I am still thinking about the last two Long Covid/PASC talks. (PASC is post-acute sequelae SARS-CoV-2.) I have not written about the earlier talk, which was from the group of Long Covid patients, many of the medical people, who have banded together to do their own research and advocate for research. That group said that half have ME/CFS (myalgic encephalomyopathy/chronic fatigue syndrome) and did say that they are unhappy about the research into exercise.

How do I interpret that in light of the more recent talk, with studies about exercise?

Remember that before Long Covid, we thought that about one in ten people with any severe infection may get ME/CFS. Covid-19 is a really nasty infection and hitting people way harder. However, the second talk did show evidence that many though not all Long Covid patients respond to exercise therapy. Here is my prediction: many of the Long Covid people will recover in the two year time line. Two years more or less and that’s if they get help and therapy. However, we may have ten percent, and that’s a guess, that will have a longer course. Ten percent of the people with Long Covid is a very large number of people.

My hope is also that we will learn much more about the immune system and we will be much better at treating and even curing ME/CFS. Something good out of a terrible pandemic.

There also is a recent article about people who tested negative for Covid-19, who have Long Covid. I think I am one of them. In March of 2021 I was tested twice for Covid-19 and was negative. I was also negative for strep A, influenza and RSV and we stopped testing. I needed oxygen. I did take penicillin because of the two previous strep A pneumonias. I had had my three vaccines already. Why do I think it was Covid-19? When the immunologist tested my antibody level in November 2021, he said it was the highest level he’d ever seen. Over 50 was protective and I had 25,000. I thought, that’s weird, from the vaccines? Then I got Covid-19 again in April and had super mild sniffles. I tested because I was traveling and had to push my travel back a week. I think that I tested negative, but remember, we were testing nasal drainage. I’ve only ever had one sinus infection in my life and I’m one of those people who got strep A as a child over and over. As an adult it is throat and lungs that are most vulnerable. I think some people do not shed Covid-19 in their nose. They might have gotten a different result if they had swabbed my tonsils. With that second round the home test was negative again, but I had to get an official travel test. I did it right away, five days before my plane. That test was positive.

There is discussion going on, whether Long Covid that looks like ME/CFS is the same thing or not. My suspicion is that we will see many of the people recover from the PEM (post exertional malaise), but that some will have a longer, more difficult course. And it is not very predictable. The hospitalized people who go through exercise are mostly recovering. They were debilitated from time in bed, on a ventilator, on a heart lung bypass machine. Yet there are people who were never hospitalized, had no preexisting conditions, were athletes and are still struggling. This is a nasty, unpredictable virus. A scintilla of hope and of fear.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: scintilla.

The agate is from Marrowstone Island. Only part of it is clear. This is one I had to dig out of hard mud.