You`re in a difficult situation.
My personal opinion is that you take what you just quoted with a big grain of salt.
There`s no "secret info", OMI has not done any clinical trial on rtx for ME. They have been treating a lot of patients, and if we are to believe them, they are seeing the same response rates as have been seen in Norway.
Fluge & Mella have indicated that the severely ill might have less chances of major responses, but there is potential hope in the trial they are undertaking on the chemo cyclophosphamide. Immunoglobulins might also be something to try. I have seen several severly ill patients return to a state with decent quality of life after interventions, and a famous former severely ill me-patient in Norway, even got completely healthy by rtx.
However, personally.. I think I would wait a bit if possible, if I were severely ill. Even though lasting relapses due to rtx seem to be very rare, I think i would have gone for cyclo or a future combination of rtx and cyclo.
With regards to Whitney, we just don`t know. Maybe rtx made him worse directly, indirectly, or because of something else completely. It`s not right to speculate on his behalf.
Wish you the best in your decisions
Based on what I saw it seemed that several of what you would consider severe were helped by Rituximab.
I agree with many of your points it is too soon to tell and people should wait until at least they can run some tests that indicate Rituximab has a good chance.
Further I want to make that many top physicians have pointed out and that is that their are likely subsets to this disease. As in it is likely not one disease.
Further there is always a chance for misdiagnoses both good and bad. There are many rare diseases and Drs do not have all the answers.
IVIG has shown efficacy in 3 of 5 small studies and has benefited some that are severely ill.
They used IVIG in Poliomylietis which can look a lot like ME. They even use to call ME post polio syndrome.
Their are many new Autoantibodies showing up in ME now as well.
But as stated it would be best to wait to see where the dice fall.
Some drugs can make people worse off.