As a kid, my parents were careful to allow few sweets for their children. So one cookie. I hated that. I love sweets. So once I grew up, I ate as many sweets as I wanted. I loved to bake. Made my own ice cream. Pies, cookies, breads, cakes, candy, soda. I read years later that humans should only consume 6 tsp a day of sugar. I added my up. I won’t tell too embarrassing. I also had migraines, never slept, panic attacks, unreal body aches. My joints were killing me. However I exercised a lot as I owned a farm, rode horses, swam, hikes, tennis, etc. I am tall so could carry lots of weight. I also had a bad back due to a cracked disc. Unreal pain a few times a year. I consulted a surgeon when pain meant I no longer could function. The last doc said “only do surgery if you feel like you want to shoot yourself”. I could not bend over. I also apparently have a high tolerance for pain. So I endured.
Then one day I read an article by Dr Bob Arnot the tv doctor. That article spoke to me. It explained what was happening to my back and why I could not get relief. I did exactly as he requested and for the most part I got rid of all pain. No drugs. It was a matter of getting blood flow to an area in the body that often is difficult. I believed and within a few months life was good again.
Then came cancer. First primary I just ignored. I was 40. Just blew it off. Second primary came about 4 years ago. This time aggressive and much further along. The 2 not related. I decided to research my disease. I had surgery but no drugs. I wanted to figure out why I had cancer and all my previous pain. I determined it was sugar. So I cut it out. I lost a lot of weight. I also never had another headache. No joint pain. No restless leg syndrome, I could sleep fine. It was for me like a miracle.
Need to mention this as well. Just before my last cancer bout, I fell and damaged my knee. Bad. I was on crutches. The pain was awful. I saw specialists. It was a tear. I would need surgery. Nope. I decided to do what I did for my back. I researched what might work. Biking. Yup, biking cured me. I never had one second of pain while riding and once again got blood flow,to difficult area and thus my body healed itself.
My point to this rambling is that many health issues can be resolved by diet change, lifestyle,changes, exercise, and frankly empowering oneself to give your body a chance to find a solution. I am not physically perfect today. All my injuries have left me not quite as before, but pretty good. I do not dwell on those changes. Maybe denial, but that is working for me.
Well, first time I've very much disagreed with you Alex, as one of those "middle aged women" suffering from something chronic that has defied lab tests but has been on and off disabling...and so the best diagnosis the mainstream doctors could give me was "fibromyalgia." I was in the ER last month for the worst vertigo I've ever experienced and I have a scheduled spinal tap in November to make sure I don't have an infection in my central nervous system.
BTW, I do have confirmed POTS and small fiber neuropathy, proved by tests, but they are idiopathic. Doctors don't know why I got the conditions but I had a severe infection in 2017 that almost killed me. I also had "chronic fatigue syndrome" when I was younger and it's real.
I'll be writing up an article about this I guess since as much as I support your work, you aren't helping people with real problems here. Just because Western medicine hasn't figured out what something is doesn't mean it does not exist.
Disappointing. As someone who has had medical doctors tell me for over a decade “your labs look great” meanwhile I have sharp shooting pains throughout my body, intractable crushing fatigue (not just “being tired “ ), and a feeling I can only describe as Stage four cancer, and western medicine doctors telling me I’m just depressed, this is upsetting. Chronic pain and fatigue IS REAL. I’ve no doubt long covid is probably real as well, most likely having to do with a woman’s body being unable to clear the viral load sufficiently. That being said, long covid isn’t something to fear. It’s no different than long term effects following influenza, Epstein Barr or Lyme. It’s real, and I’d wager in the next five years there will be more acceptance of this, instead of telling women yet again, how we feel must be “all in our head”
I got in the elevator in my building (where I live) today. A woman in the elevator said "excuse me". I pulled my dog's leash back, thinking that my dog was too close to her. But no, that wasn't it. I said "what?" - she said "you're not wearing a mask"- I said "there is no mask requirement and I am not sick" -she said "it's a PANDEMIC" - I said "I don't even have a mask" - she said "get off the elevator, I can't ride with you" - I said " you get off if you can't ride with me" - eventually, she got off, angry. She was wearing an N95 mask, btw - and I'd bet my last dollar that she was triple vaxxed. What is wrong with these people? Sometimes I start to think the world is normal and then I encounter someone like this woman who was clearly hiding in her condo for nearly 2 years, coming out only to collect the mail. Long Covid - or mental illness from Covid fear porn - who can tell the difference anymore?
I don't have a strong opinion on this subject one way or the other, but I'm glad that your readers find this piece so controversial. It's a good reminder that your readers think their own thoughts rather than blindly cheer for their favorite team.
I admire your work, but this piece comes off as very off base, arrogant and a bit misogynist. The middle age lady stuff is really tired. What about doctors being almost unbelievably incompetent? They are trained to be robotic drug pushers which doesn’t help patients if they have less than obvious issues. It took me 7 years to get diagnosed with celiac disease despite almost daily vomiting and eventually coughing up blood and being hospitalized. During that time, I was told by one of New York Magazine’s “best doctors in New York” that I was ruining my life by insisting I had an illness. It took years to recover from the anemia and other results of HIS incompetence.
I have chronic Lyme and 4 other tick diseases that have ruined the last 8 years of my life. What is the point of your post? Very disappointing Alex- please explain.
I think I’m going through long haul Covid fatigue due to the fact that the media, medical establishment and politicians just won’t let this virus disappear.
Post-viral syndrome certainly appears to be real. Like many people, I wasn’t previously aware that a small proportion of people who get sick with influenza remain distinctly sub-par for months afterwards. Most people are fully ok within a month, though.
I have seen just one sizeable comparative review of this post-flu subpar condition & long covid19.
Neither jumped out as strikingly more of less common or more or less severe.
I’m not surprised that some people are genuinely & sometimes quite obviously still unwell, months after systemic infection by a influenza, a respiratory virus that kills a low single figure number of people per 1000 infections.
It would arguably be surprising if this didn’t occur after infection by SARS-CoV-2.
I'm disappointed, Alex, to see you firmly rooted in the "It's all in your head, dear" school of medicine. You also aren't up to date with your science.
