[runemadsen]

This is just so, so wrong in many ways. Read about post-viral diseases such as Me/CFS that closely mirrors what Long Covid sufferers are going through. Watch "Unrest" on Netflix. Stop telling people who have serious physical symptoms that it's all mental. Just stop.

[eldritch_4ier]

Are there any physiological or biological signatures for Long Covid? Is there any objective way to diagnose?

The symptoms of Long Covid are so vague and our recent work so wacky, you could use the same criteria used to diagnose Long Covid to diagnose "Long Lockdowns Syndrome" with all the same vague symptoms.

[BizarreByte]

> The symptoms of Long Covid are so vague

They’re often worse than that. A lady was interviewed on Radio 1 a few days ago and she had recorded over 100 (!) symptoms in herself that she attributed to long COVID.

The fun part of the story was she was never diagnosed with COVID at any point since 2020. She assumed when she got sick in March of 2020 it was COVID and that’s when her problems began.

Everything about her story pointed strongly to serious mental health issues, but she completely rejected even the idea that was possible.

[runemadsen]

There is lots and lots of research into the similarities of Long Covid and other post-viral illnesses despite the fact that people only recently started reporting these symptoms:

"This study supports prior findings that ME/CFS occurs with high prevalence among those who have persistent COVID-19 symptoms." - https://www.mdpi.com/2035-8377/15/1/1

Long Covid symptoms are not vague. If you argue this, you have not done enough research into what people are battling. A majority of Long Covid haulers suffer from PEM (Post Exertional Malaise) which is a primary symptom of ME/CFS, and even thought research on this subject has been performed for decades, We currently don't understand what causes it. There are many theories for ME/CFS which could fit well with Long Covid, including an activation of the Epstein-Barr virus which causes neuroinflammation, and if this neuroinflammation primarily centers on the brain, it explains all the symptoms that people are reporting.

[minsight]

There are: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-022-00846-2

[joshjje]

Fibromyalgia is a similar issue and I'm sure there are hundreds of others, our understanding of the human body still has a long way to go.

[laxd]

"Stop telling people who have serious physical symptoms that it's all mental"

As someone who has serious physical symptoms stemming from mental disorder, I think you're being a dick. The experience is the same even if the root cause is mental. And your attitude belittles it.

[runemadsen]

Nowhere did I say mental disorders are better or less harmful than physical disorders, and nowhere did I say that the experience is not the same from a patient's point of view. However, there's a great difference in how the medical profession treats people with physical and mental disorders, and these patients are being told repeatedly by the entire world that they are feeling what they are feeling because of anxiety, depression, etc, which is flat out wrong. As a person who has also battled with mental problems, I'll be the first to point out that that's a big, big problem.

[laxd]

Ok I misinterpreted you then. It ticked me off when you seemed ask people to not mistake "real" physical stuff from mere mental stuff. Sorry.

[runemadsen]

No worries, I get it. That's another big problem!

[jackmott42]

I bet cases of fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome are down while long covid is up.

[Zanneth]

I'm willing to be proven wrong. Up until now, there hasn't been a lot of scientific evidence pointing to a specific physiological cause.