Long Covid (PASC)
Todays CFS/ME but taken way more seriously
Populations in many locations have been subjected to 2 years of psychological terror operations to get support for political public health objectives such as s lockdowns, mask mandates, test mandates and ultimately vaccination uptake (with or without mandates/coercion)
Furthermore, beyond the economic and psychological stress impacts on mental health there are obvious adverse effects on physical health due to lack of exercise from lockdowns, sunlight deprivations , CO2 overload from masks, increased obesity, increased alcohol consumption, etc.
And perhaps just as important is the physical impact of 2-4 injections of an under-tested and understudied novel vaccine which has resulted in millions of reported adverse effects some of which resemble the symptoms of Long Covid (PASC)
All of this is not to say Long Covid (PASC) does not exist, just to say its prevalence might be overstated due to a number of confounding factors
With many fully vaccinated people contracting COVID because the vaccines don’t protect against infection but only serious disease/death , its not possible to distinguish Long Covid symptoms from infection (PASC) or the vaccine (PASC+). Indeed, one can not rule out a synergetic effect where infection before or after vaccination exacerbates or causes Long Covid (PASC#)
With that out of the way lets discuss this paper just published May 24,2022. Unlike many Long Covid Studies this one has a control group, although the study size is a bit small
A Longitudinal Study of COVID-19 Sequelae and Immunity: Baseline Findings
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M21-4905?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Participants
Self-referred adults with laboratory-documented SARS-CoV-2 infection who were at least 6 weeks from symptom onset were enrolled regardless of presence of PASC. A control group comprised persons with no history of COVID-19 or serologic evidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection, recruited regardless of their current health status.
From 30 June 2020 to 1 July 2021, the study enrolled 189 persons with prior laboratory-documented SARS-CoV-2 infection and 122 control participants with no history of COVID-19–like illness. Two of the control participants had antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid protein and were not included in the analysis
142 participants in the COVID-19 group had not received a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine before the enrollment visit (the 47 who were vaxxed were vaxxed after infection ). 35 (29%) control participants were vaccinated before enrollment
[Median Age 50-51. Control was 26% Obese, 47% Female, COVID-19 Group 38% Obese, 55% Female ]
189 persons with laboratory-documented COVID-19 (12% of whom were hospitalized during acute illness) and 120 antibody-negative control participants were enrolled.
[ 22 had significant COVID. 12 required Oxygen. 50% of hospitalized COVID patients had PASC ]
At enrollment, symptoms consistent with PASC were reported by 55% of the COVID-19 (64% were in females) cohort and 13% of control participants.
The PASC participants reported 1 or more persistent postacute symptoms, such as fatigue, dyspnea, chest discomfort, parosmia, headache, insomnia, memory impairment, anxiety, and concentration impairment.
Increased risk for PASC was noted in women and those with a history of anxiety disorder. Participants with findings meeting the definition of PASC reported lower quality of life on standardized testing.
[Hmmmm]
Abnormal findings on physical examination and diagnostic testing were uncommon.
[So nothing a Doctor could detect on physical examination. Given the high percentage of Women I cant help contrast the legitimacy given to PASC with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome outbreaks of the 1980’s, but more on this later]
Neutralizing antibody levels to spike protein were negative in 27% of the unvaccinated COVID-19 cohort and none of the vaccinated COVID-19 cohort
[This sounds about right. We know up to 36% of unvaxxed develop no antibodies after infection]
The prevalence of reported PASC was likely overestimated in this cohort because persons with PASC may have been more motivated to enroll.
[Good to point that out]
Primary Funding Source:
Division of Intramural Research, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
[well, we cant discard this because Faucis guys paid for it]
Enrollment in this study is ongoing. This article contains findings on the 309 participants who enrolled during the first year of the study.
[so they still have time to manipulate the final results, got it. But there is something they want us or someone else to know now]
examiners were not blinded to study group
[Hmmm, unfortunate but not a big deal if done in good faith]
To address the possibility that persistent activation of the immune system might play a role in the pathogenesis of PASC, plasma samples from a subgroup of participants were selected for inflammatory biomarker analysis.
Because recent vaccination could affect plasma levels of inflammatory biomarkers and confound the interpretation of results, we selected samples from a subgroup of 48 participants with PASC, 52 without PASC, and 50 control participants who had not received a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine before blood sample collection.
No significant differences were detected between groups in plasma levels of macrophage inflammatory protein-1β, interferon-γ, tumor necrosis factor-α, programmed cell death ligand-1, interferon γ–induced protein 10, interleukin-2 receptor α, interleukin-1β, interleukin-6, interleukin-8, RANTES (regulated on activation, normal T cell expressed and secreted), and CD40
[Still waiting in suspense for the number of Vaccinated who had PASC. I wont hold my breath.
I would have thought the uninfected Vaxxed control group would have been an interesting comparison with the Vaxxed after COVID infection group, but I guess they didn’t think so]
[they conclude by saying]
The constellation of subjective symptoms in the absence of objective abnormalities on diagnostic evaluation resembles what has been described with other illnesses, including chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis, postinfection syndromes described after resolution of certain viral and bacterial infections, and mental health disorders such as depression and anxiety .
