Long Covid symptoms no worse than for other viruses, Australian research finds

Queensland Australia's chief health officer says it is "time to stop using terms like long Covid, after Queensland Health research found no significant difference in post-viral symptoms between those who had Covid-19 and those diagnosed with flu. 

Time to stop using term ‘long Covid’ as symptoms no worse than those after flu, Queensland’s chief health officer says | The Guardian | Natasha May:

March 15. 2024 - "Long Covid may be no different from other post-viral syndromes such as those experienced after flu, according to new research from Queensland Health. The lead author of the study, the state’s chief health officer Dr John Gerrard, said it was 'time to stop using terms like "long Covid” because they imply there is something unique about the longer-term symptoms associated with the virus'.... There are different definitions of long Covid but the World Health Organization defines post-Covid or long Covid as occurring in people still experiencing symptoms three months after their initial Covid-19 infection, when those symptoms can’t be explained by an alternative diagnosis.

"The study surveyed 5,112 adults who had symptoms of a respiratory illness and underwent PCR testing between May and June 2022. Of those, 2,399 were positive for Covid-19, 995 positive for influenza and 1,718 negative for both. A year after their PCR test, participants were asked about ongoing symptoms and impairment using a questionnaire delivered by SMS link. Overall, 16% reported ongoing symptoms a year later, and 3.6% reported moderate-to-severe impairment in their daily activities.

"The results of the study, which Gerrard will present next month at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases in Barcelona, found no evidence that those who had Covid-19 were more likely to have functional limitations a year on compared with those who did not have Covid-19 (3.0% v 4.1%). The 3% of the study participants who had ongoing impairments after Covid-19 infection was similar to the 3.4% with ongoing impairments after influenza.

"The study also looked at specific symptoms in the patients who had moderate to severe impairment, and found in both patients who were Covid positive and negative, the same percentage (94%) reported one or more of the commonly reported symptoms of long Covid: fatigue, post exertional symptom exacerbation, brain fog and changes to taste and smell.

"Gerrard said long Covid may have appeared to be a distinct and severe illness because of the high number of people infected with Covid-19 within a short period of time.... 'We believe it is time to stop using terms like "long Covid". They wrongly imply there is something unique and exceptional about longer-term symptoms associated with this virus. This terminology can cause unnecessary fear, and in some cases, hypervigilance to longer symptoms that can impede recovery.'

"In a press conference on Friday, Gerrard said: 'I want to make it clear that the symptoms that some patients described after having Covid-19 are real, and we believe they are real. What we are saying is that the incidence of these symptoms is no greater in Covid-19 than it is with other respiratory viruses, and that to use this term "long Covid" is misleading and I believe harmful.'

"The researchers acknowledged the findings are associations and do not represent prevalence, and acknowledged limitations in that participants who attended hospital or had pre-existing illness were not identifiable. They also said because 90% of people in Queensland were vaccinated when Omicron emerged, the lower severity of long Covid could be due to vaccination and the variant.

"Prof Philip Britton, a paediatric infectious diseases physician from the University of Sydney and a member of the Long Covid Australia Collaboration, welcomed the study ... [but] said the conclusion that it was time to stop using terms such as long Covid was 'overstated and potentially unhelpful. Long Covid has been a global phenomenon, recognised by WHO.' Prof Jeremy Nicholson, the director of the Australian National Phenome Centre at Murdoch University, said the question of whether long Covid is unique 'cannot be simply answered in this work'."

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/mar/15/long-covid-symptoms-flu-cold

Read Queensland Health release: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1037611

NOTE: When I looked for a visual to use in the story, I found some excellent videos, including from the state-owned Australian Broadcating Corp. However, none of that was available on YouTube. The only news of the study I could find carried by YouTube was this brief attempt to dismiss it: 

‘Long COVID’ symptoms found to be similar to other infections | 9 News Australia | March 17, 2024:

"Long Covid" fails to correlate with having Covid19

Another study has failed to find a correlation between presenting "Long Covid" symptoms and having a prior history of Covid 19.

