I have received comments and private messages from patients saying that family members, people around them, and even clinicians who do not understand Long COVID are now using this narrative against them.
They are being told that they are not recovering because they do not want to.
Because they are not exercising.
Because they are not doing psychological therapy.
Because they are “stuck” in the wrong mindset.
You may not fully realize the damage that kind of framing can do if you have not lived this disease closely.
For many patients, their environment had finally started to believe them because biomedical research was moving forward. Years of studies showing immune, vascular, autonomic, metabolic and muscular abnormalities were slowly helping people understand that this is a real organic disease.
And then a simple, attractive narrative appears again:
maybe it is mind-body.
maybe patients are afraid of exercise.
maybe recovery is being blocked by beliefs.
That kind of framing can erase years of progress in one family, one workplace, one clinic.
Because when a disease is complex and poorly understood, the easiest story is always the old one: maybe the problem is psychological.
ME/CFS patients have lived with this harm for decades. Many Long COVID patients are now experiencing the same thing.
And this pressure is not harmless.
Patients lose their health.
They lose their jobs.
They lose their social lives.
They lose their independence.
And then, when public narratives suggest that maybe they are not recovering because of their mindset, they can also lose the last thing they had left: being believed and supported.
That pressure can become unbearable.
Some patients end up taking their own lives because they feel abandoned, disbelieved and blamed for an illness they did not choose.
Those lives matter.
They matter as much as yours or mine.
And these patients deserve exactly the same dignity, seriousness and protection that we give to patients with any other recognized disease.
Today, nobody would tell a patient with multiple sclerosis that they remain ill because they do not want to recover, because they do not exercise enough, or because they have not done the right psychological therapy.
Nobody would frame MS as a failure of mindset just because fatigue, stress sensitivity, cognitive symptoms or depression can appear in the disease.
So why is this acceptable with Long COVID or ME/CFS?
This is not about rejecting psychological support.
It is not about denying that the nervous system is involved.
It is not about saying every recovery story is false.
It is about not confusing support with cure.
Not confusing subjective improvement with disease modification.
Not confusing heterogeneous biology with “it might be in your head.”
Not using recovery anecdotes to reframe a post-infectious disease in a way that patients will pay for socially, medically and personally.
I genuinely believe people can reconsider things. None of us has to know everything about every field. Mistakes happen.
But when a mistake has consequences for a vulnerable patient community, correction matters.
The same criticism I have made these days, I would gladly replace with support if you helped correct the framing and the harm caused by the article.
Patients deserve mechanisms.'
