8 ms·

Women tend to suffer more from long covid, however, per my understanding.

whimsicalism 5y ago
long covid has very similar demographics to chronic fatigue syndrome. issues like these are very politicized, but it's likely that most of long covid is a combination of people who are having post-illness long-term sequelae and then also people with CFS-like symptoms, perhaps exacerbated by negative media coverage around covid and long covid.
- rp1 5y ago
  Watching how poorly some professional athletes perform during long Covid recovery makes me highly doubt CFS as the root cause. Also, people have reported long-term loss of smell which also isn’t a typical post-illness or CFS thing.
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    it's almost like you didn't read my comment. as i've said, long-term sequelae certainly exist - and they are different for covid probably. i also have had long-term loss of smell and modification of taste after getting a breakthrough delta case. that said, demographically (as well as by diversity of symptoms reported), it does appear that there is also a "CFS-like" disease population being super-imposed on top of those that are experiencing long-term sequelae. much of the conversation around long covid is also being funded by ME/CFS lobbying/patient advocacy groups [0]. i think there are two distinct phenomena, and the fact that women are over-represented as long covid patients may be due to the CFS-like phenomena rather than the sequelae one. [0]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-dubious-origins-of-long-covid-11616452583 https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-dubious-origins-of-long-cov...
    - melling 5y ago
      That’s an Opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal. They tend to not be trustworthy The Journal has told us twice this year that “Herd Immunity is Near” “Herd Immunity Is Near, Despite Fauci’s Denial” https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/herd-immunity-is-near-despite-faucis-denial-11616624554 https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/herd-immunity-is-near-despi...
      - whimsicalism 5y ago
        i'm not citing the opinion piece as a general endorsement of the wall street journal, or even this article. merely citing it because it condenses the evidence showing that CFS patient advocacy groups are heavily funding many of the prominent long covid organizations.
      - xorcist 5y ago
        Is this part of some weird political debate or something? The only thing I got out of that article is that one needs to count both the vaccinated and the recovered towards immunity levels, which is very much not controversial.
        melling 5y ago
        it was in March 2021: “Herd Immunity Is Near, Despite Fauci’s Denial” It’s December 2021. What went wrong? So, in March people should have said the opinion was reasonable and made corresponding policy decisions. Include any facts that support a belief and omit all others. Anyway, I’m simply saying the track record of the Journal leans more in one direction, and is frequently wrong. Furthermore, no one ever follows up to correct all those incorrect opinions Perhaps the steady diet of “coronavirus is no big deal” and “climate change “ opinions has skewed my opinion but to me the wsj seems to have an agenda. “ Climate Change Calls for Adaptation, Not Panic” https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/climate-change-adaptation-panic-exaggerating-disaster-11634760376 https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/climate-change-adaptation-p...
        xorcist 5y ago
        From my point of view, the scientific consensus how covid spreads was pretty good from the start, and has only gotten better. With more information, the picture is more detailed, not fundamentally different. What a completely unrelated piece by Bjørn Lomborg has to do with covid is not easy to understand. Hopefully no one is surprised if Lomborg has a simplified view of any given environmental problem. He is a business school professor after all and pretty well known for these things.
    - jquery 5y ago
      The Wall Street Journal opinion page has a long history of publishing absolute garbage-tier Covid takes.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- legutierr 5y ago
  Can you explain how negative media coverage is relevant here? How can a real illness that people are suffering from be affected at all by negative media coverage? Are you saying that it's something that people are imagining because they are being influenced by media reports? And what do you mean by "politicized"? Where has long covid been politicized? I haven't seen anything like that.
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    > real illness that people are suffering from be affected at all by negative media coverage Real illnesses that people are suffering from can be psychosomatic or affected by mental status. There is a ton of stigma around suggestions like these, hence the subtext of your comment that a "real illness" is independent from mental state. > And what do you mean by "politicized"? Where has long covid been politicized? I haven't seen anything like that. If you are a researcher and your research suggests that many cases of long covid or CFS have a psychological component or are psychosomatically driven, you will get death threats as well as condemned by advocacy organizations. [0] That is what I mean by politicized. The underlying root of the issue is stigma around any sort of illness that has a psychological component. [0]: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/chronic-fatigue-syndrome-death-threats-for-scientists https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/chronic-f...