Bombshell: New Study on Long COVID in kids and young adults FAILS to link COVID to Long COVID | Vinay Prasad's Observations and Thoughts - Dr. Vinay Prasad

March31, 2023 - "A new paper out now from the Norwegians on Long COVID in kids and young adolescents takes a sledgehammer to the media narrative of the condition. TL:DR - Long covid has no link to prior COVID19, instead, initial symptom severity (of whatever virus you get), loneliness and poor physical activity are linked to the “post covid conditions”....

"The paper compares 300+ kids who definitely had COVID19 to 85 matched controls who definitely didn’t. It follows them on a battery of questionnaires and blood tests for 6 months. The cohort is well matched at baseline, and these kids were all selected because they sought PCR testing for COVID19. Ergo, many may have felt sick, and some of the people sick were sick with covid while others were sick with something else. This is similar to another paper on the topic that I discuss in this video [below - gd].

"The primary endpoint compares whether COVID19 is lined to post covid conditions and post infective fatigue syndrome, and the power calc is actually pretty decent— see paper. I say that because I see people (wrongly) saying it was underpowered.

"The first question is how many kids had Post Covid Conditions (PCC)?

• Covid group - 48.5%
• No covid group 47.1%.... No significant difference;

"Second question: how many kids have post-infective fatigue syndrome (PIFS)? The answer is 14.0% and 8.2%, and it is not significant.

"COVID19 had nothing do with either of these two conditions. Let’s me repeat that. Having had COVID19 had NOTHING TO DO with having symptoms consistent with “long covid.”

"The authors reference female sex, and indeed there was a numerical difference but it did not meet significance. Instead, initial severity of symptoms, loneliness and poor physical exercise were linked in multivariable analysis.... [F]atigue and neuroticism and emotional maladjustment and loneliness and depression are all linked. What you also see is that none of this has anything to do with prior COVID19....

"When you talk about Long COVID you have to have a control group..... With time, everyone will get COVID19 anyway, so studies from the past with controls might be the best we do. In the future, there will be no controls.

"Fear-mongering about LongCOVID in kids is not justified b/c they will all get it anyway, and many will suffer symptoms of long covid, but the two have nothing to do with each other. Randomized trials testing interventions— including counseling— are needed for people who suffer greatly from long covid. No intervention should be deployed outside of trials.

"Although not emphasized in the paper, there were no biochemical abnormality to explain long COVID, but this is partially moot b/c even COVID can’t explain long covid.

"The media have done a tremendous disservice with covering long COVID. The reason people inaccurately covered long COVID is that they needed to have it — they needed it to be scary — to justify continued restrictions in young populations.

"This study has limitations— the biggest is modest attrition, but the strengths are many compared to other papers. The control group & pre-specified power calc are the greatest strengths.... [T]he headlines should read: Well done Norwegian study cannot link the symptoms of long COVID to COVID19 in kids and adolescents. And the article should say: All kids will get COVID19 soon. There are few data to support vaccinating health[y] kids. We should let parents decide, and keep quiet, and in the meantime, learn to never restrict kids lives again. It’s just that simple."

Read more: https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/bombshell-new-study-on-long-covid

Read study: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2802893?s=03

Vinay Prasad, "What happens when you compare Long COVID to Long ANY OTHER VIRUS? NEW PAPER in JAMA NETWORK OPEN," YouTube, December 1, 2022:

Extent of Long Covid wildly overestimated

Canada's public health authority (PHAC)  website cites the incidence of Long Covid at 30-40%, but current research has it at ~5%. PHAC says its figures are under review and should not be used, but still has the old data on its website. 

Long COVID may now be less common than previously thought | CBC News - Adam Miller:

July 30, 2022 - "Long COVID can be a severely debilitating condition for those who live with it, but the growing list of symptoms and conflicting estimates on how often it occurs make it incredibly difficult to measure exactly how many people it affects. [But] Post-COVID-19 condition, as it's called by the World Health Organization (WHO), ... now appears significantly less common than earlier research suggested — thanks in part to vaccination.

