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Comment by larryflint | Hacker News Reader

Did you take the vaccine?

Yes, I did. I have both shots and a booster. That said, this all started before the vaccines. The day before I got COVID I returned from a 30 mile trip with my buddy. I had COVID in January, and vaccines were available until months later, so I don't think it's really vaccine related.

Better question: were they treated in any way?

What treatments do you mean?

Considering hospitals have basically banned or obfuscated all treatments other than prevention, good questions.

Hospitals are frequently using anti-viral and mono-clonal antibody treatments for severe cases. They are not using drugs that have been shown ineffective.

It's not a question of ineffectivrness. It's a question of treating a large number of people, with a spot light on them, and then blaming the illness for "long Covid". Maybe it is the virus? But maybe it's the treatment? Or a combo of both? Or a combo plus some other factor?

Two examples that might help frame things:

1) Chemo. It's toxic.

2) A couple of yrs ago a family member was hospitalized from a stroke. They needed to be put on assisted breathing. Well that helped, but it also led to a lung infection. And then that required treatment. Fair enough, it prevented death.

The point is, not every treatment is without sidside effects. But with Covid, evidently there are no longer comorbidies, and the treatments have no side effects.

Many of the treatments listed in the official NIH guidelines have significant negative side effects. Those are clearly acknowledged so I don't understand why you seem to think they're being hidden? In fact some of the treatments are only recommended for more severe cases partly due to the risk of side effects.

https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/therapies/

Mechanical ventilation was overused early in the pandemic and likely killed quite a few patients. Now less invasive therapies are preferred and ventilators are only used as a salvage therapy when all else has failed.

I didn't say nor imply they are being hidden. What I'm questioning is the attribution of so called long Covid strictly to the virus and not to any of the treatments and/or people's general state of health prior to getting sick. It's the mono-lens. It's the thumb on the scale narrative.

Sure there are outliers (i.e., people in very good health getting long Covid) and the media is great in highlighting them. It makes for profitable "news." But the typical American doesn't exercise enough, and doesn't eat particularly well. These things impact health. They impact recovery (from any illness or injury). Yet we continue to be stuck with leadership and a narrative that is afraid to discuss such things.

That's all I'm questioning.

The federal government yanked access to monoclonal antibodies citing they were made for a different strain when omicron came around.

Problem is plenty of people were still getting delta and they still worked, with lesser efficacy, against omicron

And the antivirals they're handing, you're better off fighting covid without them

remdesivir is a garbage drug

Anything. There seems to be this (unproven) belief that the drugs and methods used to treat Covid do no harm, and that it must be the virus, and only the virus.

The fact is, this is the first time in a long time that we've had a substantial sample size of infected humans, as well as a spotlight on the topic. The point being, there could be previous history with regard to treatment / solutions used for Covid and we've never bothered to look and see. That's not being critical. We had no reason to look. People survived and that we moved on.

But now we have a significant amount of data, yet we seem to be presuming - again, without proof - that the cause of "long Covid" is exclusively due to the virus. Simply put, that assumption isn't supported with science. It's based on assumption and narrative.

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