A genuine pioneer in medicine, Dr. Bruce Patterson, whose website is covidlonghaulers.com, has done profound work identifying immune markers that are specific to long haul COVID. Perhaps even more interesting, he hypothesizes that similar mechanisms are at work in CFS/ME. His amazing paper: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2021.700782/full
Mr Berenson. I am a physician (internal medicine and endocrinology) with decades of experience in the clinical care of patients. I also have expertise in the diagnosis and treatment of patients with Lyme disease. I also treat patients with COVID-19. I have devoted a lot of study to these clinical challenges. I urge you to adhere to the COVID "vaccine" story. Your ignorance and lack of medical expertise in the diagnosis and treatment of COVID-19 and other medical conditions (including chronic Lyme disease) is not consistent or worthy of your other important effort. A similar snide arrogance is what we get from many physicians who have dismissed the reality of chronic Lyme disease for decades. That includes the CDC. So I urge humility and restraint.
Please don’t dismiss these post-infectious & post-vaccination problems. Problems can arise from both infections & vaccinations. Unfortunately, My family has experienced this with our child. Tick-borne illness caused our previously athletic child to develop dysautonomia. Read up on POTS & how devastating it can be. You also may want to check out https://www.fmtest.com/ , https://www.omf.ngo/. More is being learned everyday.
I had a week of incredible leg pain in high school, a few days after I started cross country - as if I suddenly was having an autoimmune attack on my leg bones. "Couldn't" get up for a week, not that lying down was any better.
Fortunately, there was no affording a visit to the doctor at the time.
So I eventually just got up and went to school and back to cross-country. Pain went away after a day.
Medicine invents illnesses. Not to deny the extent to which medicine also downplays pain when it doesn't have an answer - but sometimes not having an answer is better than having one.
Somehow I only discovered Ivan Illich this year. He warned society about this well before it happened.
I no longer read the New York Times. I will just mention that chronic Lyme Disease (likely another bioweapon) is vey real. My brother has been fighting it for ten years. The medical establishment only recently acknowledged that it exists.
Alex - I am someone who is a long hauler. Treated my Covid as a cold and got back to running and cycling while still not 100%. Reactivated my Epstein Barr Virus (mono). I understand EBV reactivation is about 60% of long covid cases, so it is a real medical condition. I'm no 66 have been trim and active, had mono back when I was 21. Ivermectin helped me but I started it too late to prevent the EBV.
I have so far considered Mr Berenson a great researcher, at least as far as the whole tissue of lies build around the Covid hoax is concerned. But I am appalled that he apparently writes about medical things that he knows nothing about, in lockstep with mainstream doctors whose misdiagnoses and (mis)treatments of Lyme disease patients have been causing untold suffering for years. Those same mainstream doctors have ridiculed, talked condescendingly down to or ignored the tens of thousands of people who do not get better from Lyme after a 1- to 4-week low-dose antibiotic treatment.
Berenson quotes CDC (!!) opinions and federal studies to opine that chronic Lyme is only in the head of patients because they don't choose Sontag's "good passport." I am outraged because both of my daughters and I had chronic Lyme and for one of my daughters it was debilitating, very difficult to treat, and frightening because of the callous and ignorant attitude of the pediatricians who "treated" her while she was so sick she couldn't even read, barely ate and slept 20 hours a day for many weeks. Only when I took her to an alternative doctor who put my daughter on long-term antibiotic treatment, combined with holistic treatments did she finally get better -- after a year and a half. To ignore the stories of terrible suffering of countless people like those in my family is callous and ignorant, if not arrogant.
I am very disappointed and feel that such superficial treatment of issues about which he obviously knows very little and using the CDC and federal sources to make a point discredit his work in general. I won't trust anything he says any longer.
As a middle aged woman with some very serious health issues it is almost impossible to be taken seriously by society or by doctors. There is a huge blind spot in society that one hopes maybe writers and 'trained observers' would actually be able to see: that there is an epidemic of auto-immune and endocrine related diseases in women. So day after day women by the time they're 40+ are pretty sick and going into the doctor -- "I have no energy, I feel awful" and day after day they're misdiagnosed with depression, given pharma drugs and sent home. They try every diet on the Internet. They order supplements. They shop the health food store and they wonder -- why don't I feel better?
Why does no one ask - what in the world is going on with the 40+ women? Grandma wasn't sick like this.... Well they don't ask why everyone has at least one or two transgender people in their family now do they? Why Grandpa is now Grandma. Why your best friend is obese when they starve themselves silly.
The questions you're not allowed to ask is the dog that isn't barking and that is where the story is, and the quasi narcissistic image conjured loosely in this chapter of the depressed middle aged woman, I'll add: alone at home with her cats slowly descending into further neuroticism and booking as many doctor appointments as possible, this isn't an image conjured by the author, it's an image the chemical companies hope we hold to our chests and keep forefront in our minds as the rest of our people and society succumb quietly to a whole slew of powerful environmental toxins as well as those added to food.
Wow. I really don’t understand you ragging on those suffering with and from fibromyalgia and ME, me being included in both columns here.
You obviously have never suffered from these conditions. Believe me, they are real, and I hope you never personally find out how real. How and why you’ve weaved fibro and ME into the COVID hoax is beyond me.
I’m not a “middle-aged woman” with fibro and ME; I am a man who contracted this in my early 40’s, and am now approaching 60. I was a high-level, multi-sport athlete, accomplished in some of the most (perceived) “tough-guy” professions around. I mocked people with this condition. I abhorred weak people.
I didn’t just get one aspect of this thing. I got almost all of the classic symptoms. If anything, it’s getting worse in some ways, but I’ve learned to live with it.
I do agree with getting away from the medical enablers. I took part a 2-year long “program” designed specifically for folks like me, albeit I was one of only a couple of men in said program. What I found was a lot of “software” help, but hardly any “hardware” assistance. By that I mean there was a ton of focus on one’s mental state and how to “cope” with the disease, but not much help in the traditional sense of medicine. I wanted to hear what I could DO about my condition, but there’s precious little, especially if you’re on a disability pension. You can treat the symptoms to an extent, it seems, but the disease is not yet curable, as you so aptly compared to AIDS. For someone as smart as you seem to be, how tone deaf could you possibly be?
You personally don’t have to believe in something for something to be true. But you don’t get to tell me what I’m experiencing isn’t true or real.
An element you never touch on, let alone address (but I’m not really surprised by this now), is the effect that concussions can have on felt pain. I myself have had around 20 concussions, luckily only a handful of which were serious to the point of losing consciousness. The affects of these brains traumas don’t just go away like a bruise on your knee. Synapses are damaged or destroyed. Things feel, look and sound different afterwards. Phantom pain is still pain to the brain. Brain fog is really brain fog. Temporary loss of hearing or vision really happens. Spending hour after hour tossing and turning in bed because of severe restless legs, hands and arms is frustratingly real. Having days on end of diarrhea is painfully real. Embarrassingly, anxiety attacks are unfortunately horribly real.