"Based on data from ... early in the pandemic, the WHO estimates placed the condition at a rate of between 10 to 20 per cent of COVID-19 patients, while the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) states it can occur in between 30 to 40 per cent.... Canada's Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam went as far as to say back in May that long COVID can affect up to 50 per cent of all patients, adding that the symptoms can be 'quite broad and non-specific.' But with estimates that more than half of Canadians have been infected with COVID since D ecember after the emergence of Omicron and its highly contagious subvariants, there is a lack of evidence to suggest there are currently millions of COVID long haulers in Canada....

"'Long COVID is real. There are a lot of people suffering from it,' said Bill Hanage,* an epidemiologist at Harvard University's T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston. 'But you don't serve those people by pretending that 40 per cent of the population is in that boat'.... 

Screenshot of PHAC website https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/diseases/2019-novel-coronavirus-infection/symptoms/post-covid-19-condition.html, August 14, 2022. 

"Many of the estimates cited by health organizations are based on early data that largely looked at patients in 2020, long before COVID-19 vaccines and Omicron.... One study published in The Lancet in July 2021, cited by PHAC as one of its main sources for its estimate that 30 to 40 per cent of non-hospitalized patients develop long COVID, looked at fewer than 1,000 patients between April 2020 and December 2020. 'I assume that due to vaccination and the Omicron variant, fewer people will now be affected by long COVID,' Clara Lehmann, a lead author of the study ... said in a recent e-mail. PHAC also cites two systematic reviews as evidence for its high estimates of long COVID.... Many of the papers analyzed in the [review] studies are from before the emergence of Omicron and COVID-19 vaccines, while a significant proportion also had no control groups from the general population to compare against....

"A U.K. study published this week in Nature identified up to 62 symptoms associated with long COVID, including hair loss and erectile dysfunction, and found 5.4 per cent of non-hospitalized patients reported at least one symptom three months after an infection. In comparison, 4.4 per cent of people with no recorded evidence of COVID-19 infection reported at least one symptom.... That's in line with a recent survey from the U.K.'s Office for National Statistics that found the rate of long COVID was just over four per cent with Omicron BA.1 or BA.2 breakthrough infections in triple vaccinated adults.... 

"In a statement to CBC News, a spokesperson for PHAC clarified that 'there is currently insufficient pan-Canadian data to estimate the number of long COVID patients in Canada' and the rates of 30 to 40 per cent on their website 'predate the arrival of Omicron.... The estimates should not be used to extrapolate how many Canadians may have [long COVID] in 2022 since the arrival of the Omicron variant and sub-variants,' the statement read....

"[Some] confusion lies with the different definitions of what long COVID actually is [as well as] with the fact that the level of immunity in the population from prior infection and vaccination has vastly changed the risk.... And while some symptoms can be life-altering, others can be much less severe or hard to attribute to COVID-19 altogether — making [Long Covid] incredibly difficult to study accurately. 'It's fuzzy, the criteria are not sufficiently settled to permit statements that are as strong as some people make,' said Hanage from Harvard. 'You need to decide exactly what you mean by long COVID and recognize that there are a lot of different sorts of long COVID.'"

Read more: https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/long-covid-estimate-vaccination-omicron-canada-1.6536194 

* signatory of the John Snow Memorandum

The Covid goalposts keep being moved

When Believing the Health Authorities Requires Denying Obvious Realities | Brownstone Institute - Thorstein Siglaugsson:

Image: The Silver Doctors

June 7, 2022 - "This weekend The Daily Sceptic published two articles reviewing some studies purported to show Covid-19 vaccines are useful for countering so-called long-covid, lingering symptoms after Covid infection. The conclusion of the author, who is an ex-senior scientist with the UK government, is that the vaccinations do not in fact prevent those symptoms....

"The interesting thing here is how we have, over the course of 18 months, moved from eagerly awaiting vaccines that would eradicate Covid-19 by providing herd immunity, towards failed attempts at showing that at least those vaccines prevent long-term health issues among those who catch the disease and fall ill with it, the disease they wouldn’t have caught, let alone fallen ill with, had the vaccines worked as promised. 

"At the same time, more and more data from all over the world show how the vaccine rollout is in fact correlated with a large spike in excess mortality. The only hope seems to be the adenovirus vaccines, the use of which was discontinued in most countries in favour of the mRNA vaccines. That may have been a premature decision, as contrary to the mRNA vaccines, they seem to lower excess mortality. 

