Long COVID
#1
I've been moderately fascinated with Long COVID (LC) after first reading about it. When you consider that for most people, COVID is not a big deal, and that with vaccines (which can have a therapeutic effect) it should be less of a big deal, it is strange that people are obsessed with talking about it, and trying to make it a thing. There are two elements at play here. The first is the "Long COVID sufferers", which on average are hypochondriacs the drive the bottom up push for LC, and the second group is broadly the media-health-government apparatus (I suppose you could call it the Cathedral, if you wanted, but I don't think it is as politically driven) which manipulate the discussion from the top down. Both groups have different desires, both using LC as a means to an end, but let us have a look at the condition and the discussion surrounding it, because it is fascinating.

I had heard about LC, or as it was called primarily at the time 'Long Haul COVID', in 2020, but it wasn't until 2021 that I realised how deranged it was. When I saw a news article about Heidi Ferrer, a writer on Dawson's Creek, who "died by suicide after an ongoing battle with long-haul COVID-19" I was immediately interested, especially since LC seemed so farcical at the time. If you go to her blog and search 'long covid' you will find a few articles that give a deep dive into her 'condition.' Her direct perspective on LC is enlightening, here are some key insights:

In March 2020, she stockpiled good "for the apocalypse" as she described it. She felt "the first stirring symptoms" in April, "strange coldness - an awful crawling sensation. Somehow I didn't know, yet I knew" she said, but she tested herself via PCR, was negative for COVID. Then she has random foot pain, develops a limp, sees a podiatrist, gets new shoes, custom orthotics, sees a physical therapist, which despite not having COVID, she believes is COVID. You can see the hypochondria come when she talks about spending $200 on industrial gym wipes to disinfect everything. Later she talks of "a betrayal of my own body and brain" that "no doctors...and educated specialists, no scientists, could tell me when or if this unfolding nightmare would end." The key thing to remember is she never was diagnosed with covid at this point. She doesn't have COVID, never had COVID, but was apparently "disabled and bedridden", contemplated buying a wheelchair, and had a range of symptoms going from fatigue and flu like, to "foot pain...stabbing knives, pins and needles, a deep ache that nothing could touch" which "on a scale of 1-10, it was often a 9" and "one night, multiple veins burst in my foot. I think I had micro-clots forming, the kind that can cause some people's limbs to be amputated." Okay, I think it is clear reading this, she doesn't have LC, she has some sort of mental issue. 

I won't dig too much into what else she says, except to point out when discussing the "survivor corps on Facebook" that she says despite LC sufferers having daily seizures and suspected heart attacks, the E.R. wouldn't treat them. For the proto-LC sufferer, nobody believed them, and yet LC has now morphed into this larger, 'real', phenomenon. Dr. Robert Malone, in his Rogan interview, mentions that he decided to get vaccinated towards the end of 2020, despite having previously had COVID, because he felt the lingering symptoms of 'brain fog' and believed it would act as a therapeutic. So there being an actual, long lasting health impact from COVID is certainly possible/probably, but whether this is LC, or what these people claim to suffer from, is debatable. An article out today highlights this divide by looking at the male and female difference in symptoms when suffering LC. Males have more endocrine issues ("COVID-caused diabetes and disorders affecting the kidneys") while female patients "were far more likely to experience mood disorders such as depression, ear, nose and throat symptoms, musculoskeletal pain." Men have symptoms that you can quantify, women have "mood disorders", so the divide is striking. Does anyone believe that COVID, a respiratory virus, genuinely acts like this? We don't see such a divide in symptoms from COVID infection, so why would LC be so divergent? That same article says that women have  more side effects because "women are built to have stronger immune responses than men", but a strong immune response giving you depression, while men get diabetes, doesn't sound like a logical conclusion to the data. Couple in the fact that women are vastly overrepresented in LC cases (The Guardian reports several figures, ranging from 2/3 of LC cases, to 80%) we have a mysterious illness largely targeting women, with vague symptoms, which apparently are not being diagnosed by health professionals (or at least, weren't in 2022-21), so why does it matter now? This is where the second of the two elements of LC comes in.

