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Comment by vmception | Hacker News Reader

I've been very dismayed at the non-existent data between "dead" and "not dead". This has been guiding pretty much everyone's decisions, everybody's counterpoints on all parts of the political spectrum, and it is pretty annoying when you know that they aren't operating on the same information as you are.

Its just not as simple as "hm only 10% of 90 years olds are the ones dying in my municipality, I'll play along because nobody is inviting me out anyway", encephalitis lethargica had very debilitating side effects for decades afterwards.

Covid is a blood clotting neurological disease. It strips blood of the ability to carry oxygen, debilitates the ability for your body to even get oxygen from air, and damages many organs (probably due to the worsened oxygen delivery). What do people think the loss of smell, taste, and ability to think clearly is? Many of the same people consider themselves asymptomatic because they didn't get a hard dry cough.

I just don't get the impression that others are putting two and two together here.

I am all for getting data! Good investment.

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> Covid is a blood clotting neurological disease. It strips blood of the ability to carry oxygen, debilitates the ability for your body to even get oxygen from air, and damages many organs (probably due to the worsened oxygen delivery).

Literally everything in this quote is speculation, or factually incorrect.

Covid-19 is not a "neurological disease" -- SARS-CoV2 is a virus that infects epithelial cells. Epithelial cells are not neural cells.

Blood clotting is observed in some patients, but the mechanism is unclear. Blood clotting is a common result of inflammation -- triggered by any disease.

It does not "strip blood of the ability to carry oxygen". This is simply wrong. Inflammation associated with SARS-CoV2 infection damages the ability of the lungs to absorb oxygen.

The claim that it "damages many organs" is at least an overstatement -- the vast majority of Covid-19 patients have no such damage. Patients with severe inflammatory responses clearly do have some damage. It's not yet clear if the damage is due to the virus, or the response of the host's own immune system.

The claim that organ damage is caused by "worsened oxygen delivery" is speculation on speculation.

> What do people think the loss of smell, taste, and ability to think clearly is?

The loss of smell is believed to be due to infection of of supporting cells in the olfactory epithelium. Not the nerves.

Taste is lost because smell plays a huge role in the perception of taste.

"Loss of ability to think" is so vague as to be pointless to debate. Depression and anxiety are likely causes of the same symptom.

Thanks I agree, I was just looking up the other day whether “brain fog” was an accepted term and reached the same conclusion as you

For me, the poor leadership and lack of consensus is enough for me to avoid exposure. When everyone can articulate what you said, instead of the reductive things they do say, I’ll be more comfortable

But I’ll likely be vaccinated before then, which is just as fine for my risk analysis

Had severe brain fog for a few years. Blood thinners gave me my mind back.

Like what, aspirin?

Xaralto elequis, Pradaxa

Thank you so much for the clarity and levity.

The person you're responding to is understandably scared and is ignorantly propagating the sensationalism that the news has been hammering into our brains.

The news is not science..people need to realize.

It's a business and even the biggest news companies peddle sensationalism.

Even if only one person has some strange side effect like 'covid toes'...the news media can prey on humans emotional response which overrides statistical reasoning to lay claim that it's a possible Covid outcome.

And while it's not an outright lie...it's extremely disengenuous and very sensational. And they do it all the time.

We need to teach people statistical reasoning in school and we need to hold news agencies accountable for statistically irresponsible news.

I've relocated twice during this pandemic and have no qualms going out and making judgements for my personal probability of exposure.

"Scared and unable to derive statistics" is a large inaccurate stretch of the imagination, I'll make my own stretch of the imagination and say you were probably pasting this response a year ago on things that turned out to be real threats for 500k Americans that didn't even know they had a meaningful pre-existing condition.

We don't have statistics on who has the "inflammatory response" or any other side effect.

I have a stone that keeps covid away, you can't afford to not buy it.

At the end of this month when the eviction moratorium ends, there's about to be tens of thousands of people relocating to the streets.

Apologies that you had to switch houses during this trying time. My heart goes out to you and your struggle.

80% of the population is under the age of 55. That age group has more of a chance of dying of a car accident than they do of Covid.

40% of all money in the money supply has been printed in the past year, building supplies are already up by two to four times and are showing signs of inflation. America just went 1.9 trillion dollars more into debt. Tens of thousands of small businesses have closed and thier business has been absorbed by large companies increasing inequality.

The price we're about to pay for this economically is going to be significant.

