'In spite of the paucity of knowledge about this new syndrome related to Covid-19, British adherents of the unhelpful-beliefs-and-deconditioning hypothesis for ME/CFS have
been advising patients with post-Covid symptoms to resume regular activities as soon as possible and to avoid resting too much — exactly the wrong-headed advice given for decades to legions of people with ME/CFS, leaving many worse off than before.
Had U.K. and U.S. medical authorities not been so invested for years in fruitless psychological and behavioral interventions for ME/CFS, perhaps they would have listened over the years when patients told them that exercise and psychotherapy did not get them “back to normal.” Perhaps they would have pursued essential biomedical research instead.
We may now be paying the price for this longstanding disregard, given our urgent need for robust information about the possible long-term consequences of a virus that has already infected
millions of people around the world, an unknown number of whom will experience some form of post-Covid disability. Studies of these people are likely to yield significant insights into this viral illness as well as into ME/CFS.
But we would have been far better off in the first place had the medical and research establishments not spent years ignoring or distrusting the voices of patients suffering from a life-changing post-viral syndrome. Perhaps it is time they started listening.'
