࿐࿐Alba ࿐

Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil. Against stupidity, we are defenseless.

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer

[࿐࿐Alba ࿐ @AlbaDocherty]

Had Covid? Have you had these things ruled out? No?

This is a *short* list of clinically-provable conditions in Long Covid that some orgs and other interests want you to think is (not-biomedically validated in Long Covid) MECFS instead. Many of these issues demand medical attention. Many of them have viable treatments that could help ppl right now. Many of them cause sudden death...we haven't seen any of that, have we?

Dementia & Vascular Dementia - If you've had Covid, you have a 41% higher risk of dementia and a 77% higher risk of vascular dementia. This is anything but MECFS "cognitive PEM".

Thrombotic microangiopathy - Microclots throughout small blood vessels severely limit oxygen and nutrient delivery to tissues. When you exert yourself, tissues cannot get enough oxygen to meet even minimal increased demands. This creates oxygen debt and toxic metabolite buildup that triggers a systemic crash - the delayed, prolonged exhaustion and multi-system symptoms can resemble MECFS.

With organs already barely functioning due to poor blood flow, any extra activity pushes the whole system over the edge, causing a collapse that takes days or weeks to recover from.

Heart failure (including HFpEF) - Heart Failure with Preserved Ejection Fraction is particularly insidious. Standard echos can look "normal" but the heart can't properly relax and fill. Causes exercise intolerance, shortness of breath, and fatigue that worsens with activity. Sound familiar?

Interstitial lung disease/fibrosis - Scarring of lung tissue causing progressive breathing difficulty and exercise limitation that can seem like PEM.

Chronic thromboembolic disease - Clots organizing in lungs, causing progressive right heart strain. The "PEM-like Sx" are driven by the heart-lung unit hitting a wall - any exertion beyond minimal activity causes systemic oxygen starvation and cardiac strain that takes days to recover from. Unlike deconditioning, rest doesn't improve capacity because the structural blockages remain.

Diaphragmatic dysfunction - Nerve or muscle damage to breathing muscles, causing "air hunger" and exercise limitation that can seem like PEM.

Pulmonary hypertension - High blood pressure in lung arteries causes severe fatigue and breathlessness with exertion that can be misdiagnosed as PEM. Often missed without right heart catheterization.

Silent myocardial ischemia - Reduced blood flow to heart muscle without typical chest pain. Can present as fatigue, exercise intolerance, PEM.

Aortic stenosis or other valve disease - Can develop from Covid infection and cause exercise intolerance that is often dismissed as deconditioning and/or PEM.

Microvascular dysfunction - Covid can cause small vessel disease affecting coronary, cerebral, or peripheral circulation can cause fatigue, exercise intolerance, and cognitive issues that worsen with exertion.

Pulmonary embolism (including microemboli) - Covid can cause blood clots in lungs, especially smaller chronic ones, that can cause progressive exercise intolerance and fatigue.

Myocarditis or pericarditis - Post-viral heart inflammation can cause exercise intolerance, fatigue, and chest symptoms that worsen with activity. This requires proper cardiac imaging and biomarker testing to diagnose, but can be mistaken as PEM.

POTS and dysautonomia - Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome and other autonomic dysfunctions can cause profound fatigue and post-exertional symptoms, but require specific testing and treatment, quite contrary to how Yale's Akiko Iwasaki & Harlan Krumholz run POTS "studies".

Cerebral hypoperfusion - Reduced blood flow to the brain can cause cognitive dysfunction, fatigue, and exercise intolerance that is misclassed as PEM. This can result from Covid vascular damage, autonomic dysfunction, or other mechanisms that result in symptoms that sound a lot like PEM.

Small vessel cerebrovascular disease - Microinfarcts or white matter changes from vascular damage could cause cognitive impacts and fatigue that can be mislabeled as MECFS.

Neuroinflammation - Direct viral invasion or immune-mediated inflammation in the nervous system could cause symptoms attributed to PEM: Hypersensitivity to noise, light, and temperature; memory problems, difficulty with attention, persistent forgetfulness, difficulty focusing, slowed information processing, etc. that appear similar to "cognitive PEM".

Cerebral venous sinus thrombosis - Blood clots in brain's drainage system. Can cause headaches, cognitive issues, and fatigue that can be misdiagnosed as MECFS, before catastrophic events occur.

