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Created on Friday, 21 January 2022 17:27

You should read this article about a young man with long Covid, but the most important part is the first paragraph, in which he says that back in October 2020 he had mild cold-like symptoms (a stuffy nose and a cough) that lasted only a few days.

But then after that, he started developing chronic symptoms: fatigue, nerve pain, brain fog, and blood pressure fluctuations.  It wasn’t immediately assumed he had long Covid. Doctors came to that conclusion after testing him and treating him for other things and coming up empty.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/lingering-pandemic-long-covid-patients-102705958.html

Long Covid is a default diagnosis. There is no test for it.

Is there a test for long Covid?

No, there is no single test to diagnose Long Covid. It's a condition that isn’t fully understood, and the usual definition of long Covid is “lasting symptoms after a Covid-19 infection, which can’t be explained by anything else.”

So, that’s the key: chronic symptoms that can’t be explained by anything else. What symptoms? Any symptoms. But, don’t assume that people with Long Covid continue to test positive for Covid. That is not the case. It is not a requirement. They are more than willing to make the diagnose of Long Covid even if you test negative.  

Here is an article about people who test negative for Covid, yet doctors are still calling what they have Long Covid. The first patient did test positive for Covid when she was acutely sick, but that was 7 months ago. She hasn’t tested positive for Covid in 7 months. Yet, they are sure that “remnants of the virus” are behind her problems.

But wait. It gets worse. Even people who NEVER tested positive for Covid, not when they were acutely ill and not when their chronic symptoms appeared, yet, doctors are more than willing to assume that what they have is Long Covid.

Some of these people have tested negative for Covid all along, that in spite of numerous attempts to garner a positive test result, they never, ever got one. Yet, their doctors are still willing to say that what they have is Long Covid, on the assumption that their negative tests were false negatives.

 https://khn.org/news/article/they-tested-negative-for-covid-still-they-have-long-covid-symptoms/

Keep in mind that I don’t put stock in any of the Covid tests: not the PCR test, not the antigen test, not the rapid tests. I think they are all bogus. Still, I marvel at their willingness to extend the Covid umbrella by being willing to recognize ANY symptom as Covid, and being willing to call something Covid without even the confirmation of their bogus tests.   

Now, the Social Security Administration has announced that people with Long Covid can apply for long-time disability benefits. In other words, they are going to get to retire.

What if you knew that the overwhelming majority of these sufferers never had a positive antigen test to indicate present COVID infection or an antibody test to show past infection? What if you knew that just as hospitals were paid bonuses to declare cases as COVID rather than any number of other potential causes of death, the U.S. government is paying a bounty to researchers to pontificate on “Long COVID”?

What if you also knew that those “Long COVID” demographics, even according to those who insist this is definitely COVID-related, happen to match those of previous somatoform diseases (even if it’s become not just un-PC but a career-killer to say so) such as “multiple chemical sensitivity” and “fibromyalgia encephalitis/chronic fatigue syndrome” and that indeed even these syndromes appear to have been identified well over a century ago?

Finally, what if you knew that far from doing sufferers a favor by misclassifying their symptoms we’re actually dooming them to perhaps a lifetime of suffering because just as there’s no cure to the above somatoform diseases there will never be a cure to “Long COVID,” leaving these people forever in despair sometimes, as with Dawson’s Creek writer Heidi Ferrer who took her own life in May after what her husband called “an unremitting battle with Long Covid.” She was 50 years old.

The largest study so far of “long-haulers,” published by researchers at University College London in July, comprised nearly 4,000 subjects from over 56 countries. The researchers acknowledged merely in passing that in the study a mere 27% of these “COVID long-haulers” had evidence of exposure to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. That’s whether antigen or antibody. The only connection to COVID was the attestation of the sufferers. They “felt” they had COVID, regardless of evidence.

That was actually from the Kaiser Health News, and here is the link:

https://khn.org/news/article/they-tested-negative-for-covid-still-they-have-long-covid-symptoms/