One of the biggest challenges #mecfs has faced is that there isn't a tidy story to organize one's thoughts around. "Fatigue" has been offered up as the story, but it's a TERRIBLE one. Trivializing, false, and vague. 1/
Some percentage of long-haulers will end up meeting the criteria for #mecfs. The big advantage that they have is that they have a better story: they never recovered from a pandemic. 2/
Long-haulers likely do face some challenges that are unique to that virus. There is a lot of heterogeneity among #mecfs pts, so even just from that perspective , it should be expected that their experience won't be identical to any other #mecfs patient. 3/
But given that virus after virus leads to #mecfs in some percentage of patients, we should also expect that there will be a great deal of commonality as well. 4/
The big question is whether researchers taking up the tidier, more inviting story of #longcovid will understand the deep links to #mecfs, and whether they'll learn from the #mecfs literature and collaborate with #mecfs researchers. 5/
If they do, it will accelerate long Covid research and expand the impact of their research, helping to clarify the problem for ME patients -- along with other pts with poorly understood, closely related problems including MCAS, EDS, Lyme, dysautonomia, autoimmunity, etc. /end
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