I think the old saying (please excuse the loose paraphrasing here) of spending a minute in another’s shoes before criticizing or denying his pain is in order here for you to pay special attention. Don’t let your success in outing the COVID hoax let you think that you now are qualified to speak about, or know everything related to, the human body and its ills, because you certainly don’t.
So...you think chronic Lyme is made up, Alex? I love your writing, but you're way off-base on this one. It took three idiot doctors mis-diagnosing my husband for two years before we finally figured out (with help from Stephen Buhner's excellent book) that he was suffering from chronic Lyme. And trust me, there is nothing fake about the fevers, chills, recurring skin infection at the bite location, debilitating joint pain, and other symptoms. With how little we know about Covid, and the general incompetence of our medical establishment, who am I (or you, or anyone else) to say that there's no such thing as long Covid??
People are sick because we're poisoned every single day all day. The body freaks out at the poison in various ways. Our air is poisoned, our water is poisoned, our food is poisoned. People are obese because we don't get enough nutrition out of our food. People are addicted to sugar (a poison), fat, and caffeine. Of course they're sick. But, big pharma to the rescue to slap a band-aid on it that will make things worse in the long run. The Hegelian Dialectic continues.
Long Covid (or long-haul Covid) documents myriad symptoms NOT related to respiratory for which the FLCCC Alliance has created a protocol. My son & I contracted and recovered from Covid last year, ~July 2020. My wife & I caught & recovered from Covid about 2 months ago. As they recovered, I developed a rash (or hives) on my lower left leg; sensitivity to heat; euphoric feeling coursing through my body, tingling skin; body aches. After going through a doctor affiliated with the FLCCC, I am better informed on "Long Covid." I've been prescribed their regimen, but it's been almost impossible to find a pharmacy around me in Florida that will fill Ivermectin. You know the drill: anyone who considers a "horse dewormer" needs help from "Big Brother." I finally have found an online pharmacy that will fill IVT, but I'll need to wait one month to receive it. In the meantime, I'm taking Quercitin, C, D, B.
As far as your reference to restless leg syndrome, this is another example of symptom that is treated like a syndrome. I had it for years. Sitting on a plane or bus in the evenings would drive me mad. I had to take an extremely hot bath every might to fall asleep. But once I stopped eating gluten and especially corn, poof it was gone. If I consume corn, it will immediately return that evening. I had to figure it out on my own, but far too often doctors just want to write you a Rx and send you on your way and never get to the bottom of the real issue.
I wonder how many here complaining have root canal teeth? Given keeping dead tissue in the body will always lead to chronic pain issues, from the effect of asymptomatic infection slowly leaching bacterial toxins into the body. Given the 97% correlation of breast cancer on the same side as the root-canaled tooth, it's a wonder anyone would still get one.
OMG! Thank you , Alex for telling it like it is, but that's not a surprise, you've been doing it since the beginning of COVID. As a physician who has spent the last 15 years reviewing and testifying at SSA disability appeal hearings, the number of people attempting to get disability for fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, irritable bowel syndrome, migraine headaches, chronic pain syndrome, chronic Lyme disease and all sorts of basically subjective complaints is astounding. Long COVID sure has a striking resemblance to good old FM or maybe chronic Lyme disease. Better start getting daily antibiotic shots for the next few years. I'm sure they'll find a doctor who needs a new Porsche. Can't wait till all these people file for disability. I guess I'll have a job for quite a while.
I’ve said this before but I have never heard of an illness with such a varied and all-encompassing list of symptoms. Or no symptoms! You can have none, one, any number in combination, or all. Amazing virus.
You are really wrong on the Lyme stuff Alex. It’s really incredibly painful and debilitating. This is not a good look when you say these things. Dr. Fauci himself gaslighted a group of chronic fatigue syndrome patients, you sound like him now. Why don’t you talk to a NY doctor treats it Like Dr. Kenneth Liegner or Dr. Leo Galland. It’s not about being tired or not feeling great. It goes from acute and then can become that. I was bedridden for a couple years, and I’m normally a healthy and active person and now I’m much better. Believe me, it is real. It can take years of brewing in your system with mild symptoms and then get a lot worse. It’s an infection. Most people don’t get adequate treatment. Do you think having symptoms after Ebola is also mental?
Long Covid is a media diagnosis of what is known as Viral Infection Syndrome. This happens after a severe viral illness including influenza, gastroenteritis, lyme and other viral diseases. I had the flu many years ago and effects lingered for months afterwards. Nothing new here except for the lies told by the mainstream media to keep people who don't know any better scared and watching. Disgraceful.
Dude! 😂 do you just every now and then feel the need to shed subscriber and piss off your base??? Those with chronic symptoms do truly suffer. I know. And yes, it is likely they are just latching on to ANY available explanation. But you come across as intentionally discrediting them and saying it’s all in their heads. They may have their faith in their diagnosis or treatment misplaced, but their suffering is real. Something is going on that is NOT psychological. Compassion is warranted.
I have a friend that is deathly afraid of getting long haul Covid. Nothing I say can convince her that she likely doesn't need to worry about it unless she is hospitalized and more likely in the ICU on a ventilator. And in that case, her concerns would be much greater, like not dying. If she gets Covid, I am afraid she will be a long haul case, because she already has a lot of the symptoms and she doesn't even have Covid yet. The fear of everything Covid that medical professionals have instilled in emotionally vulnerable people is cruel. And people that are fearful are willing to give up rights, which is why she is in favor of mask / vaccine mandates. So she is willing to leverage her fear to infringe on the rights of others. I can only hope people of her mindset remain in the minority.
Pre-ordered it back in September. I've read everything you've written about Covid. It's participated in shaping my understanding of what has been going on. It's all very important and vital work. I've re-ordered and spread a lot of what you have researched and written on the matter. Thank you for the work you do. I cant wait to read Pandemia.
Somewhat surprisingly, I think "long Covid" is a thing, because of evidence presented by Patterson which found that spike protein fragments get stuck in the monocytes, which then live for much longer than normal, and run around causing inflammatory damage for months - as long as 15 months in one case. There do seem to be treatments that work to deal with the issue. I'm not too surprised that a lab-leak gain-of-function virus does some pretty unusual things. And it turns out, if you get early treatment (which decreases the number of viral particles created), then in most cases, long COVID doesn't happen.
WHAT DOES CHRONIC LYMES MEAN? My son has had this condition for 20+ years. He has been diagnosed with it! His life is hell. Chronic means - never ending and the pain, misery, multiple doctors visits, great expense, massive doses of antibiotics (even a pic line for 6 months) over the years, exhaustion, everything on the list in this book, and more. This in not a whine..... this is a nasty and debilitating condition. He was a good and loved police officer and had to retire early because his body could not go the distance. HE LIVES WITH THIS EVERYDAY AND NIGHT OF HIS LIFE, so for those of you who scoff.....GET A LIFE..... hopefully without Lymes.