LC is used by several groups to further their own ends. Loosely, this collective ranges from doctors, media, governments, and activists. Each one has their own specific motivation for pushing LC and other similar conditions:
1. Doctors/Health Industry - Like everything, doctors make money by plying their trade. More illness, more visits, more money. In countries like Australia with government financed healthcare, the money is largely endless since it is hard for government's to say "sorry, we aren't going to treat you", especially in the age of covid. The Daily Telegraph has an article talking about a special LC clinic, that can only treat 10% of the people on its waiting list, so we better start funding more healthcare to get LC looked at! The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners says that "there will be a 'definite' ongoing need for the dedicated clinics" required to treat LC. As the chair of an organization for doctors, does anyone think he would be saying there actually isn't need for his constituents?
2. Government/Politicians - Similar to doctors, diagnosing "problems" and "solving" them is the crux of most electoral politics. You must be helping, you must be doing something, and you must be achieving something, regardless of the reality of the problem. In Canberra, a speciality LC clinic has opened. If you read the press release, you'll see it is full of buzzwords trying to grift some more votes by funding certain groups. Like doctors, a cure isn't as good as constantly being seen to be "doing something", so funding physiotherapists and whatever else for these people, forever, is a better solution than ever eradicating LC.
3. Media - There are less specific reasons here, but like the other two groups, the media exists by drawing in your attention. They blow these issues up, and fomenting a class of hypochondriacs who click on everyday to find out about their conditions, to see what is happening, is in their interest. We saw this mentality in general during covid (at my workplace, each day nearly every employee went to the break room to watch the daily press report on numbers, as if it had any impact) and now that covid is going away, they need to latch on to something else.
4. Activists - Again, cynically these people will use whatever situation to their ends. Like at the beginning of covid every group lobbied that their specific political wishes would help covid, we see this now largely from leftists. LC gives you cause to create and fund long running health initiatives, it gives cause to ruin businesses by pushing for extra leave for workers, it allows for more social restrictions to help "prevent" continuing spread because even if everyone is vaccinated, LC still exists. Search LC on twitter and you'll see plenty of tweets like this. It's easy to say covid is over, but nobody expected the levels of totalitarianism that flourished from covid, we should always be wary that stuff like LC can be cause to turn the heat up on people again. Look at how Taylor Lorenz is weaponising it. "Long covid means people can't work, ergo we need more welfare." It is functionally equating people's inbuilt laziness with a hypothetical medical condition. You don't think 'tired' black women are going to be found to be chronic LC sufferers, or suffering at a higher rate? This is just going to become another weapon to be used against us.

Ultimately, I find LC endlessly fascinating simply because by all reports it seems to be hysterical, delusional, hypochondria, and yet as a social force it has grown. Again it is easy to dismiss it, but from two years ago when the mentally unwell like Heidi Ferrer started talking about it we now have dedicated LC clinics, and a media-government-health apparatus in alignment to siphon more taxes from people to fund them. I fear ultimately this will never be addressed in a meaningful way, instead critiques (like this) will remain small and impotent, while doctors extort billions from taxpayers in a wealth transfer to waste money on a condition they know is bullshit. From the fact that by all accounts the main sufferers of LC have generic symptoms, to the use of LC by powers to push their own ideas, I think it is clear that any actual concern for health is secondary (if LC was even a real condition). I am interested in seeing how this pans out in the long run, especially with this special clinics opening up, since we may see an ever increasing amount of patients like trannies rising over time in response to social contagions. Also interested to see what other people think, or whether or not it is even something to think about. Is it just a case of retards playing with their own shit, and to leave them be? I don't know, I just hate that I'm going to be forced to hear about this fake and gay condition for a while yet.
#2
Is it sick for me to find this amusing? The WEF sicko that came up with this "Long Covid" (LOL) thing must find this very funny as well. I'd like to think that if I were a sociopath with a lot of money I would also invent memetic diseases for the same foolish paranoid suburban moms that fall for something like "Long Covid." Perhaps this is just the beginning of comically named virus variants.
#3
(07-06-2022, 12:46 AM)godvvins Wrote: Is it sick for me to find this amusing? The WEF sicko that came up with this "Long Covid" (LOL) thing must find this very funny as well. I'd like to think that if I were a sociopath with a lot of money I would also invent memetic diseases for the same foolish paranoid suburban moms that fall for something like "Long Covid." Perhaps this is just the beginning of comically named virus variants.

I find it funny that neurotic women are literally killing themselves because of an imagined illness. I remember learning about hysteria crazes in my anthropology classes, so probably some interesting historical comparisons out there.
#4
(07-06-2022, 05:14 AM)Brucean Wrote:
(07-06-2022, 12:46 AM)godvvins Wrote: Is it sick for me to find this amusing? The WEF sicko that came up with this "Long Covid" (LOL) thing must find this very funny as well. I'd like to think that if I were a sociopath with a lot of money I would also invent memetic diseases for the same foolish paranoid suburban moms that fall for something like "Long Covid." Perhaps this is just the beginning of comically named virus variants.

I find it funny that neurotic women are literally killing themselves because of an imagined illness. I remember learning about hysteria crazes in my anthropology classes, so probably some interesting historical comparisons out there.

It's another in a long list of imaginary and/or performative diseases that only AWFLs get that are completely unsupported by medical science but are in fact supported by "medical science" that appears on daytime talk shows:
  • chronic fatigue syndrome
  • fibromyalgia
  • persistent Lyme disease
  • non-celiac gluten intolerance
  • "allergies" to things like perfume and cigarette smoke
#5
It's a little funny and a bit bizarre to watch this phenomenon, as it has been with much of the COVID insanity, though what should be noted it is yet another pattern that has parallels to the shifting attitudes in modern medical science.

I would summarize it as creating a "mythos" around science itself, shifting from the scientific method into Science™. The kind of nonsense that hits the front page of reddit and is replied to with "Hi, [profession] here!" is the prevailing attitude towards it today. Condescending, vague, appealing to their own authority rather than appealing to truth.

Although with "long COVID" it's less severe and blatant, you can see a similar attitude in certain things like sexual promiscuity, homosexuality and biological differences between race and sexes. Pointing out certain behaviours independently is generally allowed (with the proper justification), but having a taboo view towards it and suggesting the wrong is things is criminal towards the scientific institution. Even disregarding whole academic institutions being compromised by this, peer review, which much of this research passes through is a mafia for this reason alone.

Watching the concerted push towards everyone getting vaccinated, is not so different in my eyes towards accepting certain accepting or debauched attitudes towards the other things I listed.



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