I think having this disease makes us more likely to see similar symptoms in other people and ascribe them to ME, even though the causes of their symptoms are not due to ME. It also makes us aware when people who do have ME describe their symptoms, whereas if we didn't have ME, their descriptions of symptoms might not have even registered on our minds. The awareness of ME could be considered contagious.
During this time I had problems and I didn't want to give a short answer....... However you spoke like those doctors who do not recognize the existence of ME, for them those symptoms are common...
In 10 days I spent 39 years with ME, the first few years I didn't think about contagiousness, but then I started to notice that: family members, partners and relatives showed symptoms similar to mine; when you see that these people complain of having headaches that they hadn't had before and are forced to cover themselves with hats and scarves, that they say they have difficulty digesting, joint pain, you realize that they have the same ease as you in contracting colds and flu, they complain of tiredness, you often see them with shiny eyes and dark circles under their eyes; you can't go wrong with this. I believe that is a clear signature of ME and I think I have developed a clinical eye almost like Dr. Melvin Ramsay.
Those were the most difficult years I lived because almost every day I lived with anguish and a sense of guilt (even if it took years to reach the awareness I have today), believe me I hoped I was wrong especially in the summer or when my parents improved. symptoms, but year after year it has become a certainty. This is to say that: when a ME patient considers the fact of having a contagious disease, a world of painful emotions opens up to him, shame towards society, feelings of guilt for having transmitted it to others (especially loved ones) for not having them warned/protected……. one feels greater sense of guilt with friends, relatives and colleagues, less with family members and even less with strangers. So believe me it is much easier for a patient to avoid these thoughts and "espouse" one of the many theories (pollution, genetics, mould, EDS etc.) that the medical world allows us to have (due to objective difficulty in finding the cause, but perhaps at the beginning also for some form of interest) and which sometimes fuels due to the protagonism of some.
If I were a scientist I would have few doubts, the characteristics of ME are: at the beginning it appeared in the form of local epidemics, there is often more than one case in the same environment (family, friends, work) in 2/3 of the sufferers it started out as flu-like and chronically maintains this aspect, we no longer talk about it but until 15 years ago it also affected the pets of ME sufferers. The explanation why it is widespread in all industrialized countries is of course because people travel a lot, while in the third world they don't have time for these things, they have to think about surviving and then it's usually warmer over there...
Good night