The new excuse for endless lockdowns is, “yes, Omicron is mild but it causes long COVID which reduces people’s cognitive capacity. I don’t want to become stupid!!!”
The effort of willpower required to abstain from saying, “honey, are you sure you didn’t get it at birth because you aren’t that bright” is enormous.
As someone who does have long-covid, this kind of thinking can be harmful. I’ve had to fight for treatment—and not everything can be treated. I’ve got chronic costrochondritis and lymphadenopathy that I’ve had for over a year, as well as something very like chronic fatigue syndrome. There’s nothing like forgetting even simple words. I didn’t feel dumb, just…my brain would switch off. I had to tell people that if I was answering a question and I just trailed off and started staring, to ask that question again because the thought had literally left my mind in the middle of speaking. I thought I was having strokes.
I was not. It’s persistent autoimmune inflammation and damage to different organs.
I know for a fact I had covid. I had chronic mono several years ago, and while I was sick and tired for well over a year I would experience that over the chronic pain in a heartbeat.
Do all people get long covid? Of course not. And not everyone who thinks they have it actually has it—many are actually experiencing recurrences of CMV, or mono, or other viruses. That’s been ruled out, though, in my case and in other cases like mine. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
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“That doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”
Instead of “people who claim to have it” I had intended to write “most people who claim to have it”.
I’m very sorry for your troubles (which I’m sure are related to having had covid probably in reaction with previous illnesses) but they seem unrelated to the media “long covid” narrative which is being used as a club to keep lockdowns and wealth transfers going.
The problem of promoting the malingerers is that legitimate tough cases like yours and some others get ignored.
Agreed. People offload all sorts of neurosis on “long COVID,” and as a result, people who really have it get no treatment.
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Probably not just neurosis. I think it’s the new “Lyme Disease”. The thing is that there are a lot of people with chronic autoimmune problems, they’re really difficult to diagnose and treat, and having a label– any label– however inaccurate, is a boon because it allows the condition to be treated, and if you’re lucky with the labeling, it allows insurance to cover the treatment.
My cousin had “Lyme” for well over a year while they were doing tests trying to figure out what the heck was causing chronic joint pain and digestive problems in an until-then-healthy 30yo. In the end, they removed her appendix and she was cured. It was all incredibly frustrating while it was going on, and then the solution was so non-intuitive and non-obvious that we were all kind of stunned when she got better. Delighted, also, but… who’d have thought?
But “Lyme” was basically the “cover story” that allowed her to continue pursuing a solution. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see that happaning with “long covid” also.
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Pen, please look into whether Fluvoxamine can help you. Steve Kirsch paid for study of this repurposed drug and I think he discussed that it had benefits for brain fog.
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That is absolutely ridiculous. I’d argue that campuses closing is more detrimental if you get long-covid and can still work or go to school because the best thing is a consistent schedule. I can nap around work because I have to physically be there. Physically reading books and handling things is mentally stimulating—staring at a computer screen is not.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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