Two thirds of people with “long COVID” never had COVID. It doesn’t mean their suffering isn’t real. But it does let us guess with a near complete certainty how they lean politically.
P.S. There’s also no doubt that some people – although a lot fewer than make the claim – can have long-term effects from COVID. They still need to have COVID first, though.
This mat not be fully related, but I feel I need to mention to ‘someone’ as I can’t share my thoughts anywhere around me.
My father in law in his 80s, and with such poor health lately he could barely walk, was offered the vaccine a week ago. His health immediately went further south and now he’s expected to pass any minute.
I’m puzzled. Why give someone in such poor health and such advanced age, the COVID vaccine. He even lives (was living) at home!
Oh, that’s so sad. I’m so sorry.
Unfortunately, in all places that are heavily vaccinated, mortality spikes after vaccination and holds for a month.
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And I agree. I don’t see the logic behind it. And what makes it even worse?! Being in a room with my brother-in-laws and their spouses-basically his own kids- and, they all…supported it without any questions!
The amount of ‘intelligent’ people, who seem to not only have adopted everything they’re being told without any questioning, but who will judge you if you dare voice any concern, blows my mind.
The number of journalists ignoring the fact that every virus has the potential to cause long-term/chronic conditions makes me want to tear my hair out. I know they have all bought into this “covid scare” narrative, but it still drives me nuts. Everyone out there dealing with the long-term effects of influenza, mono, etc has just been made that much more invisible by their garbage reporting.
Actually, the part about making other sufferers of long-term viral-induced conditions more invisible does not appear to be true: one silver lining of this whole thing is that it has massively raised the visibility of viral-induced chronic fatigue (etc) and hugely increased research funding in that area. I know what I’m talking about because my husband has had chronic fatigue for the last five years (in his case, from mono brought on by cytomegalovirus) so we’ve been paying close attention to long-COVID issues.
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This is somewhat similar to the MIS-C syndrome they claim is caused by COVID in children. In a significant portion of those cases, there is no evidence these children ever had COVID.
I also agree with what was said above regarding long-term consequences of other viral diseases. I know someone who suffered for over a year due to the consequences of the Lyme disease. That being said, I am genuinely sorry for anyone that has to deal with long- term consequences of COVID (or any other disease).
A lot of these symptoms could be a result of lock downs. Take the brain fog and difficulty finding words. If one sits at home all the time doing some computer job and watching Netflix, what do they expect it’s going to happen to their brain? There is research proving that binging on shows is a killer to the memory. On top of that, you don’t have the stimulation that comes with every day social contact, you don’t get to think on your feet, you are not having unexpected conversations where you get to use a wider vocabulary. And of course there is depression, boredom and all kinds of other things on top of that.
Great point. I wonder how much more could also be related to the NPIs (non-pharmaceutical interventions – masks, lockdowns, distancing). Certainly any long-term lung problems, along with erratic heartbeat, headaches, and excessive fatigue, could be potentially caused by wearing a bacteria- and fungi-saturated mask routinely. New GI symptoms could be due to eating differently when working from home, lack of exercise, staying indoors more, etc.
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Respectfully, while it is reasonable to suppose that some people will indeed suffer brain/mental consequences as a result of COVID induced circumstances and/or behaviours, the fact of it is that medically the so-called “brain fog” is far more likely to be the result of a direct SARS-CoV-2 pathology.
For example, a set of structures in the brain are known as the limbic system. If you type the words “limbic system disorders” into a web search engine, the kinds of symptoms and syndromes that pop up sound a lot like COVID symptoms, ranging from smell and taste disturbances, psychoses, blood pressure disturbances etc.
At the same time, we know that the virus will enter and destroy the kinds of cells that the limbic system is made of because we know what kinds of receptors are on the surfaces of those cells, which in turn means we can predict with high accuracy whether or not the virus will affect them.
When you put all of that together, it is much more reasonable to suppose that the virus is finding its way into an area of the brain that has all of the receptors required for it to do so, affecting the tissue, and in so doing, impairing the function of that region of the brain, manifesting in exactly the kinds of symptoms that are commonly seen in the case of other disease syndromes to do with that exact region of the brain, than it is to suppose that those exact things are happening because people are locked inside their houses watching TV.
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Whoever wrote that article is incompetent. Halfway through the article, the writer states:
“First, consider that at least some people who identify themselves as having long Covid appear never to have been infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. In Yong’s influential article, he cites a survey of Covid long-haulers in which some two-thirds of them had negative coronavirus antibody tests — blood tests that reveal prior SARS-CoV-2 infection.”
It’s like this. When a woman gets pregnant, substances appear in her blood that only appear in the blood of a pregnant person. So, if that women were to use a regular supermarket pregnancy test that detected those substances, then the fact that she is pregnant and has blood full of those substances would cause a positive reading in the pregnancy test.
But then, at some point in time, the woman would give birth and have her baby, which would in turn cause her body to no longer produce the substances that are only produced in pregnancy.
So, if a bunch of researchers came along and tested that woman a few months after she gave birth using a regular pregnancy test, then their testing regime would show that the woman was not pregnant.
In that case, any researcher who said that the negative pregnancy test was definite proof that the woman had never been pregnant would clearly be incompetent, because the pregnancy test is understood to only be effective in confirming pregnancies that exist at the time of test, but cannot confirm pregnancies in the past.
A logical researcher seeking to confirm pregnancy in that particular woman would instead use methods that suit the circumstance, like checking to see if the woman was holding a baby.
Well, in the case of COVID, the fact of the matter is that it has been observed that some people who were definitely infected with SARS-CoV-2 no longer have antibodies as little as 4 months later.
So, testing large numbers of people who say that they had COVID a long time after the infection resolved and then declaring that two thirds of them “never had COVID” is like giving pregnancy tests to a lot of women surrounded by tiny human beings who called them “mummy” and then saying that none of them had ever been pregnant because the pregnancy test was negative.
The fact of the matter is that we human beings still do not have a testing methodology that can prove previous SARS-CoV-2 infection after disappearance of antibodies beyond doing a clinical diagnosis to look for signs on COVID (like lung X rays showing ground glass regions in scans showing double pneumonias etc) which means that for now, we shouldn’t jump to any conclusions about who definitely did or didn’t have this virus.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
Clarissa's Blog 
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