You are wildly off base and uninformed with your gaslighting of people suffering from chronic health conditions. There is a whole world of science that has not made its way into insurance-based models of medicine about which you are apparently completely unaware. I’m so disappointed in your lack of awareness coupled with your arrogance and self-appointed superiority. I’ve been in this world as a patient, writer, and assistant to a researcher and can tell you chronic health conditions are indeed very real and have very real and obvious underlying mechanisms — which aren’t acknowledged simply because big pharma can’t fix them. You inadvertently became a shill for the very forces you purport to oppose.
Still waiting for you to explain why you are making fun of those of us with chronic Lyme and other tick diseases- not funny. I appreciate a piece like Douthats because a lot of people don't "get it" until they get it. I wouldn't have understood either, until it happened to me. Heartless.
Alex, I think you may be correct that the bulk of "Long Covid" cases are not a true disorder (non-psychiatric anyway). However, POTS (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome) is a legitimate, measurable (tilt-table testing) disease manifesting as dysregulation of the autonomic nervous system. Symptoms such as marked tachycardia on standing, temperature dysregulation, profound shortness of breath and "brain fog" can occur. It can be seen with several disorders including Parkinson's Disease. POTS is also known to occur as an autoimmune process in a post-viral setting. This is not new at all and a variety of respiratory viruses can cause this. It occurs more commonly in young women. This can be incredibly debilitating and these patients are often misdiagnosed (with depression) as most Primary Care Docs do not have sufficient knowledge about it. It is treated typically with waist high compression stockings, salt tablets, beta blockers other cardiac meds and a graduated seated exercise program. It will be challenging for clinicians to tease out the legitimate illness from the mass hysteria, depression and anxiety occurring in our society today.
I just signed up for this substack and this is the first post I received in my inbox. As someone who had suffered from chronic Lyme since fourth grade, it was disappointing to see you mock and dismiss this very real illness that has destroyed my life and my son's life (I passed my Lyme down to him. Yes, that happens, and it's devastating.) I was impressed by your truth-telling on Rogan, but it seems your willingness to look beyond the official narrative ends at Covid. Too bad; chronic Lyme sufferers could have used you in our corner.
I had Covid last August (‘20). A supposed “mild case”. It took me 10 weeks to get close to normal. I couldn’t walk 20 feet without getting out of breath. I woke up each morning exhausted. My arms and legs felt like lead. I couldn’t leave my house, climb stairs, drive, or shop.
The worst aspect was the thought that this might be with me for years. I took supplements and researched the best treatments. I wasn’t a triathlon runner, but I have always been able to do pretty much whatever I wanted physically. It was truly terrifying. And it’s real.
I'm unsubscribing. Sad arrogance. My wife has chronic lyme and we both now have chronic Covid. I asked my dr about Chronic Covid and she said there are MANY cases (plus much documentation). So everyone who has shortness of breath, that won't go away, due to Covid, is a psych case?!! Your analysis of Covid vaccines has usually been good, but now you have lost all my respect.
I'm sure some of it is legitimate long-term effects but where do you draw the line. when there's a legitimate reason there's going to be people who use it illegitimately. Add in extra unemployment extra medical benefits and free rent for covid and you have a recipe for people milking the system for everyday off, every penny, every emotional-sympathy crutch they can get. Again I'm not saying it's not real, I'm just saying at what point do you draw the line between legitimate sufferes vs all the me toos piling on so they can get some free stuff too.
I dunno Alex. I can't read Ross' piece because it's behind a paywall and I no longer subscribe to any MSM. But as someone who has tried to heal my child who suffered from Lyme, babesia, and other tickborn nasties, I can say the effects devastate. Two years bed-bound, CFS and psychiatric conditions that exist 7 years later. The Lymies are perhaps our greatest allies as 'medicine' and public health care not a whit about their 'all in their head's symptoms. And, of course, the other similarity to COVID is both are the result of weaponization. A bit disappointed in your dismissal of someone who has suffered from a condition that is all too real and all too disregarded.
According to https://lcrhealth.com/many-key-hormones-affect-health/, the human body has over 200 types of hormones or hormone-like substances, plus vitamins, minerals, and gut biome. If diet, lifestyle, stress, and misuse of prescribed or illegal drugs lead to an imbalance or dysregulation of these hormones or other substances, especially hormones like insulin, then some of the syndromes Alex mentions could be the result. Just because we haven't isolated the cause to a particular germ or mechanism doesn't mean the conditions aren't real. And even when we know the mechanism, only sometimes would a new drug be beneficial. Other times an old drug or, even better, a change in diet, lifestyle, and/or use of drugs is the most beneficial approach.
Alex, I’m disappointed. I am grateful for the information you provide regarding Covid, which has been essential to our understanding. This time though, you are down a path of judgment that is based on falsehoods and helps no one.
Some of us have discovered terrible realities. We have learned that experts are often compromised, arrogant, ignorant and callous. We learned of government deceit and manipulation, and of regulatory capture which has hollowed out our bureaucratic institutions. We’ve realized that media exists to feed itself and it’s benefactors, by creating a public narrative built on lies.
It’s even more unfortunate, that this awakening often doesn’t lead to broader understanding; to the realization that the manipulation is ubiquitous, and eternal. It taints everything and affects us all. The only novel aspect of the Covid deception, is that the destruction has been turned up to eleven.
Our own fear and struggles are repeated billions of times over, our suffering mirrored in the experiences of others. The question facing each of us is this: will we recognize pain that may look different than our own, but which ultimately stems from the same source?
Often the answer is no.
It’s tragic, really, because we are missing opportunities to learn from and support each other, and to unite. So while we need the information you are providing, please remember that we are and always have been, in this together.
We must do better if we hope to save ourselves this time.
Chapter 25! Idiot I am
As a kid, my parents were careful to allow few sweets for their children. So one cookie. I hated that. I love sweets. So once I grew up, I ate as many sweets as I wanted. I loved to bake. Made my own ice cream. Pies, cookies, breads, cakes, candy, soda. I read years later that humans should only consume 6 tsp a day of sugar. I added my up. I won’t tell too embarrassing. I also had migraines, never slept, panic attacks, unreal body aches. My joints were killing me. However I exercised a lot as I owned a farm, rode horses, swam, hikes, tennis, etc. I am tall so could carry lots of weight. I also had a bad back due to a cracked disc. Unreal pain a few times a year. I consulted a surgeon when pain meant I no longer could function. The last doc said “only do surgery if you feel like you want to shoot yourself”. I could not bend over. I also apparently have a high tolerance for pain. So I endured.