"To sum it up, no protection against infection, the vaccinated seem to fall ill just as easily as the unvaccinated, ... and despite some short-lived protection against death, the net effect is an increase, not a decrease in excess mortality. The last straw is trying to show that at least the vaccines prevent the rather dubious long-covid. Even this attempt fails according to The Daily Sceptic. Still, I expect we will see a wealth of studies purportedly showing some minor positive effects on all sorts of unrelated conditions; once a believer, there is always one more last straw to cling on to.

"This brings us back to the other goalposts, the three-week flattening of the curve, how lockdowns were supposed to stop the virus in its tracks, how masks were supposed to do the same, and how those goalposts have moved and how there is always another excuse. If the three-week flattening of the curve didn’t work it was because the lockdowns weren’t strict enough or not put in place at the correct point in time. If the masks didn’t work in a real-life setting this was of no consequence; the excuse was they weren’t used correctly.... If the lockdowns plunged hundreds of millions into acute poverty it wasn’t because of the lockdowns; in some mysterious way the virus itself had forbidden those people to work. 

"Moving goalposts and after-the-fact justifications are not a new problem. We see this everywhere. Every project manager has experience of targets being changed, of weak excuses, unrealistic plans and budgets. And of course there is always the tendency to try to cover up what happened. But even so, the stakeholders not directly responsible for the execution usually realize failure when it happens. 

"But this is not happening now. We, the public, are the most important stakeholder and it is not us who make the decisions or are responsible for the execution. What is new is how we unquestioningly accept every new goal, every justification, how ready we are to forget today what we were convinced of yesterday, how willingly we go for the next booster believing, truly believing the reason the last one failed to protect us was just bad luck.

"We have collectively accepted a parallel world, a parallel set of truths, and however far it is from actual reality does not matter in the least. Our goal is not to eradicate the disease, not to live with it and minimize the harm it causes, our goal is to sustain our belief in the cult leaders, no matter how often they mislead us; with every lie, every shifted target, every excuse, our faith only grows stronger.

"With every excuse we accept, with every denial we echo, every misguided action we support, we entangle ourselves more and more deeply; by each step, we take a higher stake in the narrative, and the higher it gets, the more fiercely we defend our parallel set of truths; the harder it becomes to break away and accept reality."

Read more: https://brownstone.org/articles/when-believing-the-health-authorities-requires-denying-obvious-realities/

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Long Covid associated with beliefs, not antibodies

Mind over matter? Long Covid study sparks controversy | MedicalXpress: 

November 12, 2021 - "A large-scale French study suggesting symptoms of so-called long COVID may be more due to psychological factors than to infection with the virus has sparked debate among patients and scientists. The report that appeared earlier this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association focused on nearly 27,000 participants across France who took antibody tests to screen for COVID infection. After the subjects had received the antibody test results, researchers asked them whether they believed they had been infected with COVID and to report on symptoms like fatigue, breathlessness or impaired attention.

"The vast majority of respondents — over 25,000 people — tested negative for COVID antibodies and believed they had never been sick. Of the some 1,000 who tested positive, about 450 believed they had contracted the virus. Finally, about 460 people who received negative antibody tests said they nonetheless believed they had had COVID.

"Researchers found that people who believed they had had COVID, whether or not they had had a positive test, were more likely to report long-term symptoms. A positive antibody test, meanwhile, was only consistently associated with one long-term symptom: loss of smell. They concluded that persistent physical symptoms 'may be associated more with the belief in having been infected with SARS-CoV-2 than with having laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 infection'.

"The study coordinated by Cedric Lemogne, head of psychiatry at the Hotel-Dieu hospital in Paris, suggested the findings were important in order to allow research into other causes of the symptoms. 'A medical evaluation of these patients may be needed to prevent symptoms due to another disease being erroneously attributed to "long COVID",' it said."

Read more: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-11-mind-covid-controversy.html

Long Covid doesn't exist, volume one zillion | Substack - Alex Berenson:

November 10, 2021 - "The Journal of the American Medical Association has another stunning paper out ... on post-Covid symptoms.... Researchers asked people to report whether they had had Covid and whether they had any of 18 lasting symptoms like insomnia, fatigue, or cough. They found that self-reported Covid was very strongly associated with nearly every symptom. 