Poor people and future generations will probably have to pay it though. #yolo

the basis of my post was about the lack of statistics between "dead" and "not dead", so statistics about who dies is pretty irrelevant

I moved because I had the privilege to choose and did

you are reading everything wrong here

Covid is irrelevant if you're under the age of 55, which is 80% of the population.

> We need to teach people statistical reasoning in school

We don't teach most high school graduates to fluency the math that would be needed for this reasoning to work fluidly.

It's unfortunate. People who are poor statistical reasoning are easy to manipulate.

> Literally everything in this quote is speculation, or factually incorrect.

Neither one of you provided sources. I think that you're right, but how's a layperson to know?

Google actual science instead of 'the news'. The patho-physiology of Covid is well known.

In stead of a blithe comment, you could directly link evidence and instead you chose the less productive of two routes. It makes you look like an ass and doesn't contribute to the conversation.

You're wrong. It's hard science that's easily Googleable. References are only needed for something debatable.

You don't need to link references that gravity exists either.

I'm not wrong. My comment was that you could choose to blithely remark OR post links to support your claim, which would be the more productive route.

Instead, you have doubled down and chose to continue making blithe remarks like "gravity doesn't need a reference."

You are wrong because it's not a claim. The pathophysiology of Covid is hard science. Gravity existing is not a claim either. No need to support either of those with ref's is because they are easily googleable. It's a waste of people's time.

If it's not affecting the brain and nervous system why are people opening up clinics specifically for that? https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/covid-19s-effects...

People open up churches to an invisible man in the sky.

Who knows why people do what they do.

Again, no sources to back up any of your claims. As Hitchens once famously claimed, "What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."

The second person is more correct: https://www.uptodate.com/contents/coronavirus-disease-2019-c...

UpToDate is what I use to manage patients, and is pretty good.

Manage them as a medical student...? [1] As an attending physician, I wouldn't follow the advice of a med student nor intern.

[1] "I'm going to throw in my two cents as a medical student"

Are you saying that UpToDate is badly flawed, or are you just being gratuitously condescending?

> As an attending physician, I wouldn't follow the advice of a med student nor intern.

I hope this is just sloppy writing on your part, because the sentiment your comment is actually conveying is downright dangerous.

What do medical students have to do with anything? Stay on topic

StackOverflow: Developers :: UpToDate: Physicians

... which makes the "Don't confuse your Google search with my medical degree" meme a bit more amusing.

Would you hire the developer that copy and pastes from StackOverflow without understanding the code or the developer who reads StackOverflow to come up with their own solution/conclusion?

Also, I'm not so interested in the absolute effects but the effects as compared to previous / annual influenzas.

Just FYI, there is some real weird stuff going on in the brains of quite a few people who died of COVID. COVID is far from a fully understood disease. https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20210217/autopsies_may_expla...

I have a blood clotting disease. Factor 5 Leiden. Basically destroyed my life once it activated.

I mostly had it under control with blood thinners. If I went off for a few days I would have issues, then a stroke. ( I hate side effects of Pradaxa)

Got covid. Sucked, but got over it. However now I can’t miss any pills. If I skip tonight’s, Tomorrow one side of my body will go numb. I get severe brain fog, Plus a host of other issues that take days to weeks to resolve. Same crap as before covid, but I have no margin for error now. Oh and now I piss blood, because blood thinners, yeah.

This is fucking brutal. My ex-girlfriend had Polycythemia. I realise it's very different to what you're explaining here, but her symptoms when she didn't take her medication, or when she got hot, or did anything strenuous were very similar to what you listed.

In addition to pissing blood.

Is this a disease that you've always had? Came later in life?

If this is asking too much or prying to deep, don't answer my questions. I empathise as much I can with you, as much as I can.

2 parts. Genetic disorder factor 5 Leiden. Not aa problem until a few years ago.

Also have an Autoimmune disorder. Had it since I was a teen. Made worse by my teenage love of mountain dew.

It’s a risk factor for clotting, and probably contributes. It also causes inflammation and neuropathy. It was was annoying and a slow but growing problem.

Then I got exposed to a LOT of natural gas from a mega rental company house.

Well dormant gene for factor 5 activated and I my blood went crazy. Lots of clots. Autoimmune also went nuts and decided that nervous system and various organs needed to die in a most painful way possible.

Took a few years to get it under control..ish. Covid has clearly made it worse.