Then one day I read an article by Dr Bob Arnot the tv doctor. That article spoke to me. It explained what was happening to my back and why I could not get relief. I did exactly as he requested and for the most part I got rid of all pain. No drugs. It was a matter of getting blood flow to an area in the body that often is difficult. I believed and within a few months life was good again.
Then came cancer. First primary I just ignored. I was 40. Just blew it off. Second primary came about 4 years ago. This time aggressive and much further along. The 2 not related. I decided to research my disease. I had surgery but no drugs. I wanted to figure out why I had cancer and all my previous pain. I determined it was sugar. So I cut it out. I lost a lot of weight. I also never had another headache. No joint pain. No restless leg syndrome, I could sleep fine. It was for me like a miracle.
Need to mention this as well. Just before my last cancer bout, I fell and damaged my knee. Bad. I was on crutches. The pain was awful. I saw specialists. It was a tear. I would need surgery. Nope. I decided to do what I did for my back. I researched what might work. Biking. Yup, biking cured me. I never had one second of pain while riding and once again got blood flow,to difficult area and thus my body healed itself.
My point to this rambling is that many health issues can be resolved by diet change, lifestyle,changes, exercise, and frankly empowering oneself to give your body a chance to find a solution. I am not physically perfect today. All my injuries have left me not quite as before, but pretty good. I do not dwell on those changes. Maybe denial, but that is working for me.
Well, first time I've very much disagreed with you Alex, as one of those "middle aged women" suffering from something chronic that has defied lab tests but has been on and off disabling...and so the best diagnosis the mainstream doctors could give me was "fibromyalgia." I was in the ER last month for the worst vertigo I've ever experienced and I have a scheduled spinal tap in November to make sure I don't have an infection in my central nervous system.
BTW, I do have confirmed POTS and small fiber neuropathy, proved by tests, but they are idiopathic. Doctors don't know why I got the conditions but I had a severe infection in 2017 that almost killed me. I also had "chronic fatigue syndrome" when I was younger and it's real.
I'll be writing up an article about this I guess since as much as I support your work, you aren't helping people with real problems here. Just because Western medicine hasn't figured out what something is doesn't mean it does not exist.
Disappointing. As someone who has had medical doctors tell me for over a decade “your labs look great” meanwhile I have sharp shooting pains throughout my body, intractable crushing fatigue (not just “being tired “ ), and a feeling I can only describe as Stage four cancer, and western medicine doctors telling me I’m just depressed, this is upsetting. Chronic pain and fatigue IS REAL. I’ve no doubt long covid is probably real as well, most likely having to do with a woman’s body being unable to clear the viral load sufficiently. That being said, long covid isn’t something to fear. It’s no different than long term effects following influenza, Epstein Barr or Lyme. It’s real, and I’d wager in the next five years there will be more acceptance of this, instead of telling women yet again, how we feel must be “all in our head”
I got in the elevator in my building (where I live) today. A woman in the elevator said "excuse me". I pulled my dog's leash back, thinking that my dog was too close to her. But no, that wasn't it. I said "what?" - she said "you're not wearing a mask"- I said "there is no mask requirement and I am not sick" -she said "it's a PANDEMIC" - I said "I don't even have a mask" - she said "get off the elevator, I can't ride with you" - I said " you get off if you can't ride with me" - eventually, she got off, angry. She was wearing an N95 mask, btw - and I'd bet my last dollar that she was triple vaxxed. What is wrong with these people? Sometimes I start to think the world is normal and then I encounter someone like this woman who was clearly hiding in her condo for nearly 2 years, coming out only to collect the mail. Long Covid - or mental illness from Covid fear porn - who can tell the difference anymore?
I don't have a strong opinion on this subject one way or the other, but I'm glad that your readers find this piece so controversial. It's a good reminder that your readers think their own thoughts rather than blindly cheer for their favorite team.
I admire your work, but this piece comes off as very off base, arrogant and a bit misogynist. The middle age lady stuff is really tired. What about doctors being almost unbelievably incompetent? They are trained to be robotic drug pushers which doesn’t help patients if they have less than obvious issues. It took me 7 years to get diagnosed with celiac disease despite almost daily vomiting and eventually coughing up blood and being hospitalized. During that time, I was told by one of New York Magazine’s “best doctors in New York” that I was ruining my life by insisting I had an illness. It took years to recover from the anemia and other results of HIS incompetence.
I have chronic Lyme and 4 other tick diseases that have ruined the last 8 years of my life. What is the point of your post? Very disappointing Alex- please explain.
I think I’m going through long haul Covid fatigue due to the fact that the media, medical establishment and politicians just won’t let this virus disappear.
Post-viral syndrome certainly appears to be real. Like many people, I wasn’t previously aware that a small proportion of people who get sick with influenza remain distinctly sub-par for months afterwards. Most people are fully ok within a month, though.
I have seen just one sizeable comparative review of this post-flu subpar condition & long covid19.
Neither jumped out as strikingly more of less common or more or less severe.
I’m not surprised that some people are genuinely & sometimes quite obviously still unwell, months after systemic infection by a influenza, a respiratory virus that kills a low single figure number of people per 1000 infections.
It would arguably be surprising if this didn’t occur after infection by SARS-CoV-2.
I'm disappointed, Alex, to see you firmly rooted in the "It's all in your head, dear" school of medicine. You also aren't up to date with your science.
A genuine pioneer in medicine, Dr. Bruce Patterson, whose website is covidlonghaulers.com, has done profound work identifying immune markers that are specific to long haul COVID. Perhaps even more interesting, he hypothesizes that similar mechanisms are at work in CFS/ME. His amazing paper: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2021.700782/full
Mr Berenson. I am a physician (internal medicine and endocrinology) with decades of experience in the clinical care of patients. I also have expertise in the diagnosis and treatment of patients with Lyme disease. I also treat patients with COVID-19. I have devoted a lot of study to these clinical challenges. I urge you to adhere to the COVID "vaccine" story. Your ignorance and lack of medical expertise in the diagnosis and treatment of COVID-19 and other medical conditions (including chronic Lyme disease) is not consistent or worthy of your other important effort. A similar snide arrogance is what we get from many physicians who have dismissed the reality of chronic Lyme disease for decades. That includes the CDC. So I urge humility and restraint.