    - nicoburns 5y ago
      Is there any evidence that it is psychosomatic? My understanding is that CFS (and long covid which indeed appears to be similar) affects a wide range of people, most often after some kind of viral infection that is very much physical in nature. And furthermore that the most successful treatment programs tend to focus on careful regulating exercise and diet which again seems to be largely physical. Just because the underlying biological mechanism isn't understood doesn't mean that there isn't one. To me CFS seems like a case of a disease neglected by medical science because it's dismissed as being psychosomatic.
      - whimsicalism 5y ago
- MisterBastahrd 5y ago
  Totally. Media coverage is why I suddenly started falling asleep during my work day and why my sense of smell and taste are still screwed up a year later. I can't taste oranges, cannot stand the smell or taste of tap water, and my office smells like an ash tray because CNN and MSNBC, and not because there's actually an issue. One of the very best ways to be insulting on this sort of an issue is to tell people that what they're experiencing is a fabrication of a media conspiracy that doesn't exist.
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    1. Maybe actually read my comment, where I acknowledge that post-covid sequelae are absolutely a thing. I myself experienced long-term sense of smell screwups. 2. Psychological components of an illness are still an illness, and I'm not suggesting that long covid is a "fabrication." You need to get over your internalized stigma, psychological effects can be incredibly powerful. People experiencing CFS get similarly outraged when people suggest there is a psychological component to the disease. This is due to stigma. Indeed, if anything, CFS is good evidence of the strong impact that even a (probably) psychologically derived illness can have on one's physical well-being. 3. Even saying that something is at least partially driven by the media does not mean it is not a "serious" problem. Media coverage of high profile suicides leads to a measurable increase in the number of suicides in the general population. Those people killing themselves is not a "fabrication" and is in fact a really serious problem. i would be surprised if we hadn't seen something like cfs for covid emerge given the level of scary (to be clear, not irrationally scary, justifiably scary) media coverage around covid.
    - zajio1am 5y ago
      > This is due to stigma. Indeed, if anything, CFS is good evidence of the strong impact that even a (probably) psychologically derived illness can have on one's physical well-being. AFAIK there is no strong consensus that (even covid-unrelated) CFS is probably psychosomatic in constrast to, say, immunologic.
      - whimsicalism 5y ago
- yosito 5y ago
  I know people with long covid and people with CFS, and while there may be some overlapping symptoms that are common, they are decidedly different in most people.
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    As I've said, "long covid" is an overloaded term right now. I'm also not going to be drawing conclusions from "I know some people X" and "other people Y." Hopefully the scientists studying this don't do that either.
- vimy 5y ago
  CFS isn’t psychosomatic though. Enough research out there that disproves the ‘it’s all in your head’ theory. Long Covid _is_ CFS. Viruses and bacteria are always the trigger for CFS.
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    > Enough research out there that disproves the ‘it’s all in your head’ theory. That is definitely not even close to the consensus opinion of the field. there have been a number of attempts to try to show viruses as causing cfs, they have been discredited, whereas the pace study has not. [0] post-aids patient advocacy, in clinical practice it has become incredibly unwise and unpopular to say that something is psychological in nature. even researchers who don't do anything in the clinic will still get death threats for suggesting otherwise. [0]: https://www.nature.com/articles/471282a https://www.nature.com/articles/471282a
    - vimy 5y ago
      Pace has been debunked. The idea that is has become unpopular to say something is psychological in nature couldn’t be more wrong. Talk to CFS patients before you make statements like that. There is not a single CFS patient who hasn’t been accused of making it all up. Not. A. Single. One. Whenever a doctor doesn’t know the answer, it’s always psychological. It’s the easy way out. People like you piss me off to no end so I’m gonna stop replying.
      - whimsicalism 5y ago
        you clearly have massive internal stigma against people with psychologically-based illness. this is not the same as "making it all up." this is exactly what i mean when i say this stuff is politicized. i disagree fundamentally with the epistemic theory of "trust people to know what is causing their illness, not doctors or researchers." e: for evidence of what this particular strain of "patient advocacy" looks like, just peruse through this person's previous comments (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29398210 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29398210), such as: > Alzheimer isn’t a disease but a symptom of chronic viruses and bacteria. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6066504/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6066504/ > People with Alzheimer have been cured after taking antibiotics.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- elzbardico 5y ago
  Any viral infection can cause some medium term effects. But most of the people with so called long-covid didn’t even test positive. They are just really convinced that they got it some time ago and that now they have long covid and the doctors are gaslighting them

long covid has very similar demographics to chronic fatigue syndrome. issues like these are very politicized, but it's likely that most of long covid is a combination of people who are having post-illness long-term sequelae and then also people with CFS-like symptoms, perhaps exacerbated by negative media coverage around covid and long covid.

