We’re publishing today a piece by Eduardo Zugasti, which looks at the history of syndromes “without clinical explanation” and asks whether Long Covid should be understood in this context, as being primarily psychogenic or sociogenic. Here’s an excerpt.
It would be a great mistake to assume that the modern extinction of tarantism, or of the picturesque – to us moderns – medieval epidemics of dancers (pictured), is simply the end of sociogenic illness and the disorders formerly known as neurasthenic or hysterical. Post-traditional society, with its new avenues for digital information and (dis)information, the empowerment of ‘civil society’ and the fragmentation of medical authority, seems to multiply the opportunities for the flourishing of ‘medically unexplained diseases’ in recent decades. According to Abigail A. Dumes from the University of Michigan: “What was understood as neurasthenia from the mid-19th to early 20th century came to be understood as hypoglycaemia in the 1960s, Briquet’s syndrome in the 1970s, chronic fatigue syndrome in the 1980s, and, by the late 1980s and early 1990s, multiple chemical sensitivity, Gulf War syndrome and chronic Lyme disease, among others.”
For Elaine Showalter, the feminist scholar and medical historian, these are ‘hystories’, epidemics of post-Freudian hysteria. Modern syndromes would be characterised by the expression of individual and social stress, powerlessness and physical or sensory symptoms without clinical explanation, but often attributed – by patients and activist doctors – to an unidentified external cause. The new ‘tarantula bites’ range from physical candidates such as viruses, environmental toxins, products of Big Pharma, electromagnetic waves or chemical warfare, to such fantastic agents as satanic conspiracies, in the case of the false memory syndrome or extra-terrestrial infiltration, in the case of ‘abduction syndrome’. The ‘hystories’ – for Showalter – have three basic ingredients: “a doctor, or other authority to define, name and publicise a disorder; unhappy patients with vague symptoms; and a supportive cultural environment”, starting with the USA itself, the “hot zone of psychogenic illnesses” and the true genesis of the new biomedical labels.
Worth reading in full.
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While I fully support the Daily Sceptic’s general aims and abhor vaccine mandates and lockdowns, the tendency for those on this side of the fence to diminish the suffering of those with Long Covid as ‘psychogenic’ is misguided and damaging.
Most experts in this field regard Long Covid and Myalgic Encephalomyeltis to be the same or very similar with the same underlying pathology having been identified in both. M.E. sufferers have faced the same kind of stigma historically as if it is reasonable to assume that millions of patients around the world with the same core symptoms are taking part in some kind of hypochondriacal pact. Parkinsons and MS patients also faced this in the past.
Prof. Scheibenbogen of Charite University, Berlin, has published a series of three papers that piece together the likely core pathophysiology of M.E. The illness is likely driven by autonomic disturbance, autoimmunity and excessive vasoconstriction, this latter leading to a reduction in blood flow by 20% throughout the entire body, including the brain. The body recognises this as an emergency state and tries to rectify it by releasing emergency vasodilatory systems. These ultimately fail and also have the knock on effect of downregulating… Read more »
The article & discussion below it reinforces the point that while Long Covid might be a thing it is an absolute pussycat compared to the much more lifethreatening
“Long Vaccine”
Or the pervasive but disturbing and draining “Long Moron”!
What vaccine is about as “effective” as the COVID vaccine? The flu vaccines. I don’t know if I’m supposed to point this out, but I did with this article.
https://uncoverdc.com/2022/02/14/flu-vaccines-of-dubious-effectiveness-helped-pave-the-way-for-covid-vaccines-of-dubious-effectiveness/
Anecdotical data point: I’ve never heard of a flu vaccine before the so-called bird flu of 2004.
I had Covid, afterwards I had a little post viral fatigue, same as you get after Flu lasts about two weeks.
Long Covid is actually mental depression caused by lockdown, if you’re not mentally tough enough to deal with the real strain that WEF controlled governments imposed on us, clinical depression.
That’s what it actually is.
Never forgive, never forget.
Long Covid is rife amongst the chattering classes – the Islington set/middle-classes/public sector type. You won’t find many working class people with it. It’s a skivers disease.
Islington?
Maybe Long Covid is an excuse the denizens of this borough use as a reason to not venture outside.