I'm sorry. That really sucks.

Clotting clearly does happen for a subset of patients. But it's wrong for the OP to claim that this is because the virus is doing something to the blood. That's a leap too far. Other infections cause similar sorts of issues -- sepsis, for example.

The distinction matters, because if the clotting is mediated by a runaway inflammatory response (e.g. an over-reaction of the innate immune system), it's inherently a problem that will affect a subset of people who are infected (for reasons we don't really understand). Whereas if the virus attacks some component of the blood, it would be expected to affect most people the same way.

But if we have a population of people who will experience this, wouldn’t that feed into the GP contention that no one is measuring the experience between alive and dead?

I completely buy the idea that all of these effects happen with other conditions, but if there’s a surge due to covid, shouldn’t we investigate it?

> wouldn’t that feed into the GP contention that no one is measuring the experience between alive and dead?

Well, no...there have been a lot of publications in this area. We hear about them all the time. Most of these publications are bad at the moment, but that's normal. It takes time for good research to be completed. It will happen.

> if there’s a surge due to covid, shouldn’t we investigate it?

Sure. I don't think anything I've written here implies otherwise.

Man, that sounds hard. I wish you the best.

Parent is correct about COVID attacking the ability of red blood cells to carry oxygen. This has been known for a while. Many sources if you search. Here is one:

https://chemrxiv.org/articles/preprint/COVID-19_Disease_ORF8...

This is a paper that used a computer simulation method ("docking") of computer-generated protein structures to arrive at the conclusions you're citing. I did my PhD in this area. Docking methods are not anywhere near reliable enough to make this sort of claim.

This is little more than a story told with software.

One side is producing research papers and other sources. You are saying you have a PhD in this area so trust you.

I do not know you, I do not know if the PhD in question actually qualifies you to speak on the subject, and I do not know if it did that you would actually be fully up to date on the subject. I do not necessarily want to dismiss this out of hand as an appeal to authority, but as a layperson, you do not making a convincing argument when it boils down to "Listen to me, I have a PhD, trust me over these other people who have PhDs who are also publishing peer reviewed papers that disagree with me."

> One side is producing research papers and other sources. You are saying you have a PhD in this area so trust you.

That's not a paper. It's a pre-print. It isn't peer-reviewed. It isn't published. Literally anyone can push a document to a pre-print server.

I'm saying I have a PhD in this exact discipline, and this document isn't proof of what it claims. You certainly don't have to believe me, but saying "this is a paper, and therefore it is likely to be correct" is not a standard of evidence that exists.

>That's not a paper. It's a pre-print. It isn't peer-reviewed. It isn't published. Literally anyone can push a document to a pre-print server.

I stand corrected.

> but saying "this is a paper, and therefore it is likely to be correct" is not a standard of evidence that exists.

It is still at least showing some work beyond the "making claims with zero supporting evidence", which is what you are doing.

> It is still at least showing some work beyond the "making claims with zero supporting evidence", which is what you are doing.

Really? OP knew exactly what was going on in this pre-print. Unlike you who took this for a published paper. Don't ask someone to show work when you yourself didn't read the summary.

Also the paper doesn't talk about the 'ability of red blood cells to carry oxygen', the attack is first and foremost reported to result in less hemoglobin being available. There is a difference here.

To be fair, the OP mentioned "the ability of the blood to carry oxygen", not blood cells, which would be correct if the overall concentration of hemoglobin was lowered.

OP here. This is a great discussion and I'm glad this particular subthread chose not to dismiss it and instead chose to debate the progress of the research into it or lack thereof.

Would be even greater to get NIH to invest $1B into looking into it further.

6 months ago people would have retorted slightly differently, although they would have balked at the assertion they would have assumed that people already researched it and ruled it out, and therefore I would have been "fearmongering" because the scientists already researched it! now we can acknowledge that they haven't and needs to be peer reviewed.

so the goal post has moved, but I'm all for data being collected.

>Really? OP knew exactly what was going on in this pre-print. Unlike you who took this for a published paper. Don't ask someone to show work when you yourself didn't read the summary.

This is not the only reply from him in the thread going back to the top comment. There are other articles and papers posted, in response to his reply or backing the assertions of the original post he replied to, here and throughout the rest of the rest of the comment section. In none of his posts did he provide any response to them beyond his appeals to authority.

I had no desire to reply to multiple posts with the same general concern and instead picked a single one.