"But the scientists ... also ... compared self-reported symptoms in people with antibodies — that is, people who had actually been infected and recovered from Covid — to the general population. And they found no difference in almost any symptom. Covid was not a risk factor for chest pain, or breathing difficulties, or trouble focusing, or stomach pain, or any of the many, many other complaints that long Covid 'patients' and interest groups say are real. There was one interesting exception; people with Covid antibodies did have a much higher rate of anosmia, losing one’s sense of smell. Because anosmia is a known and lasting side effect, it serves as a useful control of sorts.

"The researchers also found that almost 60 percent of the people with antibodies HAD NO IDEA THEY HAD EVEN HAD COVID AT ALL. Meanwhile ... more than half the people who said they had had Covid had no antibodies.... The study strongly suggests that many people are using previous Covid diagnoses — either real or imagined — to help explain away common physical symptoms such as joint pain or cough. It also suggests that actually being infected [with] Covid is far less risky than thinking you have been infected with Covid for many people..... 

"This study should slow, if not stop, the rush to medicalize long Covid. It is yet more proof that the illness is a group of squishy (if painful and difficult) symptoms looking for a name - and more importantly a billing code. But so many patients and physicians and public health experts are now invested (in some cases literally) in making long Covid real that the gravy train will likely roll on."

Read more: https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/long-covid-doesnt-exist-volume-one

Read study: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2785832

Covid-19 FAQ vs GBD (5): Youth and Long Covid

Anti-virus: The Covid-19 FAQ on the Great Barrington Declaration 
V: Youth and Long Covid

by George J. Dance

from "A Defence of the Great Barrington Declaration from Its Powerful Critics", The Daily Sceptic, 22 March 2021. 

6) Younger, healthier people don’t want this virus either. Just because younger, healthier people who catch the coronavirus die at lower rates than the elderly or those with pre-existing medical conditions, it doesn’t mean that it’s fine for them to catch the virus. (9)

"Lower rates" sounds deliberately misleading; the FAQ's own cited source says that “For every 1,000 people infected with the coronavirus who are under the age of 50, almost none will die” and “The IFR [is] close to zero for people between the ages of 15 and 44” (15) . But that does not mean that young people have no risks at all. It is prudent for them to manage their risks, too.

I wish I could tell those young people to also get vaccinated. Unfortunately, they are not legally allowed to do so at this time [March 2021]; governments have monopolised the vaccines, and nobody is allowed to take them until their government lets them. As not just a Covid libertarian but a full libertarian, and in light of my earlier vaccine comments: I would like to see a legal vaccine market for those excluded from the Government program. That need not drain vaccines from the Government program: one possibility is a Right to Try law, letting people import, buy, and sell vaccines that have been authorised in other countries; a ‘Dallas Buyers Club’-type solution. Alas, governments have put themselves in charge; and they have decided that no one can receive a vaccine without their permission.

I can only advise those who do not want catch the virus, and cannot legally be vaccinated, to take the common-sense steps I mentioned earlier:  limit contacts, give other people their space, avoid crowded and closed-in spaces, take extra vitamins and zinc, and discuss with your doctor what else you can do.

Many sufferers of the coronavirus have found it to be an unpleasant few weeks, have been hospitalised, or have developed “Long Covid” – symptoms that persist long after the initial infection. The evidence for “Long Covid” is growing, although it remains inconclusive. Doctors from intensive-care units have written about their experience of watching as even young patients die from the disease. Hospitalisation rates, although highest for the elderly, have been accelerating in the UK across all age groups. Even for young people, Covid risks being far worse than just a bad cold or bout of the flu.

I know little about “Long Covid”, but I suspect I am not alone. As the John Snow Memorandum put it, “we still do not understand who might suffer from long COVID,"(3)  nor do we understand precisely what their 'suffering' entails. “Long Covid” is being used as a blanket term for a number of distinct syndromes and a whole host of symptoms, ranging from observed physical damage like scarring of the lung tissue, right through to purely patient-defined symptoms like “breathlessness, muscle pains, palpitations and fatigue”(20) (all of which I have suffered from myself through the lockdowns). The bottom line: the risks and harms of Long Covid are largely unknown.

