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Fie, Fauci!

Jyoti

Senior Member
Messages
3,373
New Fauci interview at The Guardian on Long Covid:

https://www.theguardian.com/society...ong-covid-risk-emergency-response-coronavirus

Great that he is urging Congress to act (what about the NIH?) and generally making noise about it, great also that he is noting and decrying discrepancies in access to care.

I am not in general a Fauci basher, but it is unfortunate that he speaks as if LC is a wholly unknown phenomenon, never before seen on the face of the earth. Starting from scratch, they are.

And this?
What is becoming clear is that some groups are more vulnerable than others: elderly people (Fauci, 81, became infected with Covid in June and worried that he might suffer long Covid but was spared) and anyone whose Covid case was severe (though mild to moderate cases can also lead to the condition).

Fauci added: “The other interesting thing is that it also is more prominent in people who have underlying psychological issues: depression and things like that. The one thing you don’t want to fall into the trap of saying is well, it’s all psychological, because it’s not, it’s real.”
[emphasis mine]

I'd love to know where that 'data' came from.....
 

BrightCandle

Senior Member
Messages
1,147
The classing of Long Covid as a separate disease has probably wasted the bulk of the research money spaffed at long covid. We got a bunch of small replication studies on findings in ME/CFS and only 2 new findings, one is the microclots that has been now replicated in ME/CFS and the other is some proteins in the blood which I suspect will also be replicated in ME/CFS. Fauci is a big reason why this happened and why ME/CFS still has little in the way of funding. Its an annoying interview for how it makes Long Covid into a big deal that requires more funding (after the NIH wasted most of it on a symptom study so big no one cares since it will take years to complete) but in the process completely dismisses ME/CFS which other research has already shown to be at least 50% of Long Haulers qualifying for the same diagnosis.

I am constantly annoyed and irritated with this opportunity passing. The entire point of all that funding for Long Covid was to catch covid turning into long covid and to find out what breaks first, not to look at people once they have developed the condition but how it develops so we can separate cause and effect. They have wasted the opportunity to look by ignoring it even exists and then treating it like its unique.
 

hapl808

Senior Member
Messages
2,052
I am not in general a Fauci basher, but it is unfortunate that he speaks as if LC is a wholly unknown phenomenon, never before seen on the face of the earth. Starting from scratch, they are.

So, here's some total guesswork.

What is becoming clear is that some groups are more vulnerable than others: elderly people (Fauci, 81, became infected with Covid in June and worried that he might suffer long Covid but was spared) and anyone whose Covid case was severe (though mild to moderate cases can also lead to the condition).

If he weren't spared from long Covid symptoms, would he admit it? I highly doubt it. But I wouldn't be surprised if he's suddenly taking it a bit more seriously because he's experiencing some loss of function since his infection.

I hate everyone acting as if it's some new thing. Even more when sometimes it's doctors I've literally seen in person and described these same symptoms and was told I was wrong about my own experience.

In addition, the article gets some stuff wrong. No, elderly people aren't necessarily more vulnerable for long Covid, although I would have expected them to be. Research has not shown that to be the case, but my guess is that elderly people who complain of brain fog are just dismissed entirely.

Women's immune systems could be involved, or maybe because we've traditionally considered these chronic illnesses as bullshit, we're more likely to toss women into those buckets. I believe in the early days, men were diagnosed with MS and women were diagnosed with hysteria.

Anyways. Bunch of idiots steering the ship in my humble opinion, with no willingness to look at a map or ask for directions.