Had Covid? Have you had these things ruled out? No? This is a *short* list of clinically-provable conditions in Long Covid that some orgs and other interests want you to think is (not-biomedically validated in Long Covid) MECFS instead. Many of these issues demand medical attention. Many of them have viable treatments that could help ppl right now. Many of them cause sudden death...we haven't seen any of that, have we? Dementia & Vascular Dementia - If you've had Covid, you have a 41% higher risk of dementia and a 77% higher risk of vascular dementia. This is anything but MECFS "cognitive PEM". Thrombotic microangiopathy - Microclots throughout small blood vessels severely limit oxygen and nutrient delivery to tissues. When you exert yourself, tissues cannot get enough oxygen to meet even minimal increased demands. This creates oxygen debt and toxic metabolite buildup that triggers a systemic crash - the delayed, prolonged exhaustion and multi-system symptoms can resemble MECFS. With organs already barely functioning due to poor blood flow, any extra activity pushes the whole system over the edge, causing a collapse that takes days or weeks to recover from. Heart failure (including HFpEF) - Heart Failure with Preserved Ejection Fraction is particularly insidious. Standard echos can look "normal" but the heart can't properly relax and fill. Causes exercise intolerance, shortness of breath, and fatigue that worsens with activity. Sound familiar? Interstitial lung disease/fibrosis - Scarring of lung tissue causing progressive breathing difficulty and exercise limitation that can seem like PEM. Chronic thromboembolic disease - Clots organizing in lungs, causing progressive right heart strain. The "PEM-like Sx" are driven by the heart-lung unit hitting a wall - any exertion beyond minimal activity causes systemic oxygen starvation and cardiac strain that takes days to recover from. Unlike deconditioning, rest doesn't improve capacity because the structural blockages remain. Diaphragmatic dysfunction - Nerve or muscle damage to breathing muscles, causing "air hunger" and exercise limitation that can seem like PEM. Pulmonary hypertension - High blood pressure in lung arteries causes severe fatigue and breathlessness with exertion that can be misdiagnosed as PEM. Often missed without right heart catheterization. Silent myocardial ischemia - Reduced blood flow to heart muscle without typical chest pain. Can present as fatigue, exercise intolerance, PEM. Aortic stenosis or other valve disease - Can develop from Covid infection and cause exercise intolerance that is often dismissed as deconditioning and/or PEM. Microvascular dysfunction - Covid can cause small vessel disease affecting coronary, cerebral, or peripheral circulation can cause fatigue, exercise intolerance, and cognitive issues that worsen with exertion. Pulmonary embolism (including microemboli) - Covid can cause blood clots in lungs, especially smaller chronic ones, that can cause progressive exercise intolerance and fatigue. Myocarditis or pericarditis - Post-viral heart inflammation can cause exercise intolerance, fatigue, and chest symptoms that worsen with activity. This requires proper cardiac imaging and biomarker testing to diagnose, but can be mistaken as PEM. POTS and dysautonomia - Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome and other autonomic dysfunctions can cause profound fatigue and post-exertional symptoms, but require specific testing and treatment, quite contrary to how Yale's Akiko Iwasaki & Harlan Krumholz run POTS "studies". Cerebral hypoperfusion - Reduced blood flow to the brain can cause cognitive dysfunction, fatigue, and exercise intolerance that is misclassed as PEM. This can result from Covid vascular damage, autonomic dysfunction, or other mechanisms that result in symptoms that sound a lot like PEM. Small vessel cerebrovascular disease - Microinfarcts or white matter changes from vascular damage could cause cognitive impacts and fatigue that can be mislabeled as MECFS. Neuroinflammation - Direct viral invasion or immune-mediated inflammation in the nervous system could cause symptoms attributed to PEM: Hypersensitivity to noise, light, and temperature; memory problems, difficulty with attention, persistent forgetfulness, difficulty focusing, slowed information processing, etc. that appear similar to "cognitive PEM". Cerebral venous sinus thrombosis - Blood clots in brain's drainage system. Can cause headaches, cognitive issues, and fatigue that can be misdiagnosed as MECFS, before catastrophic events occur. Progressive atherosclerosis - Covid accelerates plaque formation. Carotid or coronary artery disease developing years faster than normal. This Covid-induced condition present with MECFS-like symptoms through a mechanism of exertion-triggered ischemia and delayed recovery. Vasculitis - Covid can cause blood vessel inflammation throughout body. Can affect any organ system and progress to organ failure if untreated. Patients experience malaise, fatigue, and generalized weakness. Covid-induced systemic vasculitis can produce MECFS-like symptoms through multi-organ hypoperfusion and inflammatory exhaustion that worsen with exertion. COVID-19 causes brain and neurological damages that produce symptoms remarkably similar to the generic Dx checklist MECFS, isn't that convenient? Especially when doctors & ins companies won't cover the scans required to prove your brain damages, vascular damages, dementias, etc. Insurance companies LOVE the medical-care-ending-zero-treatment MECFS Dx. It's so much cheaper to tell 400M ppl to pace than to develop targeted treatments for them, isn't it? This is a short list conditions that can be caused by Covid, are found in Long Covid, and that require medical treatment, not to be written off as MECFS.

