We are now dealing with the effects of what George Monbiot calls Long COVID. He writes:
Long Covid is no respecter of youth, health or fitness. It afflicts more women than men but it can strike anyone down, including people whose initial infection seemed mild, or even asymptomatic. In some cases, long Covid could mean lifelong Covid.
The effects can be horrible. Among them are lung damage, heart damage and brain damage that can cause memory loss and brain fog, kidney damage, severe headaches, muscle and joint pain, loss of taste and smell, anxiety, depression and, above all, fatigue. We should all fear the lasting consequences of this pandemic.
Long Covid is shorthand for a range of conditions. Some scientists divide them into three broad categories, others into four. Of these, one seems to ring a bell. It’s a cluster of symptoms that bear a strong similarity to myalgic encephalomyelitis or chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). This is a devastating condition that affects roughly a quarter of a million people in the UK, and is often caused, like long Covid, by viral infection.
Like COVID, chronic fatigue syndrome has not been taken seriously:
A paper published in the British Medical Journal in 1970, and widely reported in the press, set the tone for scientific inquiry across much of the following 50 years. It dismissed outbreaks of the disease as either “mass hysteria” or misdiagnosis. The researchers failed to assess a single patient or interview a single doctor. Their conclusions were largely based on one observation: that the syndrome affected more women than men. Therefore, they reasoned, it was likely to be psychosomatic.
A study by the ME Association reveals that over 10 years, only £10m was spent in the UK on researching this syndrome: £40 per patient. By comparison, epilepsy research received £200 per patient, rheumatoid arthritis £320, and multiple sclerosis £800. Even today, some doctors refuse to believe sufferers, dismiss their symptoms or prescribe disproven and harmful treatments.
The now world is taking COVID seriously because so many people have died. Chronic Fatigue doesn't kill and therefore it has been overlooked. Monbiot believes that negligence is unforgivable.
Image: uppercervicalawareness
8 comments:
There's no shortage of experts willing to say that myalgia and chronic fatigue are overblown. Both conditions are diagnosed on the basis of self-reported symptoms without much in the way of objective signs. So the insured or employee says, "I'm suffering," and the insurer or employer says, "prove it, you malingerer!"
Our society's Calvinist heritage trains us to see shiftlessness and urges us to tell others to suck it up and get back to work - especially if those others are women or a few shades darker. As a result, a lot of people forgo proper treatment and burn out early. It's a problem society needs to take a hard look at.
Cap
I agree, Cap. We take diseases that cause death seriously. But we believe that those that cause suffering must be borne.
At the pace these variants are popping up we may be forced into a "catch up" situation of regularly modifying vaccines and who knows what lingering symptoms they may bring. I think we're going to be wearing masks for a couple of years to come, Owen. I'll bet this isn't how you expected to spend your retirement, eh?
I expected to face health challenges in my retirement, Mound. But COVID was off my radar.
does make me wonder if long haul COVID AND chronic fatigue are related at all. has any one had a look at the insides of the virus to see how they compare.
Having seen Chronic Fatigue amongst a number of people in one work place back in the 1980s it was interesting and no it wasn't all in their heads. I knew these people and they weren't slackers, they weren't mentally depressed, etc. They had some thing wrong with them. One in the end was diagnosed with Lyme's Disease. Some died of MS but it is the wierdest thing I ever saw because they were all young, healthy professionals, with good lives.
Perhaps once more people develop long haul COVID research will be done, because long haulers are going to cost the government and business a shit load of money. It may then address Chronic Fatigue.
More women may have been effected, or so it seemed because women will seek help while men frequently will try to tough it out, commit suicide, take up drinking, etc. In the group I observed it was both men and women who became ill.
Chronic fatigue affects both men and women, e.a.f. There may, indeed, be a link between the two.
I have a relative that suffers and has done for twenty five years.
It can go away and does return.
The medical industry has approached CFS as they approached Lyme disease; that it to say with little sympathy.
Sadly it reminds me of my youth when we treated those that served in WWI suffering from shell shock so badly.
Our attitudes towards medical issues we know little of reminds me of charges made to servicemen in the two world wars that were convicted of LMF, lacking in moral fibre.
The modern age has brought us more medical issues of sexual identity, a tough nut to crack.
Not a good choice of words but true.
At the end of the day its science, we continue to learn, well hopefully.
If we rid ourselves of the Trumps, Bushes, Harper's and going back a bit the Thatcher our lives could be much less antagonistic.
Could be a wonderful world , could it not..
TB
As Tennyson wrote, TB: "Tis not too late to seek a newer world."
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