5 ms·

I would say we don't really know if it's so called Long COVID. I mean that I have taken care of an ME/CFS sufferer long before COVID was around. So it's a set o

I would say we don't really know if it's so called Long COVID. I mean that I have taken care of an ME/CFS sufferer long before COVID was around. So it's a set of diseases grouped by their similar symptoms. Autism and ADHD seem similar in that regard

proto-n 2y ago
The "so called Long COVID" really just means "I got covid and I remain unwell in some way, long term". I'm not sure it needs to be questioned if those two qualifying things are given. Very well might be the same thing as ME/CFS, or might not, I don't think we have a conclusive answer yet about what causes either.
- jdietrich 2y ago
  "Long COVID" encompasses several very distinct nosological categories, which makes it a difficult term to talk about. There are at least four distinct subtypes - people who had severe acute illness and suffered respiratory injury, people who had severe acute illness and suffered cardiovascular or renal injury, people who had a relatively mild acute illness but developed long-term neurological or musculoskeletal sequelae, and people who developed those latter symptoms during the COVID pandemic without actually being infected with COVID. All of those types of suffering are very real, but may have very different causes and require different treatments.
  - davidt84 2y ago
    Without knowingly being infected with COVID is probably a better way to phrase that.
    - jdietrich 2y ago
      https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/spectrum.02537-22 https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/spectrum.02537-22
      - 4bpp 2y ago
        > The final study population comprised 341 participants (90.6% females) who completed blood sampling and answered the questionnaire. A total of 232 (68%) were seropositive How does this compare to the base rate in a similar population? Two thirds sounds like a reasonable estimate for "ever had COVID" in Denmark in 2022, though maybe a smaller percentage would in fact be seropositive. It would be interesting if self-reported long COVID had little or no correlation with having had COVID at all.
      - chmorgan_ 2y ago
        note that this is 'self reported long covid'. For a proper study you'd need an objective measure otherwise it can't be determined what might be long covid vs. fatigue from working late hours at work, changes in mood due to season, changes due to age etc.
- H8crilA 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - krageon 2y ago
    It's not that it sucks to have this brought up, it's that the people who do are pretty consistently dismissive and infantilising about it. Naturally, folks that this happens to develop an aversion to people that say the same thing for the millionth time. It's not novel, it's not interesting (in that it never leads anywhere novel either) and it's frequently hostile.
    - H8crilA 2y ago
      The bigger problem is that nothing seems to be "interesting", in the sense that nothing leads anywhere with this disorder - no test, and no treatment.
    - pfannkuchen 2y ago
      If anything I feel like it’s actually more interesting if it’s a psychiatric condition. Does someone’s visceral sense of having control of their own life being detonated have an impact on their body? Probably? What if they have been conditioned to act like they are not bothered by this aspect of the situation, and therefore don’t process this feeling and it remains unresolved. That is like the definition of trauma.
- InDubioProRubio 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - ta20240528 2y ago
    … along with mental/emotional disorders being a character fault.
  - theoreticalmal 2y ago
    Doesn’t the Bible specifically mention against this line of thinking?
    - plagiarist 2y ago
      I believe they might be facetious.
    - rtkwe 2y ago
      Probably but that doesn't stop people from selectively reading or twisting the Bible to serve their own ends, bringing the weight of God behind their own desires and goals. They know most believers never actually read their own holy book on their own much less with a critical eye to how well it matches what they're being told.
    - InDubioProRubio 2y ago
      Reading utopic rulebooks - the intent is of no value. What is of value, is the reproduceable outcome of the rule-book interacting with actual humans, not idealized or demonized concepts.
klipt 2y ago
Yeah a relative of mine had it decades before Covid. A better term may be "Long Virus" since multiple viruses can trigger it, Covid just happens to be the most recent pandemic.
- saalweachter 2y ago
  Eh, the advantage of "long Covid" is that syndromes are clusters of symptoms without a known underlying cause. "Long Covid" may give ME/CFS symptoms, but if you solicit 100 Long Covid sufferers for a study, you are more likely to be able to find underlying similarities than for 100 ME/CFS suffers. The results would potentially scale to some sunset of ME/CFS suffers neho never had Covid, but it makes sense to start with the group we at least have a common starting point on the cause.
  - GuB-42 2y ago
    That's what I am wondering, is it the right cluster? Some long covid symptoms are nothing like ME/CFS such as a persistant loss of taste and smell. And there are people with ME/CFS who never had covid. Anyways, I am sure that research goes both way, that is, studying the consequences of covid and the causes of ME/CFS. "meet in the middle" can be a good exploration strategy.
    - chongli 2y ago
      The symptoms may be very different but the causes may be similar: permanent damage to tissues and organs which the body is unable to heal over time.
- il-b 2y ago
  Mono (Epstein–Barr) can as well cause prolonged (many months and even years) illness.
tempfile 2y ago
[flagged]
- acomjean 2y ago
  I think the point being made was diseases can be difficult to diagnose. Some diseases don’t have explicit tests. ADHD is diagnosed by looking at just symptoms if I remember correctly. I’m not sure about autism. I knew someone who became sick. At first it was thought to be Lyme, it took a long while to determine and a bunch of other theories to determine it was lupus. Tests were not fully accurate and these illnesses manifest a little differently in different people.
  - tempfile 2y ago
    I am not objecting to the general point that diseases are hard to diagnose. The wording OP used does not just say that - phrases like "so-called" come with an implication that the thing being referred to is just made up. That's why my comment asks if they would say the same thing about ADHD and Autism. They probably wouldn't, because it would carry an implication that they thought ADHD and Autism were somehow "fake".
    - hgomersall 2y ago
      ADHD and Autism are interesting, because they are entirely based on certain clinical presentations and the opinion of the diagnosing practitioner. There are a certain set of traits that are "classically" ADHD for example, so what happens if you show 80% of those traits and show the counter-case for 20% of the traits? I expect that neurodivergence is going to become far more nuanced in its assessment, with a better understanding of an individual's whole psychological profile.
      - krageon 2y ago
        You can literally see ADHD in a brain scan, especially if you contrast it with after someone has taken the proper medication for it. This isn't some sort of witchcraft, it's a physical thing that's measurable.
Cthulhu_ 2y ago
Weird gatekeeping but ok; COVID causes chronic fatigue syndrome in some people. Because so many were affected (millions worldwide), it got its own nickname. ME/CFS developed after a covid infection. Modern understanding of autism / ADHD sees the two as part of a spectrum of neurodiverse conditions (think of an audio mixer of many different traits, more than a side-to-side slider), but I don't see the connection with ME/CFS, whether or not it's caused by a covid infection.
- mschuster91 2y ago
  > Weird gatekeeping but ok; COVID causes chronic fatigue syndrome in some people. Because so many were affected (millions worldwide), it got its own nickname. ME/CFS developed after a covid infection. ME/CFS has been around for way longer - prior to Covid, the Epstein-Barr virus was strongly suspected to be a trigger for it. Unfortunately ME/CFS was (and in many cases still isn't) widely known among doctors, so diagnoses were hard to come by and treatment even harder. At least now that there is money flowing into ME/CFS research and knowledge about it gets more widespread, "old time" ME/CFS sufferers have a perspective now...
- gadders 2y ago
  >>COVID causes chronic fatigue syndrome in some people. Because so many were affected (millions worldwide), it got its own nickname. It already had a name - post-viral fatigue syndrome. It's happened after other viruses before.

