Has CFS really been a form of Long Covid all along?

[YippeeKi YOW !!]

Yes, but at the cost to taxpayer up to $12,000 per month, HIV not a death sentence anymore

$12,000 divided between 169 million taxpayers works out to ….. uh, arithmetic doesn’t seem to be among my limited abilities today, but let’s just say pennies per filer, which seems like a reasonable sacrifice to make to save someone’s life.

I sure wish the .gov would spend that kind of money of we who have CFS/ME

Boy howdy, do I ever hear that …. it’s one of the reasons that the question posed in this thread by @Rich D is so interesting. And important. Because once there’s a cure, or even just a treatment that's close to a cure, there’s help from the gov. At least I think there is.

But that’s going on the premise that it’s a fair world, and we don’t need to go to deep into that, because, you, know, anger …. depression ….. more anger …. .....

 

[gbells]

Pharmaceutical companies like diseases they can treat rather than cure. So to cure ME you have to get more NIH funding or something they can patent and charge big bucks for (hepatitis C cure regimen $90,000).

"GILD is a case in point, where the success of its hepatitis C franchise has gradually exhausted the available pool of treatable patients," the analyst wrote. "In the case of infectious diseases such as hepatitis C, curing existing patients also decreases the number of carriers able to transmit the virus to new patients, thus the incident pool also declines."

"[Gilead]'s rapid rise and fall of its hepatitis C franchise highlights one of the dynamics of an effective drug that permanently cures a disease, resulting in a gradual exhaustion of the prevalent pool of patients," the analyst wrote. "... diseases such as common cancers -- where the 'incident pool remains stable' -- are less risky for business."

It's Official! Curing Patients Is Bad for Business

 

[bensmith]

I’ll take treat i honestly don’t even care how i get to feeling better.

 

[YippeeKi YOW !!]

It's Official! Curing Patients Is Bad for Business

Yes, couldn’t agree more if I’d said it myself.

Which in fact, I have ….I’ve harped endlessly on that in these threads, sometimes drawing uncomfortable fire from members who perhaps have had better luck with Drs than many of us here have, or at least than most of us that I’ve read about in these threads have.

It's like the corner pusher: they don’t make money unless you;re hooked, and Big Pharma dont make da money unless you need to be endlessly 'treated', usually with an increasing number of drugs.

It starts with that one off-label drug that the Dr assures you will help your (fill in the blank with unpleasant or unbearable symptom of your choice) …. when that fails and creates side effects that make your life even less appealing, another drug is added …

“Well, this one should take care of the side effects of that one and give it more time to work ….”, which is usually followed by Door #3, “This will take care of the side effects of those other two, and give them both more time to work …..”, after which comes, “I don’t understand why those didn’t work (accusatory glare over his $1800 dollar designer glasses from prescribing Dr, who knows it’s your fault) …. but this new combo should make a positive difference in you QOL …”, after which 3 or 4 other drugs are added, while one of two of the previous drugs are subtracted.

And so it goes. Endlessly. Accompanied by the music of equally endless cash registers ringing and chiming merrily in the background.

Not all Drs are like this, but more than we’d like are, with patients so desperate for help that they have no choice but to go along with the parade of experimental efforts that often leave them worse than when they started out, and a good deal poorer.

It’s one of the reasons this site, and these threads, are so invaluable. For many of us ….. wait, I’ll just speak for myself here ….. for me, it’s the best hope I have, and I’m grateful beyond words for it. And I suspect a lot of you out there are, too.

 

[Abrin]

Overtraining puts stress on your body, which in turn stresses your immune system, which could trigger a response from a virus, released from more rigorous oversight by the now stressed immune system, busy with other things ....

That is definitely within the realm of possibility but one of the reasons that the overtraining stories have always fascinated me is because the majority of the time the athletes will generally claim that they had no original flu like symptoms at all.

Just to clarify that I am not claiming in the least that I have any solid idea what causes ME/CFS. I've been sick for so long that I've see a lot of theories come and go. As far as I am concerned it is anyone's guess.