Excess death in France. It surely has nothing to do with the ongoing Covid pandemic. #SarsCasm

RT @OrangeCatsRule1: My FB feed is filled with sick folks traveling, then returning home to have a battery of tests due to chest pain, BP s…

I'm seeing a disturbing trend. People being told they have #MECFS, and then un-aliving themselves when they buy into it.

iF yOU mEEt tHE cRIteRiA yOU hAVe iT Flat-earth idiocy and anti-science tribalism have real life and death consequences.

👏@Rob_DeRosa ✊🔥

Your fans are the most annoying people on the fucking planet

RT @DebHolloway: Feeling defeated and deflated. This 13th wave of SARS-CoV-2 looks massive so far. This means more #LongCovid and more #Lon…

Astroturfing shills lie about and abuse HIV AIDS history to argue against dedicated Long Covid research. It's fucking depraved. The indisputable lesson of AIDS is that dedicated HIV research is what produced results: ~50 FDA approved medications.

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🥾Doing extra cognitive work when my body is stretched to thin always brings sharp pain and a fizzing sensation over my right ear in a specific place for at least three years of the five and a half years of this disease. It's becoming more predictable. Here is what I think is happening. 🫧Why Deep Thinking Triggers Sharp Pain & "Fizzing" in Your Scalp when you have LC 🤯Thinking takes real, physical energy. For people with LC, pushing your brain to solve problems or process complex information drains your system just as fast as physical exercise and I do it alot. 💪I know others are trying everyday to figure out what is happening in their bodies so I felt like I needed to address it. 🚨If you get sharp, jabbing pains above your ear followed by a strange "fizzing" or "bubbling" feeling when you try to think hard, there is a clear physical reason for it: 👉 Phase 1: The Sharp Jabs (The Adrenaline Surge) 🧠When you focus hard, your brain demands extra blood and fuel. Because LC damages normal blood flow, your body has to dump a sudden burst of adrenaline to force blood upward. 💆This sudden push stretches the small blood vessels in your scalp, pulling on the delicate nerves wrapped around them and triggering quick, sharp, "ice-pick" pains. 👉Phase 2: The "Fizzing" or "Bubbling" (Energy Failure) 🔌If you keep pushing through the pain, those scalp nerves completely run out of energy. Instead of sending normal signals, the nerves drop into chaotic, low-voltage misfiring. 🌊 Blood flow through the strained vessel becomes turbulent. Your brain perceives this disorganized nerve chatter and blood movement as a fizzy, carbonated, or electric feeling. Nursing Note🩵 ⚠️Mental effort is a physical workout. The sharp jabs followed by a bubbling feeling are a physical warning light telling me that the blood vessels and nerves in my scalp have run out of fuel. 🌩️When the fizzing starts, it's most likely my local brain battery is at zero and the only fix is total rest. And I resist. So often I push it away and try to continue with whatever my brain is trying to work out. 🤓Nursing Note to Self The task can wait a few. I can take breaks. I can be gentle with myself. It's hard for some people like me to turn it off. I am a compassionate problem solver at heart like many others on here. It can still wait a few. Rest is extremely important when my body is fighting a constant battle against a disease that limits blood flow to the brain and organs. 😴🛏️ #LongCovid #BloodFlowProblems

RT @DebHolloway: There are so many actions, non-actions, choices, and selfish priorities that have disgusted me over the past six and a hal…

Our children continue to suffer without proper awareness, mitigations, research, and treatments while people without their best interests in mind continue to assert that this is nothing new. 💔 #LongCovidKids

pwME dON'T sAY tHEy'RE tHE sAMe tHInG Here's our pwME "allies" abusing LONG COVID AWARENESS DAY to protest for themselves in front of THE WHITE HOUSE carrying signs of DISINFO AND LIES that say "LONG COVID IS MECFS". This rancid bullshit was featured in ROLLING STONE.

By whom? By none other than those you all so worship. This started as early as 2021. If only you malicious idiots had spent your time looking at the truth instead of slandering, harassing, and blocking the ppl pointing it out, eh?

PEM in Long Covid (or, any other condition) ≠ MECFS.

Las infecciones no son nada inocuas. Ninguna. "Estas infecciones en el embarazo están relacionadas con un mayor riesgo de autismo en el niño A diferencia de otros, estos patógenos a veces pueden atravesar la placenta e infectar directamente al feto". abc.es/salud/enfermedades/in…

😉

First of all, and concerningly, the Gilead-funded ERASE-LC trial specified one biomarker panel in its published protocol but reported findings for a different biomarker panel, with no explanation from the authors for the switch. The study protocol also committed to reporting results at 95% confidence intervals, as their own stated analytical plan required. The biomarker results failed at that threshold. So instead of adhering to their own study design, Faghy et al. introduced 85% and 75% intervals that appear nowhere in the protocol, making the biomarker findings appear positive. When your study's biomarker panel does not match your protocol, and when the results on a different panel range from clearing nothing to barely clearing 75%...that is not a positive finding There was no placebo, no blinding, and no control group. Note also that the EQ-5D-5L quality-of-life improvement (0.06 points) did not reach the published minimum clinically important difference of 0.11. So even among the outcomes that cleared 95% CI statistically, the magnitude of change was below what is considered clinically meaningful on the most widely validated quality-of-life instrument in the study. Extremely disappointing to continue to see such issues and spin in published Long Covid trial findings.

This is why we fight.