Thread by @SGriffin_Lab

Today is #LongCovidAwarenessDay
This is SO important, because it's likely that a great many people are NOT aware of it...
Unseen disabilities and chronic health conditions are something that millions of Brits face and deal with on a daily basis.
This isn't helped by black and

white judgemental nonsense from folks that don't understand the nature of such things.
Remember the whole nonsense around disability benefit fraud in the 2010s, people with blue badges being attacked when they didn't have a wheelchair in their car boot?
Sometimes people can

outwardly seem to function reasonably normally in public (ideally with reasonable adjustments in place), but to carry on like that costs them dear when they get home...
Then, there are the people that remain unseen, forgotten, behind closed doors and relying on others for their

care and wellbeing.
#LongCovid is just part of this picture, but the immediacy and rapid increase in cases is obviously a huge concern.
What's also terrible is knowing that this disease IS preventable, ideally by avoiding the short version...but also, vaccines DO help stop it🙄

I imagine that many people with chronic illness would dearly love to have an identifiable cause, not least a preventable one.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again, one major issue with the "living with" strategy is that SO many people can't. This can mean deaths, but also

morbidity, latent multi-system conditions, and the many faces of #LongCovid
We have the @CBItweets telling the government about the impact on the workforce, we have school absences, we have people carrying on regardless to the detriment of their health and wellbeing long term.

For a Government so obsessed with (borrowing) money (can you feel the trickle-down from the VIP list yet folks?), you'd think an economic argument might make sense...
More is needed. There is great research ongoing, but not enough, and this applies to related conditions as well

that have been chronically neglected for decades...graded exercise anyone?!
I defy ANYONE to look at the website for @LongCovidKids and the personal accounts from such amazingly brave kids and their families, to not look away with a piece of their heart permanently broken.

I developed #LongCovid after "mild" BA.2 in spring '22. Smell, brain, muscles, lungs, and heart, all affected. I thought I was getting better in August, but I relapsed.
However, I am lucky, a year on I was found to have Fe deficiency anaemia, and despite some slightly scary GI

referrals before Xmas, some little brown pills have restored me to something a lot more like I was...albeit quite a lot heavier! My bowel is still a mystery, coeliac -like but seronegative, was it SARS2? Who knows...but I count myself amongst the lucky ones that haven't endured

this for much much longer, and for #LongCovidKids at a time when their lives should be the exact opposite.
So, next time someone says "it's just a cold", laughs at someone in a mask, or comes into work coughing and spluttering in July when nowt else is circulating, please think

for a second about so many folks that clearly are NOT "living with" COVID, at least not as they should be @SteveBarclay
Last thing, a blatant plug for next week's @IndependentSage briefing on #LongCovidAwareness hosted by @BinitaKane and @sheencr, featuring @EricTopol and others