The top post should have included sources for their assertion. They did not. Others stepped in for them and did in the thread. Other threads include articles and sources for the same assertions. At that point, the burden of proof isn't on them - someone saying they're wrong needs to provide details on why that is not the case vs. just saying "I got a PhD in this so trust me."

It's a classic appeal to authority fallacy.

I'm not saying "you should believe me because I have a PhD". That would be an appeal to authority.

I'm saying: I have deep expertise in this exact area, and based on my experience and knowledge and ability to read papers in this area, I can confidently say that this is a bad "paper" that does not prove the claim made.

You have no skill or experience in this area, and you choose to believe the paper instead of my assessment of the paper. That is certainly your right, but your basis for doing so is "it's a paper and I don't know who you are", which is self-evidently silly.

>I'm not saying "you should believe me because I have a PhD".

Yes, you fundamentally are.

>I have deep expertise in this exact area, and based on my experience and knowledge and ability to read papers in this area, I can confidently say that this is a bad "paper" that does not prove the claim made.

There is no functional difference between the here because you don't even provide an argument as to why this is.

What is the real difference between "I have deep expertise in this area and knowledge and experience" and "I have a PhD"? Is a PhD not a proxy for expertise, knowledge, and experience in a subject?

What is the difference between "believe me" and "I can confidently say that this is a bad "paper" that does not prove the claim made"? Are you not asking me to believe your conclusion based entirely on your authority? You have made no argument for me to evaluate.

One form is more verbose, but it is still 100% an appeal to authority.

It is one thing to state your credentials and then make an argument. It is another to state your credentials and a conclusion with no argument.

The NIH has also addressed this topic as well.

"We speculated that in COVID-19, beyond the classical pulmonary immune-inflammation view, the occurrence of an oxygen-deprived blood disease, with iron metabolism dysregulation, should be taken in consideration. "

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7267810/#:~:tex....

The guy complaining here is simply wrong. He's backpedalling because he made an unscientific and unsupported statement that oxygen deprivation is caused only by inflammation. There is plenty of evidence of other mechanisms at play. Nitpicking them is fine, pretending they don't exist is foolish, which is what he is getting called out on.

There's nothing wrong with publishing a computer model. But until it has been experimentally validated in humans then it's medically irrelevant. You're really reaching on this one.

It's still more than the literal zero evidence presented by the person I replied to.

Thanks for sharing your off-topic criticism. Here is NIH on the same topic:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7267810/#:~:tex....

Next time, if you're going to try gatekeeping, be sure you have grounds for it.

At least in the case of the heart, there’s the beginnings of evidence that is suggestive of the fact that the damage is not simply incidental to systemic inflammation. https://medicine.wustl.edu/news/covid-19-can-kill-heart-musc...

That's interesting, thanks. But as you note, an in vitro study is still a long way from proof of claim -- just because something can happen does not mean that it does happen in actual people, and it certainly doesn't mean that it happens often. I would characterize this as evidence suggestive of a plausible mechanism.

One thing missing, for example, is why this doesn't appear to happen frequently. Most of the highly touted claims of cardiac involvement from summer 2020 have been debunked (e.g. in athletes).

What do I do with this response? Should I take covid seriously or not?

On the taste/smell thing- people I know who've had that symptom say that it is qualitatively different from the loss of taste/smell you get with a bad cold. In particular, they also lost the ability to taste things like salt and sugar, which people with a cold can still taste. My understanding of this may be outdated, but I thought that tasting those wasn't an olfactory thing- am I wrong, or is the ability to taste salt and sugar dependent on different epithelial cells that are also damaged?

(Interestingly, these people did retain the ability to sense the 'heat' of chili peppers...)

> SARS-CoV2 is a virus that infects epithelial cells.

Unfortunately, there are strong indicators that Sars-CoV-2 is capable of infecting more than just epithelial cells: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41422-020-0390-x

> The claim that it "damages many organs" is at least an overstatement -- the vast majority of Covid-19 patients have no such damage.

The problem: assuming a (made up, just for the argument here) 0.1% rate of coronavirus cases that end up in long-covid / systematic organ failures, and you have 1k of infections, that's not many total cases. Assuming you have 116 millions of infected people however, suddenly even a 0.1% rate translates into hundreds of thousands of affected people. The actual rate is possibly in double-digit percentage area (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7533045/), so ... yeah.