 

[gbells]

That is definitely within the realm of possibility but one of the reasons that the overtraining stories have always fascinated me is because the majority of the time the athletes will generally claim that they had no original flu like symptoms at all.

Just to clarify that I am not claiming in the least that I have any solid idea what causes ME/CFS. I've been sick for so long that I've see a lot of theories come and go. As far as I am concerned it is anyone's guess.

I don't think this is what's happening. HHV6 causes depression and ME whether or not you're stressed. However, stress can increase the severity of the disease by allowing it at the early stages of viral infection to spread faster and deeper to more cells because of a weaker immune system overall.

 

[YippeeKi YOW !!]

As far as I am concerned it is anyone's guess.

Right there with 'ya ....

Added to its general mystery is the fact that it expresses slightly differently in all of us, sometimes widely divergently.

It's a real pisser ....

 

[Rvanson]

Ampligen doesn't cure CFS/ME, (at least I don't believe it does)it simply controls it to the point that one feels normal again. Just like people with HIV will become ill again if they were to lose their medications. So big
pharma would still be in control and making money, if Ampligen were widely available to anyone with ME.

 

[Husband of]

None that I have heard of but it is starting to look like those who only have mild symptoms can get long covid. This seems a bit strange to me.

I wish I had the article at hand but there was a study suggesting a certain percentage of people with long COVID never had COVID (knowingly I guess). And the conclusion some were making is that this proves they're just nandy pandy psychosomatic subjects (as in, what the designers of the lightning protocol think is the case for all MECFS patients). Except someone, a medical researcher, noted there was a previous estimation of how many people got asymptomatic COVID and the percentage was the same as that noted in The aforementioned long COVID article as having not had COVID.

Another point: were they really asymptomatic or did they just not associate their symptoms to COVID? Some people get much worse gut symptoms compared to respiratory symptoms. The first time i got COVID my respiratory symptoms were minimal(brief and slight sore throat that I could have passed off as nothing) but my gut symptoms were pretty severe. Wouldn't have suspected COVID if my first symptoms hadn't occurred at the exact same time as my wife and four other people I had hung out with on the weekend.

Also interesting, I had many MECFS like symtpoms (brain fog, dysautonomia, boom bust cycle) for 6 weeks. Second time around my viral load from RAT tests was very high and for an extended period, and this time I'm having similar post acute symptoms and my recovery is at eleven weeks and counting.

 

[Kevy B]

No ME isn't covid. ME predated coronavirus-19 by three decades. Chronic covid fatigue appears to be an autoimmune disease like lupus which shares has fatigue and neurocognitive impairment symptoms. They both affect similar systems but are different diseases. However, ME patients can have chronic covid which would worsen their symptoms.

Longer. There were cases in the 1960s, at least. Royal Free Hospital outbreak? It's probably been around forever, just not recognised, or given a different name. Wouldn't be the slightest surprised if it's also in other animals, too.

 

[Kevy B]

Long Covid, I think, is an umbrella of conditions, as much as ME is. e.g. There's LC people who've suffered lung damage, which I don't THINK is ever the case with ME?

I think a good %, perhaps the majority of LCers are suffering from ME, just caused by a different virus. There's so many similarities, though, that it seems to be entirely the same mechanisms at play. It just seems to be your immune system's inability to deal with, or over reaction to, a certain virus, for whatever reason, that now looks like leads to chronic infection that your body continues to keep reacting to.

Probably not a massive surprise that the herpes viruses are heavily linked, as they chronically infect, anyway.

 

[lenora]

Yes, ME has been around for far longer than the Royal Free Hospital outbreak even. I think we can expect more of the illnesses as the world gets smaller and there are outbreaks of viruses that we've never had to deal with before.

The fact is that viruses are not harmless and we should be more aware of that fact. Yours, Lenora

 

[Kevy B]

@gbells "franchise". ***king psychopaths.