rp1 5y ago
Watching how poorly some professional athletes perform during long Covid recovery makes me highly doubt CFS as the root cause. Also, people have reported long-term loss of smell which also isn’t a typical post-illness or CFS thing.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  it's almost like you didn't read my comment. as i've said, long-term sequelae certainly exist - and they are different for covid probably. i also have had long-term loss of smell and modification of taste after getting a breakthrough delta case. that said, demographically (as well as by diversity of symptoms reported), it does appear that there is also a "CFS-like" disease population being super-imposed on top of those that are experiencing long-term sequelae. much of the conversation around long covid is also being funded by ME/CFS lobbying/patient advocacy groups [0]. i think there are two distinct phenomena, and the fact that women are over-represented as long covid patients may be due to the CFS-like phenomena rather than the sequelae one. [0]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-dubious-origins-of-long-covid-11616452583 https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-dubious-origins-of-long-cov...
  - melling 5y ago
    That’s an Opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal. They tend to not be trustworthy The Journal has told us twice this year that “Herd Immunity is Near” “Herd Immunity Is Near, Despite Fauci’s Denial” https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/herd-immunity-is-near-despite-faucis-denial-11616624554 https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/herd-immunity-is-near-despi...
    - whimsicalism 5y ago
      i'm not citing the opinion piece as a general endorsement of the wall street journal, or even this article. merely citing it because it condenses the evidence showing that CFS patient advocacy groups are heavily funding many of the prominent long covid organizations.
    - xorcist 5y ago
      Is this part of some weird political debate or something? The only thing I got out of that article is that one needs to count both the vaccinated and the recovered towards immunity levels, which is very much not controversial.
      - melling 5y ago
        it was in March 2021: “Herd Immunity Is Near, Despite Fauci’s Denial” It’s December 2021. What went wrong? So, in March people should have said the opinion was reasonable and made corresponding policy decisions. Include any facts that support a belief and omit all others. Anyway, I’m simply saying the track record of the Journal leans more in one direction, and is frequently wrong. Furthermore, no one ever follows up to correct all those incorrect opinions Perhaps the steady diet of “coronavirus is no big deal” and “climate change “ opinions has skewed my opinion but to me the wsj seems to have an agenda. “ Climate Change Calls for Adaptation, Not Panic” https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/climate-change-adaptation-panic-exaggerating-disaster-11634760376 https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/climate-change-adaptation-p...
        xorcist 5y ago
        From my point of view, the scientific consensus how covid spreads was pretty good from the start, and has only gotten better. With more information, the picture is more detailed, not fundamentally different. What a completely unrelated piece by Bjørn Lomborg has to do with covid is not easy to understand. Hopefully no one is surprised if Lomborg has a simplified view of any given environmental problem. He is a business school professor after all and pretty well known for these things.
  - jquery 5y ago
    The Wall Street Journal opinion page has a long history of publishing absolute garbage-tier Covid takes.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
legutierr 5y ago
Can you explain how negative media coverage is relevant here? How can a real illness that people are suffering from be affected at all by negative media coverage? Are you saying that it's something that people are imagining because they are being influenced by media reports? And what do you mean by "politicized"? Where has long covid been politicized? I haven't seen anything like that.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  > real illness that people are suffering from be affected at all by negative media coverage Real illnesses that people are suffering from can be psychosomatic or affected by mental status. There is a ton of stigma around suggestions like these, hence the subtext of your comment that a "real illness" is independent from mental state. > And what do you mean by "politicized"? Where has long covid been politicized? I haven't seen anything like that. If you are a researcher and your research suggests that many cases of long covid or CFS have a psychological component or are psychosomatically driven, you will get death threats as well as condemned by advocacy organizations. [0] That is what I mean by politicized. The underlying root of the issue is stigma around any sort of illness that has a psychological component. [0]: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/chronic-fatigue-syndrome-death-threats-for-scientists https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/chronic-f...