This is why combatting infections is so important, not just because of mutation risk...

I agree. The neurological aspect of things concerns me the most. How many diseases do we know that cause long term cognitive damage? Even if the cognitive loss was small at the individual level, given the number of people who were exposed, that would be pretty terrible at the level of long-term societal impact.

Unless you can provide a source that proves loss of sense of smell is due to “blood clotting depriving oxygen and resulting in organ damage” your statement sounds like pure bunk.

Plus, severe influenza can result in similar organ damage so Covid is not unique in that aspect.

regarding smell, some research says it is olfactory support cells and not neuron damage.

just have a conversation bro

you know what would be even cooler, a US health agency investing $1B to investigate

> Plus, severe influenza can result in similar organ damage so Covid is not unique in that aspect.

I used to work with somebody who was never the same after a bad case of flu in their 50s, so this kind of research—regardless of which virus—is very welcome.

well, yeah, high school buddy of mine, 50 yrs old, was never the same after a bad case of flu. He was never the same because he was dead. He got sick, then three days later, dead. Our whole class was in shock. But apparently, it's not as uncommon as people think.

Most people confuse the common cold and flu. Flu is a very serious disease that kills many including children. Common cold rarely has complications, and when it does it is almost only with the very frail and very old.

A lot of assertions here for which are perspectives still actively being researched, i.e. not yet conclusive.

Agreed. My brother in law's dad got COVID. He had heart surgery before. They had him on blood thinners for some time and his doctor said that it was a very real possibility that it saved his life as he was already on something they would have probably prescribed to him.

He's in his 60s. Will he experience long term effects? Who knows.

I'm starting to get invited to meet in person for business and some are like "I get tested every week". And I just say sorry I don't make exceptions. I live with someone with a rare respiratory condition. A weekly test - what does that even tell me anyway? I know you're running your business and have employees coming in.

Everything is much easier with data. But when there is still so much to learn everyone weighs their risks differently.

Many of us here are extremely fortunate and can afford to pay for delivery and stay home.

So we need to understand that some people's perspective IS a real calculated risk tolerance.

If we can get data to understand long term effects, that will help with educating those that are really only weighing the risk of them dying.

> I'm starting to get invited to meet in person for business and some are like "I get tested every week". And I just say sorry I don't make exceptions.

Make a list now, so that you remember who the idiots are after everyone is vaccinated.

I've already had to re-plan my reintroduction to retail after finding out a few of my preferred shops weren't obeying mask mandates, or in one case actively flouting them.

It will be easy to forget and put it all behind us. Don't. We're lucky to receive such useful side-channel data.

I've actually been thinking about doing this. Because its the same people that have moved the goal post to new forms of idiocy after their various

"it doesn't exist"

"its just the flu"

"nothing you can do to stop it anyways"

"5G over the air microchips"

"dna-rewriting vaccines"

ideas fell apart and were just led to other wacky ideas.

https://www.epsilontheory.com/the-endemic-mindset/

Retribution, vengeance and holding grudges isn't how we're going to build a stronger society. I think we all need to practice forgiving the people, no matter how awful they've been, are, or will be.

Don't get me wrong, I'm enraged at the lunacy of some. But I don't think we're going to be better off in aggregate by insisting on payback.

It has nothing to do with any of the things you listed, maybe you're projecting. It's not retribution to avoid someone, nor is it vengeful to shop somewhere else.

I have for years had a big list of people, companies, and other organizations I wish to actively avoid. The pandemic just gave me higher resolution on the "undefined" set of humans and organizations.

I already avoid racists, extreme partisans, assholes, anti-science types, people who are mean to waitstaff, people who don't read books, et c. Covid gave me a few more categories.

Sounds like a recipe to end up alone.

That hasn't been the case so far, and, in my experience, my overall quality of social interactions has gone up drastically since I adopted my current approach.

Perhaps there are false positives; I am willing to take that risk for the immense benefits so far.

Everything they said sounded pretty reasonable to me, I also keep away from people who fall into all of those categories

The funny thing about burning bridges is that you don't know that you burned too many until it's too late.

> Retribution, vengeance and holding grudges

That's not the only utility for this.

Understanding the networks of information flows over social media will allow for easier reintroduction of accurate concepts, using similar looking quacks and new language for people who prefer to believe quacks over any reputable institution.

