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Money. There are many unethical alternative medicine practitioners out there scamming with quack treatments.
I don't get with people jump in that health care can only be had through a third party.
> what do you have to lose
And then the burden isn't just on you, it's on your family and friends who have to either take care of you, or watch you suffer more.
Long covid isn't nothing, clearly — but this kind of mindset is irresponsible. The "what have you got to lose" track is typically reserved only for people who have a terminal diagnosis, and even then, it's always a good idea to talk with your doctor about the pros and cons of the different experimental options you have access to.
Again, I'm assuming we are talking about people in a state of abandonment by the medical establishment, some unable to function at all. I can't understand the risk calculation here.
> it's on you to make sensible choices
The question is less, "will X formulation work as a remedy for long covid," and more, "what effects will X formulation have on someone with Y and Z conditions, in their late 60s, having undergone this, that, and the other medical procedures on so-and-so timelines, and still on a course of this other formulation to abate chronic symptoms as a result of complications during one of the medical procedures they underwent?"
This isn't really even a contrived example. Many people undergo medical procedures. Complications aren't common, but they're not rare, either, and they vary greatly in magnitude and long-term effects. A staggering proportion of people are on a course of some kind of medication (antivirals, pain relievers, more specialized stuff) at any given time. Figuring out how medications interact is aggressively nontrivial, and while there exist databases that can correlate medications and tell you if any are known to conflict with eachother (either always or under certain circumstances — information which, in most cases, was documented through case studies), this information still has to be reviewed by a trained medical professional — an MD familiar with the patient's medical history, ideally — who can say with a good degree of confidence whether a treatment is likely or not to cause the patient harm.
Usually it's about as scientific as a blood letting. "My friend Norma Rae had cancer and she sat under a pyramid whose sides were constructed of juniper wood cut in the golden ratio to focus the purifying energy of the salt crystals and she got better! Doctors don't know everything."
I'm talking about things like high-dose vitamins, some medicinal plants, various therapies like cold exposure, etc. Nothing unscientific or mystical about them, just that, as with other chronic ailments, doctors are not trained or knowledgeable on, for the most part.
Do those things have any reputable evidence behind them?
But actually, yes, some of them have, maybe not for this particular condition, but one can make reasonable inferences that some are worth trying. And anecdotes have value too.
>And anecdotes have value too.
No, they do not.
Incorrect. An absence of evidence is not the same thing as an absence of science.
Can you share some peer reviewed literature on these treatments? I've heard of a lot of "cures" shared by people like Bret Weinstein and Robert Malone, but they're thoroughly debunked and pretty obviously not real solutions, or placebos at best. Maybe you're referring to something else though?
No need to summon your favorite boogeymen.