Which appears to be the point. Normally one would expect extreme interventions to be supported by strong evidence; but if people are afraid enough of the unknown, a very lack of evidence can be used to justify extreme measures. That was the case in the March lockdowns, and it appears that a similar tactic is being tried here. Fortunately, this new variant of alarmism may not work as well. “We have to close everything, or millions may die!” has a certain cachet; “We have to close everything, or millions may have an unpleasant few weeks!”, not so much.

3. Nisreen A. Alwan et al., “Scientific consensus on the COVID-19 pandemic: we need to act now” The Lancet, October 15th, 2020.

9. All quotations in italics are from: “Claim: The Great Barrington Declaration gives a good alternative to lockdown”, Anti-Virus: The Covid-19 FAQ.

15. Smriti Mallapaty, “The coronavirus is most deadly if you are older and male — new data reveal the risks”, Nature, August 28th, 2020.

20. “Long COVID: let patients help define long-lasting COVID symptoms”, Nature, October 7th, 2020.

Read full article here

The story behind the Long Covid story

The Dubious Origins of Long Covid | Wall Street Journal - Jeremy Devine:

March 22, 2021 - "‘Long Covid,” or post-Covid syndrome, is an emerging condition that has attracted great media attention — and now [U.S.] federal funding. The National Institutes of Health [NIH] last month announced a $1.15 billion initiative to research the 'prolonged health consequences' of Covid-19 infection. The topic deserves serious study. Some patients, particularly older ones with co-morbidities, do experience symptoms that outlast a coronavirus infection. But such symptoms can also be psychologically generated or caused by a physical illness unrelated to the prior infection. Long Covid is largely an invention of vocal patient activist groups....

"The concept of long Covid has a highly unorthodox origin: online surveys produced by Body Politic, which launched in 2018 and describes itself atop its website’s homepage as 'a queer feminist wellness collective merging the personal and the political.' In March 2020, the group’s co-founders created the Body Politic Covid-19 Support Group, and as part of their mission of 'cultivating patient led research,' the organization coordinated a series of online surveys on persistent symptoms. Based on the results of these, Body Politic produced the first report on long Covid in May.

"But many of the survey respondents who attributed their symptoms to the aftermath of a Covid-19 infection likely never had the virus in the first place. Of those who self-identified as having persistent symptoms attributed to Covid and responded to the first survey, not even a quarter had tested positive for the virus. Nearly half (47.8%) never had testing and 27.5% tested negative for Covid-19. Body Politic publicized the results of a larger, second survey in December 2020. Of the 3,762 respondents, a mere 600, or 15.9%, had tested positive for the virus at any time....

"This didn’t perturb NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins, who has repeatedly supported the Body Politic Covid-19 Support Group’s patient-led research initiatives, promoting the surveys in a series of official blog posts. In the announcement of the NIH’s decision to commit $1.15 billion to long Covid research, Dr. Collins explicitly referred to the Body Politic research surveys.

This subjugation of scientific rigor to preconceived belief reflects a common dynamic encountered in clinical practice. Patients who struggle with chronic and vague symptoms often vehemently reject a physician’s diagnosis that suggests an underlying mental-health issue, in part because of the stigma around mental illness and the false belief that psychologically generated symptoms aren’t 'real.' By relinquishing the need for objective serological confirmation, and by claiming that long Covid can manifest in a mind-boggling 205 different symptoms, the Body Politic Covid-19 Support Group offered its readership exactly this attractive alternative, leading patients away from treatments that could actually ease their symptoms.

"Body Politic wasn’t the only patient advocacy group that drove the NIH funding commitment. Solve ME/CFS (which stands for myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome) was founded in 1987 by patients who felt their chronic and numerous medical complaints — including fatigue, “brain fog,” and an inability to exert themselves physically or mentally — were being dismissed by their physicians and neglected by the medical community.... In 2017, frustrated by the lack of mainstream recognition of their condition, Solve ME/CFS hired a lobbyist to pressure federal agencies to commit more funds to research. Then, in December 2020, likely sensing an intuitive link with the emerging idea of long Covid syndrome, this same organization spearheaded a letter — also signed by Body Politic — to congressional leaders urging more federal funding be dedicated to investigating long Covid....