The pathogenesis of PASC remains unclear and requires further study.
They might want to talk to Bruce K. Patterson .Some interesting research from him here
Cytokine Hub Classification of PASC, ME-CFS and other PASC-like Conditions
Results: PASC, ME-CSF, POVIP, and Acute COVID-19 disease categories were able to be classified by our cytokine hub based CART algorithm with an average F1 score of 0.61 and high specificity (94%).
Conclusions: Proper classification of these inflammatory conditions with very similar symptoms is critical for proper diagnosis and treatment.
I mentioned the comparison between CFS and Long Covid (PASC). Here is what Fauci said about CFS/ME recently
July 2020, Fauci said that “some patients may have “post-infection syndromes” that resemble chronic fatigue syndrome.
“You can see people who’ve recovered who really do not get back to normal, that they have things that are highly suggestive of myalgic encephalomyelitis and chronic fatigue syndrome—brain fog, fatigue and difficulty in concentrating. So this is something we really need to seriously look at, because it very well might be a post-viral syndrome associated with COVID-19.”
This contrast with Faucis complete apathy when it came to funding Chronic Fatigue Syndrome over the last 35+ years
To know the history of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome the best book is Oslers Web by Hillary Johnson . Amazon doesnt seem to want you to read it based on this pricing
But you can learn a bit more here
The book outlines how the CDC blocked efforts to attribute a viral causation to CFS. CDC refused Congress instruction to provide a reporting protocol for CFS in 1986 while downplaying the disease
In 1988 Fauci testified supportively about [chronic fatigue syndrome] in Congressional hearings, stating that ‘CFS results from a complex interplay between viral agents and immunological effector systems,’ yet his chief investigator of CFS at the NIAID, Dr. Stephen Straus, continued in 1990 to maintain that [chronic fatigue syndrome] is a psychoneurotic illness largely experienced by women
Fauci had to aware that the information distributed by the NIAID Office of Communications did not agree with his assessment of CFS as an illness which [he told Congress] “is triggered by an infectious agent, probably a virus, which grows in lymphoid tissue and results in immune dysfunction.”
IAmpligen despite being given orphan drug status in 1994 has never got FDA approval for ME/CFS despite being effective for some patients in trials in the 1990’s.
Ampligen is a synthetic interferon of zero-to-low toxicity that has demonstrated efficacy in trials since 1991. There are no known efficacious treatments for CFS/M.E. aside from ampligen.
Anthony Fauci is director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and considered the AIDS "Czar" (he accrued hundreds of billions of dollars for his institute to develop therapies for HIV infections). Fauci is hugely popular within the AIDS community.
In contrast to his service on behalf of AIDS, Fauci has taken every opportunity to bury M.E. for the last 35 years.
As first reported in Osler's Web, in the early 1990s Fauci expressed his bewilderment--through the NIAID deputy director who he authorized to speak for him--that patients were distressed by psychiatric diagnoses since the stigma surrounding mental illness presumably had subsided.
Fauci also accompanied Stephen Straus of the NIH clinical center to Capitol Hill to demand that Congress quiet constituents who were flooding the NIH with letters pleading for Straus--an influential M.E. denier--to be fired.
Upon Straus's death in 2007, Fauci directed that the disease be overseen by the Office of Women's Health, a tiny office with no labs or scientists, no authority to submit or fund research grants, and minimal authority within the NIH cosmos.
But despite the eery similarities between CFS and Long Covid (PASC) its interesting Dr. Anthony Faucisaid the National Institute of Health (NIH) had been granted $1.15 billion in funding over the course of four years to look at PASC
https://www.newsweek.com/what-pasc-long-covid-dr-fauci-post-acute-sequelae-1571963
From 2015-2019 ME/CFS funding has been a paltry$ 6 million (2015) -$15 million (2019) a year. Presumably up from the days it was overseen by the Office of Women's Health
So that’s quite a turnaround Dr Fauci.
That said I do not deny that Long Covid exists nor do I begrudge it funding for research.
I would also point out Long Covid exists in Flu as well
Long-COVID clinical features occurred and co-occurred frequently and showed some specificity to COVID-19, though they were also observed after influenza
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1003773
And just as I was going to post this I found a new paper just out today
Long COVID after breakthrough SARS-CoV-2 infection
It basically just reports that vaccination only provides a 15% reduction in Long Covid/PASC after Breakthrough infection. So much for vaccination as a solution to Long Covid
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01840-0.pdf
You soon discover the real gold in these science papers is in the tables buried in the Supplementary pages
https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41591-022-01840-0/MediaObjects/41591_2022_1840_MOESM3_ESM.xlsx
If I read this right 27% of vaccinated controls have symptoms that would be classified as Long Covid (PASC)
And 16% in unvaxxed/uninfected controls
SMH-No wonder they hate controls.