proto-n 2y ago

The "so called Long COVID" really just means "I got covid and I remain unwell in some way, long term". I'm not sure it needs to be questioned if those two qualifying things are given. Very well might be the same thing as ME/CFS, or might not, I don't think we have a conclusive answer yet about what causes either.

jdietrich 2y ago
"Long COVID" encompasses several very distinct nosological categories, which makes it a difficult term to talk about. There are at least four distinct subtypes - people who had severe acute illness and suffered respiratory injury, people who had severe acute illness and suffered cardiovascular or renal injury, people who had a relatively mild acute illness but developed long-term neurological or musculoskeletal sequelae, and people who developed those latter symptoms during the COVID pandemic without actually being infected with COVID. All of those types of suffering are very real, but may have very different causes and require different treatments.
- davidt84 2y ago
  Without knowingly being infected with COVID is probably a better way to phrase that.
  - jdietrich 2y ago
    https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/spectrum.02537-22 https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/spectrum.02537-22
    - 4bpp 2y ago
      > The final study population comprised 341 participants (90.6% females) who completed blood sampling and answered the questionnaire. A total of 232 (68%) were seropositive How does this compare to the base rate in a similar population? Two thirds sounds like a reasonable estimate for "ever had COVID" in Denmark in 2022, though maybe a smaller percentage would in fact be seropositive. It would be interesting if self-reported long COVID had little or no correlation with having had COVID at all.
    - chmorgan_ 2y ago
      note that this is 'self reported long covid'. For a proper study you'd need an objective measure otherwise it can't be determined what might be long covid vs. fatigue from working late hours at work, changes in mood due to season, changes due to age etc.
H8crilA 2y ago
[flagged]
- krageon 2y ago
  It's not that it sucks to have this brought up, it's that the people who do are pretty consistently dismissive and infantilising about it. Naturally, folks that this happens to develop an aversion to people that say the same thing for the millionth time. It's not novel, it's not interesting (in that it never leads anywhere novel either) and it's frequently hostile.
  - H8crilA 2y ago
    The bigger problem is that nothing seems to be "interesting", in the sense that nothing leads anywhere with this disorder - no test, and no treatment.
  - pfannkuchen 2y ago
    If anything I feel like it’s actually more interesting if it’s a psychiatric condition. Does someone’s visceral sense of having control of their own life being detonated have an impact on their body? Probably? What if they have been conditioned to act like they are not bothered by this aspect of the situation, and therefore don’t process this feeling and it remains unresolved. That is like the definition of trauma.
InDubioProRubio 2y ago
[flagged]
- ta20240528 2y ago
  … along with mental/emotional disorders being a character fault.
- theoreticalmal 2y ago
  Doesn’t the Bible specifically mention against this line of thinking?
  - plagiarist 2y ago
    I believe they might be facetious.
  - rtkwe 2y ago
    Probably but that doesn't stop people from selectively reading or twisting the Bible to serve their own ends, bringing the weight of God behind their own desires and goals. They know most believers never actually read their own holy book on their own much less with a critical eye to how well it matches what they're being told.
  - InDubioProRubio 2y ago
    Reading utopic rulebooks - the intent is of no value. What is of value, is the reproduceable outcome of the rule-book interacting with actual humans, not idealized or demonized concepts.

