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Are Latent Viruses Causing Long Covid-19 Symptoms? Patient Groups Push for Testing
Related: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, chronic viral sequelae, Epstein Barr virus, ethics in medicine, gears of the machine, health, raw file processing, SARS-CoV-2 aka COVID-19 aka Coronavirus, training
Real science is never settled, and anyone who has certainty on such things is not qualified to discuss it.
See my previous coverage of Long Haul COVID, from which I am still suffering, with my physical ability fluctuating between 10% and 20% in comparison to my typical fitness this time of year.
Are Latent Viruses Causing Long Covid-19 Symptoms? Patient Groups Push for Testing
13 July 2021. Emphasis added.
More long Covid-19 patients are pushing to investigate what they believe is fueling some of their debilitating long-term symptoms: dormant viruses that have been reactivated by the coronavirus.
An estimated 10% to 30% of all Covid-19 patients suffer from symptoms weeks and months after first getting the illness, including many young, previously healthy people whose initial Covid-19 cases were mild. Symptoms can include brain fog, fatigue, shortness of breath, racing heart beat and an inability to tolerate physical or mental exertion.
Public health officials around the world are trying to figure out exactly what is causing the symptoms; the National Institutes of Health earlier this year unveiled a major initiative to study long Covid-19, backed by $1.15 billion in funding. Yet scientists still know very little about the causes of the condition, and have even fewer treatments to offer.
Most people—whether they have had Covid-19 or not—have dormant, normally harmless viruses in their body that they contracted years earlier. Among the most common are the herpes family of viruses. That includes the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), which causes mononucleosis, as well as human herpes virus 6 (HHV-6), which causes the common childhood illness sixth disease, the herpes simplex viruses, and herpes zoster, a reactivation of the chickenpox virus that can cause shingles. Such viruses can be reactivated at times by stress, including infections.
Some long Covid-19 patients and advocacy groups are urging doctors to test more regularly for reactivated viruses. With so few treatment options for long Covid-19, they say, it makes sense to see if a herpes antiviral drug might relieve symptoms. Some doctors say it is worth more testing and further study. Others say the tests are difficult to interpret—and that even if a latent virus does reactivate, it is unclear whether that is causing long Covid-19 symptoms.
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WIND: I speculated about this likely possibility more than a year ago, with the medical establishment oblivious to it. At least there are a few doctors working on it now.
The proposition that public health officials will figure it out is laughable; these are the same people that have obliterated public confidence in their guidance. Highly politicized, lacking objectivity and while actively suppressing alternative viewpoints, they are the worst possible choice to find answers. Politically malleable anti-scientific parasites—the same jackasses who think everyone must be vaccinated, even those with prior COVID and/or other conditions that greatly raise potential risks.
COVID can cause short/medium term physical damage (neurological, tiny blood clots, gastrointestinal, etc) which usually resolve in a few months. Some unlucky people have more serious damage and/or for longer.
The main thing is that COVID screws the body up in many ways we don’t understand, especially (in my view) neurological issues.
My sense of my oscillating energy levels is that my body could be fighting against a viral enemy such as EBV or HHV-6. Proof positive that EBV was a factor are my positive antibody tests for EBV, which now show a resolved EBV infection. It feels like my body is still fighting something, perhaps HHV-6 (which almost everyone has in latent hiding places). Or maybe the EBV is still having a go at me, in spite of what the antibody test claims. Or maybe it is auto immune—or both, or yet some other virus, since medical science has yet to recognize so many things. OTOH, I don’t get sick with anything
TIP: if you get COVID and seemingly recovery, resume physical training with extreme caution. Nothing strenuous for a full 3 months after recovering from COVID, base training only and not too much.
Setting aside hospitalized patients, long-haul COVID might actually affect highly fit people more than most. Because people like me resumed sports training after recovering but while the body was still damaged and not right. That in turn seems to have triggered massive Epstein Barr Virus problems for me. For an MD friend of mine, our onset, recovery, resumption of training, then subsequent hammer blow to energy were nearly identical.
See also
Investigation of Long COVID Prevalence and Its Relationship to Epstein-Barr Virus Reactivation
