Along with claiming the lives of 1.2 million Americans, the covid-19 pandemic has been described as a mass disabling event.
Estimates of prevalence range considerably, depending on how researchers define long covid in a given study, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention puts it at 17 million adults.
Despite long covid’s vast reach, the federal government’s investment in researching the disease — to the tune of $1.15 billion as of December — has so far failed to bring any new treatments to market.
As someone with Long COVID myself, I’m unsure this article is approaching it from the right angle.
Treatments don’t just come easy, they take massive monetary investment and lots of time, AIDS took 2 decades of 1 billion + per year invested.
I’m more frustrated that we’ve only had a small amount invested (yes 1.15 billion sounds like a lot, but for something that has disabled about 0.5-3% of the population so much they had to stop working, it’s actually miniscule), and so we haven’t even figured out any mechanisms. (Without knowing mechanisms, finding treatments is like throwing random shit at the wall and seeing what sticks). I’m also frustrated that people in Trump’s administration are denying long COVID is a thing or blaming it on mental health.
That throwing random shit at the wall really sticks with me ATM, currently trialing my 3rd expirimental med for an upcoming clinic and it’s all just medication somebody received for other purposes that also seemed to have a positive effect on their longcovid symptoms.
So far none have been satisfactory but hey we keep trying.
I don’t know why we’re in such an expirmental treatment mindset around long COVID.