I did not expect to be insufficiently cynical in 2024. Ideally, an attack on Long Covid would refer to a new leap in scientific technology or treatments to address LC. Instead, this week has brought an assault on the recognition of Long Covid as an entity. It was highly coordinated and impressively so.
Let’s begin with Long Covid day:
Impressively callous, this story to downplay and even dissolve LC as an entity was held until Long Covid day. Without a doubt, this was done for maximum disruptive impact.

Then, Vinay Prasad jumped on the train.
What these aforementioned parties rely on includes the nebulousness of symptom reporting, questionnaires, and amorphously set parameters. There is a basic science truth that supersedes all of this:
Simply, Long Covid reporting individuals are enriched for persistent antigen/virus. Additionally, the virus is present many months out in the gastro and lymphatics of people, while influenza is not. There is a field of research called virology that can further explain this. So when people try to paint Long Covid with the same brush they paint flu with, all one must do is ask, What is the virus doing there? Where is the flu virus in this picture?
So, my friends, the best thing to say to refute the denialists, is to simply ask what the long term consequences of chronic sars cov 2 in the gut and brain?
Take care,
AJ
First, Long Covid's existence was denied. Now it does indeed exist, but is no worse nor common than other post viral syndromes. Soon Long Covid will be positively good for you and encouraged as it trains your immune system in the long term!
The attacks, coordinated as they are, started awhile ago. Of course, Vinay's going to deny anything associated with illness linked to SARS-CoV-2, so his denial was singularly predictable. The others, I don't know about but when you couple this attack on real science with similar attacks (and Vinay's a player there too) on vaccines, and boosters, I can't help but wonder what they expect the final outcome(s) to be.