It can also be useful to get people to realize how consistently they are led on, as many of them forgot their prior theories and are just subscribed to random causes alongside their vegan, spiritual or political journey.

It doesn't have to be about retribution. It can also be a proxy for example for how seriously a restaurant is likely to take its food safety standards.

Retribution, vengeance and holding grudges isn't how we're going to build a stronger society.

On the contrary, spite definitely has a useful purpose in social structures. It strengthens the negative effect of unwanted behaviour.

In a simplistic world, I agree as long as the response is proportional and the other actor is rational. My preferred strategy to deal with unwanted behaviour is usually 'swift proportional reprisal followed by forgiveness'. However I don't think you can apply this nilly-willy in the real world. There's a bunch of nuance at play, and the other actors are usually not very rational, and not every fight is worth the cost of fighting it. And also, none of this works if you don't _forgive_ the other side. "An eye for an eye" is a crap strategy.

> "I get tested every week"

right, yeah that doesn't tell you anything, it tells that person whether they need to quarantine for an additional week and is only useful if they hadn't seen anyone the prior 7 days.

I hear many quips like "I already had it last year" or still even people that think their one test once says they were negative and thats that.

The crazy thing, the crazy thing, is that these aren't even the people that don't understand thermodynamics and think seeing hot breath in front of a mask proves that masks offer no protection effective against covid aerosols.

I hear many quips like "I already had it last year"

Oh right. So we know for a FACT that you were exposed, and became a carrier and probably a spreader; maybe by bad luck and unfortunate circumstances, maybe by being a bloody idiot. But NOW you're even MORE blasé about it, because you feel invulnerable, so you're going to be engaging in MORE risky behaviour regarding an illness that we know people can have repeated bouts of ("catch" more than once). Thanks for letting me know, I guess. Video call it is.

spot on

> I've been very dismayed at the non-existent data between "dead" and "not dead".

Feels like we went with the Chinese "it lasts for two weeks or you die" that doctors discovered like 1-2 months in.

I hope they can start to get to the bottom of some of the clotting issues. Just in my anecdotal circle of friends and acquaintances I know at least 3 sudden anueryisms or strokes post-covid infection--some months after recovery. These were healthy 30-somethings with no pre-existing conditions and none of them even had infection symptoms bad enough to warrant a hospital trip. If nothing else there needs to be a lot more awareness about recognizing the signs and symptoms of clot, stroke, or heart attacks.

Let me confirm - you know 3 separate healthy people that are in their 30s that have had aneuryisms of strokes this past year?

Narrator: at least two were obese.

Yes, one of them was my best friend. Him and I climbed mountains together. Now he's dead--thanks for asking.

In all fairness it's only been around a bit over a year (and MERS/SARS were rare enough to have limited data). The dead/non-dead distinction has been the top priority. And I don't think the data is non-existent, but on an educated guess I'd say the top minds have more been on developing treatments, vaccines, and generally reducing mortality and morbity - and the balance of research reflects it. Sadly there will be time to measure the long term consequences. For now what more can they do than tell everyone to socially distance and wear masks, and get vaccinated as soon as possible?

At first I was going to say that I wasn't arguing for anything, but really everyone has dropped the ball here.

The same places that did the tests had the infrastructure to follow up with people and could have been doing this 6 months ago, and that has nothing to do with the "top minds" at all.

That, alongside the failed, poorly implemented or nonexistent contact tracing methods have made getting this metadata much more difficult to do.

> I am all for getting data! Good investment.

This will also flag long-term effects from other virii, as well.

One thing that Covid drove home is: "Infection with a virus can do a LOT of extra damage that we don't track very well."

There are lot of people who get diagnosed with "Lyme" (aka the modern equivalent to "hysteria" in many ways) who may very well just be "You had a bad cold/flu/other virus and your body took a lot of damage and now its going to take quite a while to clean up."

Modern medicine is amazing, but it has a gigantic blind spot around chronic conditions.

Do you have reason to believe that Lyme is not a real disease, despite a known bacteria and very distinct symptoms including red “target” marks? Or are you just referring to “long Lyme” (which is not well characterized, but has extremely high correlation with a prior real Lyme diagnosis?)

I fully believe that "Lyme disease" certainly exists.

I also believe that "Lyme disease" became a medical/medical insurance bucket for "We don't know what's wrong with you, and you're annoying enough that we can't just ignore you, but we don't want to spend any more time or money on you figuring out what is really wrong."

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