"A central feature underlying many psychosomatic-symptom disorders is a fixed belief that one is ill and unlikely to recover. By drawing attention to and legitimizing the ever-present threat of long Covid, medical authorities will lead a large group of impressionable patients to believe that their Covid-19 symptoms have not resolved and that they are helpless victims of an unrelenting sickness. 

"In the past century, the media has played a critical role in perpetuating psychogenic illnesses —  chronic brucellosis in the 1940s, chronic Epstein Barr virus in the 1980s, and today (although scientifically debunked) chronic Lyme disease. It is therefore alarming to witness the recent proliferation of uncritical and sensational media stories about long Covid. The NIH’s decision is a victory for pseudoscience and will do more to harm than help patients."

Read more: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-dubious-origins-of-long-covid-11616452583

Dr. Devine is a resident psychiatrist at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.

ZeroCovid groups launch international network

Left-wing 'zero covid' scientists plot bid for endless lockdowns | Sunday Express - David Maddox: 

July 4, 2021 - "The Sunday Express has learnt that members of Independent Sage are to be part of the launch of an international group called the World Health Network which will push for a 'zero covid' strategy of maintaining lockdowns. The revelation came at an online meeting of the Zero Covid campaign group last week where trade union officials told attendees about how covid is a means of recruiting members and how the ultimate goal has to be 'to bring down capitalism.'

"The news about the new international network was announced at the end of the meeting [by] Yaneer Bar-Yam,* an American physicist who is a member of the Covid Action Group which includes the members of Independent Sage including controversial behavioural scientist Professor Susan Michie,* who is a member of the Communist Party. It follows MPs last month questioning why three Independent Sage members including Professor Michie, her husband Professor Robert West,* and Professor Stephen Reicher,* all behavioural scientists, are also official government advisors.

"Dr Bar-Yam, a leading member of the Covid Action Group, told the meeting of leftwing Zero Covid activists that a closed conference not open to the public will be held on 14 and 15 July to launch the World Health Network. He said: 'We have a globalised team primarily of scientists called the Covid Action Group. [This is] morphing into the World Health Network [with] very enthusiastic participation from Indy Sage, ISAG (Independent Scientific Advocacy Group), Covid Germany, and reaching out to parents groups and others. The purpose of the network is to facilitate the interaction of the teams. Give it some global infrastructure thinking about opportunities'.... 

"Earlier in the meeting Kathy Jenkins from Scottish Hazards, which was set up to provide free and confidential information, advice, support and training to workers on workplace health and safety issues, discussed how she was being funded with taxpayers’ money from the Scottish government to go to non-union members and using covid to encourage them to join trade unions.... Tracy Edwards from the Public and Commercial Services Union also discussed how they were using air quality, long covid and other issues to restructure the workplace and add regulation.

"Near the end of the meeting ... Zero Covid activist Steve Ballard said that work on health and safety needed to be 'combined with transforming the nature of work.' He said: 'The rich have always said you have got to work to make us rich. That’s got to stop. Otherwise we are all going to fry'.... At a previous meeting he suggested that the Soviet Union style of Communism needed to be brought into Britain.

"Responding to his comments, Ms Edwards said: 'I agree with Steve there. Capitalism makes its own. The people who are in charge cannot be trusted to protect our health and safety. What we have got to do as a movement is not just control our working lives but society as a whole'.... Ms Jenkins added: '[Covid] hasn’t created problems, it has exposed them. Not only health and safety ones. Loads of smaller things need changing, not just capitalism [but] I completely agree we have got to get rid of it."

