Thread by @sibylle_berlin

„#Gaslighting Long Haulers
Despite all the patient voices and validating studies from university labs, long Covid has been dismissed by some doctors and journalists as a contested, even psychiatric, disease. In this column, we push back. By @r_prior“ #PushBack 1/x

https://twitter.com/r_prior/status/1621329821979623425

Quote: „A host of infectious triggers, from SARS and Epstein–Barr virus to Lyme disease and strep, can set off the same constellation of disabling symptoms, including brain fog, unrelenting fatigue, and pain. Such infections can also make an imprint through sleep disorders, 2/x

nerve damage, and air hunger, where you feel as if you can’t get enough air and struggle to breathe. In the worst cases, such patients experience disability on parwith late-stage AIDS or congestive heart failure. 3/x

Despite continued reports, patients with this presentation are routinely dismissed. If only their symptoms could be traced to a physiological cause, a whole class of illnesses currently labeled “medically unexplained” or “contested” would be routinely understood by mainstream 4/x

medicine. And despite the utter tragedy of long Covid, our newest pandemic illness offers the opportunity for just that.
But instead of accepting evidence emerging from university labs and teaching hospital clinics devoted to the study of long Covid, a new movement has evolved5/x

to lump together these endlessly sick patients with others who don’t get well - including individuals with fibromyalgia, myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), and persistent symptoms of Lyme disease. Rather than accepting the reality of our 6/x

latest agonizing illness, a string of news articles, backed by a contingent of scientists, has begun to call long Covid “psychogenic”— all in the head.“ 😡

#PushBack
#ThankYouForThisArticle 7/7