klipt 2y ago

Yeah a relative of mine had it decades before Covid. A better term may be "Long Virus" since multiple viruses can trigger it, Covid just happens to be the most recent pandemic.

saalweachter 2y ago
Eh, the advantage of "long Covid" is that syndromes are clusters of symptoms without a known underlying cause. "Long Covid" may give ME/CFS symptoms, but if you solicit 100 Long Covid sufferers for a study, you are more likely to be able to find underlying similarities than for 100 ME/CFS suffers. The results would potentially scale to some sunset of ME/CFS suffers neho never had Covid, but it makes sense to start with the group we at least have a common starting point on the cause.
- GuB-42 2y ago
  That's what I am wondering, is it the right cluster? Some long covid symptoms are nothing like ME/CFS such as a persistant loss of taste and smell. And there are people with ME/CFS who never had covid. Anyways, I am sure that research goes both way, that is, studying the consequences of covid and the causes of ME/CFS. "meet in the middle" can be a good exploration strategy.
  - chongli 2y ago
    The symptoms may be very different but the causes may be similar: permanent damage to tissues and organs which the body is unable to heal over time.
il-b 2y ago
Mono (Epstein–Barr) can as well cause prolonged (many months and even years) illness.

tempfile 2y ago

[flagged]

acomjean 2y ago
I think the point being made was diseases can be difficult to diagnose. Some diseases don’t have explicit tests. ADHD is diagnosed by looking at just symptoms if I remember correctly. I’m not sure about autism. I knew someone who became sick. At first it was thought to be Lyme, it took a long while to determine and a bunch of other theories to determine it was lupus. Tests were not fully accurate and these illnesses manifest a little differently in different people.
- tempfile 2y ago
  I am not objecting to the general point that diseases are hard to diagnose. The wording OP used does not just say that - phrases like "so-called" come with an implication that the thing being referred to is just made up. That's why my comment asks if they would say the same thing about ADHD and Autism. They probably wouldn't, because it would carry an implication that they thought ADHD and Autism were somehow "fake".
  - hgomersall 2y ago
    ADHD and Autism are interesting, because they are entirely based on certain clinical presentations and the opinion of the diagnosing practitioner. There are a certain set of traits that are "classically" ADHD for example, so what happens if you show 80% of those traits and show the counter-case for 20% of the traits? I expect that neurodivergence is going to become far more nuanced in its assessment, with a better understanding of an individual's whole psychological profile.
    - krageon 2y ago
      You can literally see ADHD in a brain scan, especially if you contrast it with after someone has taken the proper medication for it. This isn't some sort of witchcraft, it's a physical thing that's measurable.

Cthulhu_ 2y ago

Weird gatekeeping but ok; COVID causes chronic fatigue syndrome in some people. Because so many were affected (millions worldwide), it got its own nickname. ME/CFS developed after a covid infection. Modern understanding of autism / ADHD sees the two as part of a spectrum of neurodiverse conditions (think of an audio mixer of many different traits, more than a side-to-side slider), but I don't see the connection with ME/CFS, whether or not it's caused by a covid infection.

mschuster91 2y ago
> Weird gatekeeping but ok; COVID causes chronic fatigue syndrome in some people. Because so many were affected (millions worldwide), it got its own nickname. ME/CFS developed after a covid infection. ME/CFS has been around for way longer - prior to Covid, the Epstein-Barr virus was strongly suspected to be a trigger for it. Unfortunately ME/CFS was (and in many cases still isn't) widely known among doctors, so diagnoses were hard to come by and treatment even harder. At least now that there is money flowing into ME/CFS research and knowledge about it gets more widespread, "old time" ME/CFS sufferers have a perspective now...
gadders 2y ago
>>COVID causes chronic fatigue syndrome in some people. Because so many were affected (millions worldwide), it got its own nickname. It already had a name - post-viral fatigue syndrome. It's happened after other viruses before.