Please don’t dismiss these post-infectious & post-vaccination problems. Problems can arise from both infections & vaccinations. Unfortunately, My family has experienced this with our child. Tick-borne illness caused our previously athletic child to develop dysautonomia. Read up on POTS & how devastating it can be. You also may want to check out https://www.fmtest.com/ , https://www.omf.ngo/. More is being learned everyday.
Yeah had to stop reading at "restless leg syndrome isn't real", just because you haven't experienced something, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
I had a week of incredible leg pain in high school, a few days after I started cross country - as if I suddenly was having an autoimmune attack on my leg bones. "Couldn't" get up for a week, not that lying down was any better.
Fortunately, there was no affording a visit to the doctor at the time.
So I eventually just got up and went to school and back to cross-country. Pain went away after a day.
Medicine invents illnesses. Not to deny the extent to which medicine also downplays pain when it doesn't have an answer - but sometimes not having an answer is better than having one.
Somehow I only discovered Ivan Illich this year. He warned society about this well before it happened.
I no longer read the New York Times. I will just mention that chronic Lyme Disease (likely another bioweapon) is vey real. My brother has been fighting it for ten years. The medical establishment only recently acknowledged that it exists.
Alex - I am someone who is a long hauler. Treated my Covid as a cold and got back to running and cycling while still not 100%. Reactivated my Epstein Barr Virus (mono). I understand EBV reactivation is about 60% of long covid cases, so it is a real medical condition. I'm no 66 have been trim and active, had mono back when I was 21. Ivermectin helped me but I started it too late to prevent the EBV.
This week's Darkhorse podcast talks about his book, 12:20 mark. Well worth the listen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJIVrezfSkY&t=2980s
Why is this your take? I suffered horrible from Lyme. Seems unnecessarily callous. And I’m totally team Berenson. I don’t get it.
I have so far considered Mr Berenson a great researcher, at least as far as the whole tissue of lies build around the Covid hoax is concerned. But I am appalled that he apparently writes about medical things that he knows nothing about, in lockstep with mainstream doctors whose misdiagnoses and (mis)treatments of Lyme disease patients have been causing untold suffering for years. Those same mainstream doctors have ridiculed, talked condescendingly down to or ignored the tens of thousands of people who do not get better from Lyme after a 1- to 4-week low-dose antibiotic treatment.
Berenson quotes CDC (!!) opinions and federal studies to opine that chronic Lyme is only in the head of patients because they don't choose Sontag's "good passport." I am outraged because both of my daughters and I had chronic Lyme and for one of my daughters it was debilitating, very difficult to treat, and frightening because of the callous and ignorant attitude of the pediatricians who "treated" her while she was so sick she couldn't even read, barely ate and slept 20 hours a day for many weeks. Only when I took her to an alternative doctor who put my daughter on long-term antibiotic treatment, combined with holistic treatments did she finally get better -- after a year and a half. To ignore the stories of terrible suffering of countless people like those in my family is callous and ignorant, if not arrogant.
I am very disappointed and feel that such superficial treatment of issues about which he obviously knows very little and using the CDC and federal sources to make a point discredit his work in general. I won't trust anything he says any longer.
It didn’t take the media very long to create ‘Long Covid’ and as usual, they have shamelessly promoted it for clicks.
There is not a single objective finding, no laboratory or radiological evidence to support its existence.
When I heard colleagues say they were treating it with anti-depressants, I knew it wasn’t worth worrying about.
As a middle aged woman with some very serious health issues it is almost impossible to be taken seriously by society or by doctors. There is a huge blind spot in society that one hopes maybe writers and 'trained observers' would actually be able to see: that there is an epidemic of auto-immune and endocrine related diseases in women. So day after day women by the time they're 40+ are pretty sick and going into the doctor -- "I have no energy, I feel awful" and day after day they're misdiagnosed with depression, given pharma drugs and sent home. They try every diet on the Internet. They order supplements. They shop the health food store and they wonder -- why don't I feel better?
Why does no one ask - what in the world is going on with the 40+ women? Grandma wasn't sick like this.... Well they don't ask why everyone has at least one or two transgender people in their family now do they? Why Grandpa is now Grandma. Why your best friend is obese when they starve themselves silly.
The questions you're not allowed to ask is the dog that isn't barking and that is where the story is, and the quasi narcissistic image conjured loosely in this chapter of the depressed middle aged woman, I'll add: alone at home with her cats slowly descending into further neuroticism and booking as many doctor appointments as possible, this isn't an image conjured by the author, it's an image the chemical companies hope we hold to our chests and keep forefront in our minds as the rest of our people and society succumb quietly to a whole slew of powerful environmental toxins as well as those added to food.
Wow. I really don’t understand you ragging on those suffering with and from fibromyalgia and ME, me being included in both columns here.
You obviously have never suffered from these conditions. Believe me, they are real, and I hope you never personally find out how real. How and why you’ve weaved fibro and ME into the COVID hoax is beyond me.
I’m not a “middle-aged woman” with fibro and ME; I am a man who contracted this in my early 40’s, and am now approaching 60. I was a high-level, multi-sport athlete, accomplished in some of the most (perceived) “tough-guy” professions around. I mocked people with this condition. I abhorred weak people.
I didn’t just get one aspect of this thing. I got almost all of the classic symptoms. If anything, it’s getting worse in some ways, but I’ve learned to live with it.
I do agree with getting away from the medical enablers. I took part a 2-year long “program” designed specifically for folks like me, albeit I was one of only a couple of men in said program. What I found was a lot of “software” help, but hardly any “hardware” assistance. By that I mean there was a ton of focus on one’s mental state and how to “cope” with the disease, but not much help in the traditional sense of medicine. I wanted to hear what I could DO about my condition, but there’s precious little, especially if you’re on a disability pension. You can treat the symptoms to an extent, it seems, but the disease is not yet curable, as you so aptly compared to AIDS. For someone as smart as you seem to be, how tone deaf could you possibly be?
You personally don’t have to believe in something for something to be true. But you don’t get to tell me what I’m experiencing isn’t true or real.
An element you never touch on, let alone address (but I’m not really surprised by this now), is the effect that concussions can have on felt pain. I myself have had around 20 concussions, luckily only a handful of which were serious to the point of losing consciousness. The affects of these brains traumas don’t just go away like a bruise on your knee. Synapses are damaged or destroyed. Things feel, look and sound different afterwards. Phantom pain is still pain to the brain. Brain fog is really brain fog. Temporary loss of hearing or vision really happens. Spending hour after hour tossing and turning in bed because of severe restless legs, hands and arms is frustratingly real. Having days on end of diarrhea is painfully real. Embarrassingly, anxiety attacks are unfortunately horribly real.