The neighbouring borough of Camden has become a bit of a hellhole. Chaps in broad daylight on Camden High Street aggressively selling drugs – and have been seen to get aggressively annoyed when people refuse to purchase from them. I believe the lockdown made them even more aggressive, due to their normal customers not being around as often.
They get swept up every now and then, but replacements are on scene within hours. Equality and equity means the ethnic populations of jails have to reflect the ethnic percentages in the general population – if the percentages don’t reflect, the authorities will be accused of being racist for claiming that one ethnicity commits more crime than another.
To make these percentages reflect correctly, one ethnicity of criminals must be punished less severely than another. Which means less jail sentences for one group of criminals with the effect that more of these are quickly back on the streets after being caught committing crimes. And this quick turnaround leads to more emboldened criminals, because they know they can practically… Read more »
Post-viral syndrome is far from unknown – and affects some people seriously. That said, the current climate probably binds in the psychological effects of hysteria and hypochondria to the definition.
I posted a while ago on the subject of inflammation and the links with anxiety and depression. Research seems to suggest that some SSRI and Tricyclic antidepressants have anti-inflammatory properties and that their possible success is nothing to do with serotonin and more to do with reducing inflammation. This could be why scientists have been testing one particular antidepressant for use against Covid (can’t remember the name without looking it up).
My hunch is that “Long Covid” may well occur as a result of inflammation from the virus itself, from the jabs or from the stress of lockdown as DrCOxford says.
I read some time ago that the highest incidence of ‘long covid’ is within the NHS. I bet if a survey was done about the employment of so called sufferers, the majority would be in jobs with generous and credulous sick pay systems. I should think if you are hourly paid in a job with no sick pay (other than statutory) or self employed, your chances of contracting long covid are severely reduced.
Incidentally I have just seen an article highlighting the ‘fact’ that long covid causes heart problems…well, well, well – who’d would have thought that, eh?
I not only don’t usually go to a doctor (ie, only if it really can’t be avoided), I also wasn’t a single day off sick during the period I mentioned in the earlier comment.
Okay, I mostly agree but, not entirely. First because we know there is some people have underlying health issues triggered by viral infections. Not in their head but real actual diagnosed health issues.
But second, because I am one of those who got Lyme Disease. It was diagnosed for 5 years (I got dumped in the CF and Fibromyalgia camp). Only when my doctor had me do a far more expensive blood test (living in America then), and it was diagnosed and then treated for 2.5 years with intravenous IV antibiotics. I worked (mostly) during that time. Yes, some people use it as an excuse but, there are real spirochetes from real ticks. Not in our heads…real, actual, infections. It’s just too easy to dismiss everything as psychosomatic or mass movement induced (like 95% of transgendered people today). But yes, lots who are simply caught in a psychological movement.
We know lockdown created massive issues with depression and anxiety (we evolved as social creatures). We know that depression Dan aggravate pain, fatigue, etc. Anxiety too. So, at this point, long Covid is probably 90% the impact of lockdown. But we know they aren’t going to accept that answer. So Long… Read more »
The idea of a “disinterested” academic is poop.
If people don’t see how that relates to patriarchy, they need to give their heads a good shake and probably their personalities too.
I still unfondly remember summer 2020 because I had a runny nose for months on end, a hitherto unprecedented experience. I also got an initially very loud tinnitus which has still not entirely subsided. Meanwhile, it’s more of a background noise and I have days where it’s entirely gone. There were also some other effects I can’t really describe in words (and some I won’t mention despite I know the word).
NB: Obviously, none of this was anyhow improved by piling Corona measures on top of it.
My theory about the hysteria of Long Covid has to do with the very large number of people in the UK that use A&E departments as social venues.
If you visited A&E waiting rooms prior to the plandemic you’d invariably find they were packed with people. All sitting there patiently waiting to see a doctor. I greatly suspect that if these people had been asked to pay an entrance fee of £20, the vast majority of them would have turned away and went home and somehow got over their “illness”.
A mixture of people, some meeting friends, some seeking new friends, some eagerly wanting attention from a person in authority. Only a small number of them actually needing emergency medical treatment in the first place.
