Thread by @GeorgeMonbiot

A "post-viral tsunami" is gathering, with devastating consequences for large numbers of people. Some of its effects closely resemble ME/CFS, a condition whose 250,000 sufferers in the UK have been horribly neglected.
It's time for action.
My column.
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

There's a grim fact we have to face: for some people, Long Covid is likely to mean Lifelong Covid. The sufferers, like people with ME/CFS, will be seen as "inconvenient patients", and governments will be tempted to brush them under the carpet. We cannot let this happen.

Long Covid can hit anyone, including young, fit and healthy people with only the mildest initial infections. It can cause brain damage, heart damage, lung damage and many other effects. Ending lockdown too early is likely to condemn some people to a lifetime of suffering.

In a study of 20 serious conditions, patients with ME/CFS had the lowest health-related quality of life. Yet they've been left at the end of the queue for funding and attention, and have suffered decades of denial, neglect and abuse.
In short, they've been treated disgracefully.

One more thing. Even if there were no other arguments against the Great Barrington declaration and the claims of Toby Young, Allison Pearson, Julia Hartley-Brewer etc, the effects of Long Covid would demolish their nonsense.

Thank you so much to all the people with ME/CFS responding to this article. I'm sorry I don't have time to respond to you all individually. I can't think of any other condition where there's a bigger gap between the suffering it causes, and the attention it receives.

This devastating description of the loneliness of some sufferers, by @arisonsned, will stay with me:
"people who disappear, too unwell to communicate, left to lie in rooms facing the ceiling day in day out. They’re desperately sick. It is indeed a living a death for them."