  - nicoburns 5y ago
    Is there any evidence that it is psychosomatic? My understanding is that CFS (and long covid which indeed appears to be similar) affects a wide range of people, most often after some kind of viral infection that is very much physical in nature. And furthermore that the most successful treatment programs tend to focus on careful regulating exercise and diet which again seems to be largely physical. Just because the underlying biological mechanism isn't understood doesn't mean that there isn't one. To me CFS seems like a case of a disease neglected by medical science because it's dismissed as being psychosomatic.
    - whimsicalism 5y ago
MisterBastahrd 5y ago
Totally. Media coverage is why I suddenly started falling asleep during my work day and why my sense of smell and taste are still screwed up a year later. I can't taste oranges, cannot stand the smell or taste of tap water, and my office smells like an ash tray because CNN and MSNBC, and not because there's actually an issue. One of the very best ways to be insulting on this sort of an issue is to tell people that what they're experiencing is a fabrication of a media conspiracy that doesn't exist.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  1. Maybe actually read my comment, where I acknowledge that post-covid sequelae are absolutely a thing. I myself experienced long-term sense of smell screwups. 2. Psychological components of an illness are still an illness, and I'm not suggesting that long covid is a "fabrication." You need to get over your internalized stigma, psychological effects can be incredibly powerful. People experiencing CFS get similarly outraged when people suggest there is a psychological component to the disease. This is due to stigma. Indeed, if anything, CFS is good evidence of the strong impact that even a (probably) psychologically derived illness can have on one's physical well-being. 3. Even saying that something is at least partially driven by the media does not mean it is not a "serious" problem. Media coverage of high profile suicides leads to a measurable increase in the number of suicides in the general population. Those people killing themselves is not a "fabrication" and is in fact a really serious problem. i would be surprised if we hadn't seen something like cfs for covid emerge given the level of scary (to be clear, not irrationally scary, justifiably scary) media coverage around covid.
  - zajio1am 5y ago
    > This is due to stigma. Indeed, if anything, CFS is good evidence of the strong impact that even a (probably) psychologically derived illness can have on one's physical well-being. AFAIK there is no strong consensus that (even covid-unrelated) CFS is probably psychosomatic in constrast to, say, immunologic.
    - whimsicalism 5y ago
yosito 5y ago
I know people with long covid and people with CFS, and while there may be some overlapping symptoms that are common, they are decidedly different in most people.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  As I've said, "long covid" is an overloaded term right now. I'm also not going to be drawing conclusions from "I know some people X" and "other people Y." Hopefully the scientists studying this don't do that either.
vimy 5y ago
CFS isn’t psychosomatic though. Enough research out there that disproves the ‘it’s all in your head’ theory. Long Covid _is_ CFS. Viruses and bacteria are always the trigger for CFS.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  > Enough research out there that disproves the ‘it’s all in your head’ theory. That is definitely not even close to the consensus opinion of the field. there have been a number of attempts to try to show viruses as causing cfs, they have been discredited, whereas the pace study has not. [0] post-aids patient advocacy, in clinical practice it has become incredibly unwise and unpopular to say that something is psychological in nature. even researchers who don't do anything in the clinic will still get death threats for suggesting otherwise. [0]: https://www.nature.com/articles/471282a https://www.nature.com/articles/471282a
  - vimy 5y ago
    Pace has been debunked. The idea that is has become unpopular to say something is psychological in nature couldn’t be more wrong. Talk to CFS patients before you make statements like that. There is not a single CFS patient who hasn’t been accused of making it all up. Not. A. Single. One. Whenever a doctor doesn’t know the answer, it’s always psychological. It’s the easy way out. People like you piss me off to no end so I’m gonna stop replying.
    - whimsicalism 5y ago
      you clearly have massive internal stigma against people with psychologically-based illness. this is not the same as "making it all up." this is exactly what i mean when i say this stuff is politicized. i disagree fundamentally with the epistemic theory of "trust people to know what is causing their illness, not doctors or researchers." e: for evidence of what this particular strain of "patient advocacy" looks like, just peruse through this person's previous comments (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29398210 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29398210), such as: > Alzheimer isn’t a disease but a symptom of chronic viruses and bacteria. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6066504/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6066504/ > People with Alzheimer have been cured after taking antibiotics.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
elzbardico 5y ago
Any viral infection can cause some medium term effects. But most of the people with so called long-covid didn’t even test positive. They are just really convinced that they got it some time ago and that now they have long covid and the doctors are gaslighting them