Read more: https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1457950/lockdown-labour-scientists-plot-bit-more-restrictions 

* signatories of the John Snow Memorandum

Questioning the Long Covid narrative

We need to start thinking more critically – and speaking more cautiously – about long Covid | Stat - Adam W. Gaffney: 

March 22, 2021 - "What media stories about long Covid ... describe is frightening. Ed Yong, a writer for The Atlantic, has been particularly influential in sculpting this narrative. In 'Long-Haulers Are Redefining Covid-19,' he describes a mysterious syndrome that strikes even those with mild Covid-19, people who never required hospitalization, oxygen, or ventilators, but who never seem to recover. One such individual, he noted, described some five months of 'extreme fatigue, bulging veins, excessive bruising, an erratic heartbeat, short-term memory loss, gynecological problems, sensitivity to light and sounds, and brain fog.' For some of these people, Yong noted, 'months of illness could turn into years of disability'....

"Almost everyone who dies of Covid-19 develops a condition called acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), a form of pneumonia.... ARDS can have myriad long-term effects, including physical and cognitive impairments, reduced lung function, mental health problems, and poorer quality of life.... Still, even if these ailments are sometimes acknowledged in media reports of long Covid, most narratives evoke something entirely different: a debilitating syndrome seemingly affecting multiple organ systems for months on end – and perhaps indefinitely – but without any specific diagnosis.... It is also notable that reports often suggest that even those with only mild acute symptoms – or no acute symptoms at all – are at risk....  

"Other reports describe something even more frightening. In October, a New York Times article described a dementia-like illness following a mild infection like this: 'It’s becoming known as Covid brain fog: troubling cognitive symptoms that can include memory loss, confusion, difficulty focusing, dizziness and grasping for everyday words.' Another Times story asserted that an entirely resolved mild infection could cause severe psychosis months later, even leading to thoughts of committing murder. 

"Reporting on long Covid needs to be more cautious for several reasons.

"First, consider that at least some people who identify themselves as having long Covid appear never to have been infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus....Yong ... cites a survey of Covid long-haulers in which some two-thirds of them had negative coronavirus antibody tests – blood tests that reveal prior SARS-CoV-2 infection. Meanwhile, a survey organized by a group of self-identified long Covid patients that recruited participants from online support groups reported in late December 2020 that around two-thirds of those surveyed who had undergone blood testing reported negative results.... But ... study after study has found that antibodies remain positive in a majority of people with confirmed infections for many months. So it’s highly probable that some or many long-haulers who were never diagnosed using PCR testing in the acute phase and who also have negative antibody tests are 'true negatives'....

"[I]f some proportion of long Covid patients were never infected with SARS-COV-2, it shows that it’s possible for anyone to misattribute chronic symptoms to this virus.... But what’s more notable is that the late-December survey also found virtually no difference in the long-haul symptom burden between those with and without antibody evidence of prior SARS-CoV-2 infection (or any positive test), which undercuts the likelihood of a causative role for SARS-CoV-2 as the predominant driver of chronic symptoms in that cohort. After all, the symptoms reported as consistent with long Covid are associated with many conditions.... 

"Add to that the fact that the past year has produced skyrocketing levels of social anguish and mental emotional distress.... [T]here’s no question that mental suffering can produce physical suffering. A New England Journal of Medicine report showed that, across multiple continents, about half of people with depression also had unexplained physical symptoms, which often predominated over their mental ones. Sleeping problems, physical and mental slowing, persistent fatigue, and concentration problems (aka 'brain fog') are among the actual criteria for major depression in the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V).

"The sad truth is that we are living through a time of incredible trauma, sorrow, and hardship. The loved ones of more than 500,000 Americans who have died of Covid-19 are in mourning. Tens of millions have lost their jobs. This has been a period of prolonged social isolation with no obvious parallel in history. We should expect a surge in both mental anguish and physical suffering that, while connected to the once-in-a-century pandemic, will not always be directly connected to SARS-COV-2 itself....

"[T]he suffering described by long Covid patients is debilitating and real ... [and] every such patient deserves careful, empathetic evaluation and appropriate treatment and referrals.... And rigorous research into the long-term effects of Covid-19 must continue. But at the same time we need to start thinking more critically — and speaking a bit more cautiously — about long Covid."

Read more: https://www.statnews.com/2021/03/22/we-need-to-start-thinking-more-critically-speaking-cautiously-long-covid/ 

Adam Gaffney is a pulmonary and critical care physician at the Cambridge Health Alliance in Cambridge, Mass., and an assistant professor in medicine at Harvard Medical School.