Long Covid is a god-send for these people. They again can fill up the free to enter and nicely heated and comfortable A&E waiting areas to meet their long-lost friends. And get the attention and cosseting they need from a person in authority. All under the cover of an impossible to diagnose theorised disease.
Long Covid may be just another case where the medical authorities push a line of fake BS,… Read more »
I think I will need at least 5 years and funding in the $millions to even start to give you the reasoning behind the answer to that question.
You can have the actual answer now, for free, YES.
Good God! I’ve had Long Covid every Monday all of my life. Well, not my entire life, only since I started drinking when I was 6.
You started late at 6. My mother us to like telling the story of my first drinks party when I was 3 and taking the bottles off the drinks trolley at my grandparents and sitting on the door step about to have a swig of something.
Many are suffering from FOMO
It is important to note that there are some people with a chronic condition resulting from covid infection.
It is just that they are relatively uncommon — the mysterious ‘long covid’ appears to be largely a mix of post-viral lethargy (a real thing, but only lasting a month or two) and ‘hysteria’, as suggested in the article.
The important point about there being some (not many) instances of ‘long covid’ is that this real condition appears to be due to autoimmune complications resulting from the immune response to the infection — and as the vaccines stimulate an immune response similar in intensity to those hospitalised with covid then it would seem prudent to search for similar types of condition in the vaccinated.
Long Covid, Pah!!
What they need to be worried about is Long Vaccine
Kevin McCairn PhD Neuro Scientist has a hypothesis it’s all linked to a kind of “impulse control disorder” (Covid Karens) he specialised in studying Tourettes in live monkey neuroscience experiments. He links it to prion type diseases, MS, Alzheimer’s etc. and has shown brain biopsies with very similar effects. There’s plenty of literature for entry pathways for covid/spike and other virus to get past the BB Barrier, and pleanty of evidence for neurological disorder signals in some of the symptoms.
It’s interesting stuff, and given the implications from condon optimisation in the mRNA jabs (see Kevin McKernans twitter, the R&D lead on the human genome project) creating misfolded proteins, which are effectively prions, it can’t be armwaved away with any credibility IMO.
Here’s a paper discussing vax/prion disease signals in the UK yellow card system
https://scivisionpub.com/pdfs/covid19-vaccine-associated-parkinsons-disease-a-prion-disease-signal-in-the-uk-yellow-card-adverse-event-database-1746.pdf
Fraud does seem to be a sensible way to get the majority of the population to voluntarily hand over their DNA to the state
I think there is definitely something called Long Covid – and have a friend who is very disabled by it even now, a year after covid. She is fine in the morning but gets tired very easily, and has to rest a lot, and at times can hardly even talk.
On the other hand the official definition is really unclear. It seems to be about having symptoms (often miild) after 4 weeks or 8 weeks. I had symptoms for 7 weeks but didn’t consider this to be Long Covid, just normal post viral symptoms (ie I couldn’t walk as far or fast as usual, but could still manage a few miles) as someone would get after flu.
So in summary, I believe that while for some people Long Covid is a serious condition, for most it is very mild. But unfortunately these people are put in the same category, which inflates the numbers.
That’s just chronic fatigue syndrome, it existed before Covid too.
Quite – it’s just been given a scary new name. I have no trouble believing that it happens with this virus as with various other viruses, but I’ve seen no evidence that it’s any worse or more common.
I’ve known several people who have had post-viral fatigue badly, pre-Covid – in one case genuinely unable to work for several years as a result – but this level of severity is rare.
Yes I agree – it isn’t anything new – it existed before Covid.
I’d assume that when you are so quick to diagnose your friend with Long Covid, that she has had the gene therapies and boosters.
The gene therapies and boosters programme human cells to produce spike proteins. These spike proteins grow from the walls of blood vessel cells and project into the veins and capillaries.
The interior linings of vein and capillaries are designed to be smooth, so as to improve the flow of blood through them. When the spike proteins grow and project inwards into the veins and capillaries, they obstruct the flow of blood, which means the heart has to work harder.
Worse than this though is that the immune system attacks these spike proteins as alien pathogens. When the immune system finds these pathogens projecting from the linings of veins and capillaries, the first response is to form blood clots around them.