I think the old saying (please excuse the loose paraphrasing here) of spending a minute in another’s shoes before criticizing or denying his pain is in order here for you to pay special attention. Don’t let your success in outing the COVID hoax let you think that you now are qualified to speak about, or know everything related to, the human body and its ills, because you certainly don’t.
Congrats on the book.
So...you think chronic Lyme is made up, Alex? I love your writing, but you're way off-base on this one. It took three idiot doctors mis-diagnosing my husband for two years before we finally figured out (with help from Stephen Buhner's excellent book) that he was suffering from chronic Lyme. And trust me, there is nothing fake about the fevers, chills, recurring skin infection at the bite location, debilitating joint pain, and other symptoms. With how little we know about Covid, and the general incompetence of our medical establishment, who am I (or you, or anyone else) to say that there's no such thing as long Covid??
People are sick because we're poisoned every single day all day. The body freaks out at the poison in various ways. Our air is poisoned, our water is poisoned, our food is poisoned. People are obese because we don't get enough nutrition out of our food. People are addicted to sugar (a poison), fat, and caffeine. Of course they're sick. But, big pharma to the rescue to slap a band-aid on it that will make things worse in the long run. The Hegelian Dialectic continues.
Long Covid (or long-haul Covid) documents myriad symptoms NOT related to respiratory for which the FLCCC Alliance has created a protocol. My son & I contracted and recovered from Covid last year, ~July 2020. My wife & I caught & recovered from Covid about 2 months ago. As they recovered, I developed a rash (or hives) on my lower left leg; sensitivity to heat; euphoric feeling coursing through my body, tingling skin; body aches. After going through a doctor affiliated with the FLCCC, I am better informed on "Long Covid." I've been prescribed their regimen, but it's been almost impossible to find a pharmacy around me in Florida that will fill Ivermectin. You know the drill: anyone who considers a "horse dewormer" needs help from "Big Brother." I finally have found an online pharmacy that will fill IVT, but I'll need to wait one month to receive it. In the meantime, I'm taking Quercitin, C, D, B.
As far as your reference to restless leg syndrome, this is another example of symptom that is treated like a syndrome. I had it for years. Sitting on a plane or bus in the evenings would drive me mad. I had to take an extremely hot bath every might to fall asleep. But once I stopped eating gluten and especially corn, poof it was gone. If I consume corn, it will immediately return that evening. I had to figure it out on my own, but far too often doctors just want to write you a Rx and send you on your way and never get to the bottom of the real issue.
I wonder how many here complaining have root canal teeth? Given keeping dead tissue in the body will always lead to chronic pain issues, from the effect of asymptomatic infection slowly leaching bacterial toxins into the body. Given the 97% correlation of breast cancer on the same side as the root-canaled tooth, it's a wonder anyone would still get one.
OMG! Thank you , Alex for telling it like it is, but that's not a surprise, you've been doing it since the beginning of COVID. As a physician who has spent the last 15 years reviewing and testifying at SSA disability appeal hearings, the number of people attempting to get disability for fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, irritable bowel syndrome, migraine headaches, chronic pain syndrome, chronic Lyme disease and all sorts of basically subjective complaints is astounding. Long COVID sure has a striking resemblance to good old FM or maybe chronic Lyme disease. Better start getting daily antibiotic shots for the next few years. I'm sure they'll find a doctor who needs a new Porsche. Can't wait till all these people file for disability. I guess I'll have a job for quite a while.
I’ve said this before but I have never heard of an illness with such a varied and all-encompassing list of symptoms. Or no symptoms! You can have none, one, any number in combination, or all. Amazing virus.
You are really wrong on the Lyme stuff Alex. It’s really incredibly painful and debilitating. This is not a good look when you say these things. Dr. Fauci himself gaslighted a group of chronic fatigue syndrome patients, you sound like him now. Why don’t you talk to a NY doctor treats it Like Dr. Kenneth Liegner or Dr. Leo Galland. It’s not about being tired or not feeling great. It goes from acute and then can become that. I was bedridden for a couple years, and I’m normally a healthy and active person and now I’m much better. Believe me, it is real. It can take years of brewing in your system with mild symptoms and then get a lot worse. It’s an infection. Most people don’t get adequate treatment. Do you think having symptoms after Ebola is also mental?
Long Covid is a media diagnosis of what is known as Viral Infection Syndrome. This happens after a severe viral illness including influenza, gastroenteritis, lyme and other viral diseases. I had the flu many years ago and effects lingered for months afterwards. Nothing new here except for the lies told by the mainstream media to keep people who don't know any better scared and watching. Disgraceful.
After reading the chapter and the comments, perhaps this wasn't the best section to preview. By the way, Restless Leg is real.
Dude! 😂 do you just every now and then feel the need to shed subscriber and piss off your base??? Those with chronic symptoms do truly suffer. I know. And yes, it is likely they are just latching on to ANY available explanation. But you come across as intentionally discrediting them and saying it’s all in their heads. They may have their faith in their diagnosis or treatment misplaced, but their suffering is real. Something is going on that is NOT psychological. Compassion is warranted.
I have a friend that is deathly afraid of getting long haul Covid. Nothing I say can convince her that she likely doesn't need to worry about it unless she is hospitalized and more likely in the ICU on a ventilator. And in that case, her concerns would be much greater, like not dying. If she gets Covid, I am afraid she will be a long haul case, because she already has a lot of the symptoms and she doesn't even have Covid yet. The fear of everything Covid that medical professionals have instilled in emotionally vulnerable people is cruel. And people that are fearful are willing to give up rights, which is why she is in favor of mask / vaccine mandates. So she is willing to leverage her fear to infringe on the rights of others. I can only hope people of her mindset remain in the minority.
Pre-ordered it back in September. I've read everything you've written about Covid. It's participated in shaping my understanding of what has been going on. It's all very important and vital work. I've re-ordered and spread a lot of what you have researched and written on the matter. Thank you for the work you do. I cant wait to read Pandemia.
Somewhat surprisingly, I think "long Covid" is a thing, because of evidence presented by Patterson which found that spike protein fragments get stuck in the monocytes, which then live for much longer than normal, and run around causing inflammatory damage for months - as long as 15 months in one case. There do seem to be treatments that work to deal with the issue. I'm not too surprised that a lab-leak gain-of-function virus does some pretty unusual things. And it turns out, if you get early treatment (which decreases the number of viral particles created), then in most cases, long COVID doesn't happen.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.25.449905v1
Persistence of SARS CoV-2 S1 Protein in CD16+ Monocytes in Post-Acute Sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC) Up to 15 Months Post-Infection
Not a good take Alex - Dark Horse #101 much better in regard to Ross Douthat. Go high when others go low.
