4 ms·
> people are really hostile about the idea of long hauling. This is largely because the self-identified "long COVID" community on FB groups etc. (as opposed to
by Mediterraneo10 6y ago
> people are really hostile about the idea of long hauling.
This is largely because the self-identified "long COVID" community on FB groups etc. (as opposed to the scientific community studying the phenomenon) is behaving very similarly to the "chronic Lyme" groups that flourished just before COVID. Many of those people truly felt distress and, indeed, one shouldn’t deny their symptoms. However, any link between those symptoms and Lyme disease was extremely questionable, to put it mildly. The same holds now with COVID, and many of the "long COVID" self-reporters were never even formally diagnosed positive for the virus in the first place.
- wpasc 6y agoRead a little up on the history of the medical community underdiagnosing or ignoring autoimmune diseases because they are harder to confirm. Those autoimmune diseases are very real and given the history of underdiagnosing diseases that are harder to track, we should take seriously the reports of symptoms by people as more than hypochondria.
- lamontcg 6y agoYeah, we need to believe autoimmune / long COVID sufferers first. There's a parallel here with default assumptions of sexual assault / harassment being against the victim because of the existence of some claims that were clearly manufactured. (And not entirely surprisingly the victims of autoimmune diseases tend to be disproportionately women, so there's more than just a superficial similarity here)
- stjohnswarts 6y agoIsn't it possible that covid can trigger autoimmune conditions though? For years doctor's denied the existence of conditions like Crohn's disease and fibromyalgia as just hypochondria
- alchemism 6y agoAs far as the relation to COVID is concerned, I would look into the symptom severity of untreated chronic Lyme as opposed to treated. Psychosomatism may be an issue — but consider also that the neurological mechanisms governing it may themselves be degraded through the course of such infections.
- eli 6y agoI guess at this point it's easy enough to get an antigen test to see if you had it, but I'm sure a great many people who got Covid last summer didn't get a positive test. A lot of places the official advice was not to bother so long as symptoms were manageable at home.
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago> Many of those people truly felt distress and, indeed, one shouldn’t deny their symptoms. This is really important. The placebo effect is very powerful, and placebo-induced symptoms are absolutely real symptoms. They just aren't caused by what you think they are. (I'm not saying that "long COVID" is or isn't placebo-induced, merely that such a conversation is separate from whether it's "real".)
- monoideism 6y ago> The placebo effect is very powerful, and placebo-induced symptoms are absolutely real symptoms. This would be the nocebo effect, which definitely is as real as the placebo effect.
- Wowfunhappy 6y agoOops, right, a placebo would reduce symptoms. Thanks.
- altcognito 6y ago> the self-identified "long COVID" community on FB groups etc. (as opposed to the scientific community studying the phenomenon) is behaving very similarly to the "chronic Lyme" groups that flourished just before COVID. I somehow doubt the common animosity is being driven by social media groups and "Lyme disease self-identifying hysteria". It seems vastly more likely it's more about suppressing any concerns the costs might be greater than zero for those who don't die after infection. Often, tough to diagnose or difficult to treat symptoms are uncomfortable truths for public officials. 9-11 responders are a good example.
- lamontcg 6y agoAnd before 9/11 responders there was gulf-war syndrome (which never was PTSD since that group of soldiers reported much lower incidence of PTSD compared to others that fought in wars).