Capillaries with these spike proteins will be found all over the bodies of people that have taken the gene therapies. They will be particularly found in capillaries in the hearts and lungs of “vaccinated” people. Many microscopic blood clots will have formed around these spike proteins as an immune response in the… Read more »
There clearly has not been a pandemic BUT my wife and I have had what we call a cold in September 2021 that resulted in complete loss of taste and smell. Both are mostly back now but many things don’t smell right. The effect is described in this article:
https://www.healthline.com/health/weird-smell-in-nose-covid
If I start to experience weird smells I know that my sinuses are infected again, as often happens after a heavy cold.
I have had this effect after ‘flu – a complete loss of taste and smell during the acute phase, followed by an ‘altered state’ of taste and smell for many weeks. Metal taste and burning rubber smells were the principle ones as far as I remember – it was in the 70s, so a long time ago.
Agree. Especially point 2. A more direct way of putting it would be ‘was it all crap?’
Hmm, so if she disagrees with some detail of a particular feminist sect’s dogma, she’s not allowed to call herself a feminist?
Ok, if you say so. I suspect she might disagree.
Imo, the term feminist, for whatever useful content it might have had in the early C20th, was utterly discredited decades ago now. People like Showalter just haven’t caught up yet. Perhaps being excommunicated by the mainstream feminist sect for offending against their dogma might help her along.
What would Socrates have asked the covidians? Perhaps…
How would you know there had been a pandemic if there had been no:
the actual disease was barely apparent over the last 2 years. We only ever saw the response to it. like shamans shouting at fake gods
Long covid, a gift that keeps on giving to the work shy and public sector workers. Sorry I repeated myself.
Hmmm, let’s ponder on that. Yes, it is a hysteria.
Like ADHD, Anxiety and all the other labels people who can’t be arsed to go to work give themselves, expect Long Covid to be the latest free meal ticket to a Welfare lifestyle
I know loads of people who bunked off work with “long COVID” before widespread “testing” was in place. Exactly the workshy people who you would have predicted to take the piss. Several months later the same people got lucky on their umpteenth PCR test and got a positive – demonstrating that either the test result was wrong, or their long-covid sickness was no such thing.
It`s the new fibromyalgia.
Have you tried to live on <£70 per week, it’s not a lifestyle, it’s government induced business closing gaol sentence.
Free meal ticket…. *profanity* off
I doubt it is the people on statutory sick pay who are off with “long COVID”. It’s the fortunate ones who have a safety blanket of six months’ full pay with no questions asked (because “long-covid” is off-limits for HR departments to challenge). Strangely, at my workplace they all suddenly got better in exactly six months.
We should distinguish the phoney black death covid from the actual mental illnesses induced by cruel and evil governments in its name.
People under the cosh, living in fear, obeying nonsense, enforcing insanity, that was the REAL illness. And many will never recover from it.
Long Covid is a loose label for many real or imagined symptoms, perhaps caused by societal dread and psychosomatic in nature.
I have never tested positive for covid still multiple times I diagnosed myself with ‘long covid’. I always came to the conclusion that the abusing government is playing with my mental health.
Many elements are not understood (rather like the climate!) – regional, ethnic, dietary differences. The effects of chemical farming, herbicides, pesticides, fertilisers, hormones, pollution – though there are enough warning flags!
While I suppose that few folk would deny some psychological, psychosomatic effects, there are enough factors in known science which can be addressed, yet they are being avoided … they do not suit those who hold the power, status, money…
We / the scientists do not understand the virus genome – yet they have played with it synthetically to induce an effect in the human system which they also do not understand – the hubris is breath-taking in its folly.
We could use a lot more humility – it may well be that humility will be forced upon us.
The world has forgotten many things which we knew of prior to 2020 (natural immunity for example, or the definition of a vaccine). Another appears to be post-viral fatigue.
Doubtless there’s an element of this, but I think the main point about Long Covid is that it’s part of the Big Lie – once it became more obvious that not enough people were dying to justify the insanity, the narrative switched to Long Covid as it’s easy to lie about.
I suspect you’re right. I’d like a dollar for every time I’ve been asked, “But what about Long Covid!?!”