Let’s go Brandon!
Just read quick post from CNN that says vaccine shots basically stop or slow down all other diseases. So vaccinated much healthier. Oh boy….
WHAT DOES CHRONIC LYMES MEAN? My son has had this condition for 20+ years. He has been diagnosed with it! His life is hell. Chronic means - never ending and the pain, misery, multiple doctors visits, great expense, massive doses of antibiotics (even a pic line for 6 months) over the years, exhaustion, everything on the list in this book, and more. This in not a whine..... this is a nasty and debilitating condition. He was a good and loved police officer and had to retire early because his body could not go the distance. HE LIVES WITH THIS EVERYDAY AND NIGHT OF HIS LIFE, so for those of you who scoff.....GET A LIFE..... hopefully without Lymes.
You are wildly off base and uninformed with your gaslighting of people suffering from chronic health conditions. There is a whole world of science that has not made its way into insurance-based models of medicine about which you are apparently completely unaware. I’m so disappointed in your lack of awareness coupled with your arrogance and self-appointed superiority. I’ve been in this world as a patient, writer, and assistant to a researcher and can tell you chronic health conditions are indeed very real and have very real and obvious underlying mechanisms — which aren’t acknowledged simply because big pharma can’t fix them. You inadvertently became a shill for the very forces you purport to oppose.
Still waiting for you to explain why you are making fun of those of us with chronic Lyme and other tick diseases- not funny. I appreciate a piece like Douthats because a lot of people don't "get it" until they get it. I wouldn't have understood either, until it happened to me. Heartless.
Alex, I think you may be correct that the bulk of "Long Covid" cases are not a true disorder (non-psychiatric anyway). However, POTS (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome) is a legitimate, measurable (tilt-table testing) disease manifesting as dysregulation of the autonomic nervous system. Symptoms such as marked tachycardia on standing, temperature dysregulation, profound shortness of breath and "brain fog" can occur. It can be seen with several disorders including Parkinson's Disease. POTS is also known to occur as an autoimmune process in a post-viral setting. This is not new at all and a variety of respiratory viruses can cause this. It occurs more commonly in young women. This can be incredibly debilitating and these patients are often misdiagnosed (with depression) as most Primary Care Docs do not have sufficient knowledge about it. It is treated typically with waist high compression stockings, salt tablets, beta blockers other cardiac meds and a graduated seated exercise program. It will be challenging for clinicians to tease out the legitimate illness from the mass hysteria, depression and anxiety occurring in our society today.
I just signed up for this substack and this is the first post I received in my inbox. As someone who had suffered from chronic Lyme since fourth grade, it was disappointing to see you mock and dismiss this very real illness that has destroyed my life and my son's life (I passed my Lyme down to him. Yes, that happens, and it's devastating.) I was impressed by your truth-telling on Rogan, but it seems your willingness to look beyond the official narrative ends at Covid. Too bad; chronic Lyme sufferers could have used you in our corner.
I had Covid last August (‘20). A supposed “mild case”. It took me 10 weeks to get close to normal. I couldn’t walk 20 feet without getting out of breath. I woke up each morning exhausted. My arms and legs felt like lead. I couldn’t leave my house, climb stairs, drive, or shop.
The worst aspect was the thought that this might be with me for years. I took supplements and researched the best treatments. I wasn’t a triathlon runner, but I have always been able to do pretty much whatever I wanted physically. It was truly terrifying. And it’s real.
I'm unsubscribing. Sad arrogance. My wife has chronic lyme and we both now have chronic Covid. I asked my dr about Chronic Covid and she said there are MANY cases (plus much documentation). So everyone who has shortness of breath, that won't go away, due to Covid, is a psych case?!! Your analysis of Covid vaccines has usually been good, but now you have lost all my respect.
I'm sure some of it is legitimate long-term effects but where do you draw the line. when there's a legitimate reason there's going to be people who use it illegitimately. Add in extra unemployment extra medical benefits and free rent for covid and you have a recipe for people milking the system for everyday off, every penny, every emotional-sympathy crutch they can get. Again I'm not saying it's not real, I'm just saying at what point do you draw the line between legitimate sufferes vs all the me toos piling on so they can get some free stuff too.
I dunno Alex. I can't read Ross' piece because it's behind a paywall and I no longer subscribe to any MSM. But as someone who has tried to heal my child who suffered from Lyme, babesia, and other tickborn nasties, I can say the effects devastate. Two years bed-bound, CFS and psychiatric conditions that exist 7 years later. The Lymies are perhaps our greatest allies as 'medicine' and public health care not a whit about their 'all in their head's symptoms. And, of course, the other similarity to COVID is both are the result of weaponization. A bit disappointed in your dismissal of someone who has suffered from a condition that is all too real and all too disregarded.
According to https://lcrhealth.com/many-key-hormones-affect-health/, the human body has over 200 types of hormones or hormone-like substances, plus vitamins, minerals, and gut biome. If diet, lifestyle, stress, and misuse of prescribed or illegal drugs lead to an imbalance or dysregulation of these hormones or other substances, especially hormones like insulin, then some of the syndromes Alex mentions could be the result. Just because we haven't isolated the cause to a particular germ or mechanism doesn't mean the conditions aren't real. And even when we know the mechanism, only sometimes would a new drug be beneficial. Other times an old drug or, even better, a change in diet, lifestyle, and/or use of drugs is the most beneficial approach.
Alex, I’m disappointed. I am grateful for the information you provide regarding Covid, which has been essential to our understanding. This time though, you are down a path of judgment that is based on falsehoods and helps no one.
Some of us have discovered terrible realities. We have learned that experts are often compromised, arrogant, ignorant and callous. We learned of government deceit and manipulation, and of regulatory capture which has hollowed out our bureaucratic institutions. We’ve realized that media exists to feed itself and it’s benefactors, by creating a public narrative built on lies.
It’s even more unfortunate, that this awakening often doesn’t lead to broader understanding; to the realization that the manipulation is ubiquitous, and eternal. It taints everything and affects us all. The only novel aspect of the Covid deception, is that the destruction has been turned up to eleven.
Our own fear and struggles are repeated billions of times over, our suffering mirrored in the experiences of others. The question facing each of us is this: will we recognize pain that may look different than our own, but which ultimately stems from the same source?
Often the answer is no.
It’s tragic, really, because we are missing opportunities to learn from and support each other, and to unite. So while we need the information you are providing, please remember that we are and always have been, in this together.
We must do better if we hope to save ourselves this time.