Progressive atherosclerosis - Covid accelerates plaque formation. Carotid or coronary artery disease developing years faster than normal. This Covid-induced condition present with MECFS-like symptoms through a mechanism of exertion-triggered ischemia and delayed recovery.

Vasculitis - Covid can cause blood vessel inflammation throughout body. Can affect any organ system and progress to organ failure if untreated. Patients experience malaise, fatigue, and generalized weakness. Covid-induced systemic vasculitis can produce MECFS-like symptoms through multi-organ hypoperfusion and inflammatory exhaustion that worsen with exertion.

COVID-19 causes brain and neurological damages that produce symptoms remarkably similar to the generic Dx checklist MECFS, isn't that convenient? Especially when doctors & ins companies won't cover the scans required to prove your brain damages, vascular damages, dementias, etc. Insurance companies LOVE the medical-care-ending-zero-treatment MECFS Dx. It's so much cheaper to tell 400M ppl to pace than to develop targeted treatments for them, isn't it?

This is a short list conditions that can be caused by Covid, are found in Long Covid, and that require medical treatment, not to be written off as MECFS.

[Long COVID Action Canada 🇨🇦 @LongCOVIDActCA]

What would a Canadian access pathway for #ensitrelvir look like? What Long COVID research is needed?

LCAC is preparing questions for @SHIONOGI_JP. Access and evidence of benefit are separate questions.

Help shape the request:
https://t.co/ztBoWDi7Cx

[Dara in Chains @DarainChains]

Handy tool since actual medical care is nil to zero for this Virus! We need all the tools we can get!

Shhhh pass it on...

[࿐࿐Alba ࿐ @AlbaDocherty]

@LoneWolfMasker 🥰🎉🥳

[Pete 😷 #COVIDisAirborne @PeteUK7]

It isn't just about this doctor.
This is how hospitals around the country are operating.
It's what bad policies do.
This will kill and disable people who came to seek healthcare.
It will do the same to healthcare workers.
We need to fight this.
Everyone should be furious.
4/end

[Trish @trishorwen]

@DarainChains Most people have no idea that Covid can cause a tsunami of serious health issues including heart attacks, strokes, brain damage and cancer.
Left without tests and treatment, patients are facing endless suffering and early deaths.
This has to stop.

[࿐࿐Alba ࿐ @AlbaDocherty]

@lcbarbarian This whole scene has been nothing but corp/govt-run shills and the mob of idiots who support them, all while claiming to be anti-capitalists and anti-fascists. 🫠🫠🫠

[The Dåve @lcbarbarian]

Yep.

I called that guy out so many times. He was a sad engagement farmer, a shame artist attacking truth-tellers, and someone who slandered folks behind the scenes. A real piece of work.

It was clear from day one that he just wanted to build a profile for himself out of this, and I never respected that.

Guys like him were nobodies and use to it, and this was the most important they had ever been in their lives. IN contrast, my friends and I looked at this whole situation like a prison and just wanted out. And to this day, all we've ever fought for was for everyone to get better.

I remember speaking with Mr. McCone after a Space early on and realizing right then that he was completely disingenuous and had no original thought beyond just riding on other people's coattails. And I turned out to be right as rain.

Just look at his timeline and his engagement farming. Virtually no original thought. Just pseudo-plagerized regurgitated articles. He cheapened the space and cater'ed to morons.

I don't blame him though, because whenever he did actually shoot from the hip it was usually absolutely ridiculous. Either bullshit about cough medicine or some lie about how he was chained to his bed while he was really at a concert.

He aligned himself with the segment of the old community that clung to useless platitudes and used hyperbole to shame honest #LongCovid patients, labeling them violent and hateful. It was essentially a cancel culture of nit-wits built on bullshit. Most of them are gone now.

And it's better without them, even though we have to deal with the mold that grew from it.

Those little toddlers shamed our open honest spaces, claimed we were toxic without reason, and tried to build a parallel community built on performance. That lasted about five minutes because, just like them, it was completely fake. I feel bad for the honest folks who got bamboozled and were left without anyone. We later opened up the door to them, but it seemed they were just too conditioned to victimhood culture.

It was those exact people in that bullshit wannabe-community who got played by the #MECFS organizations like a bunch of useful idiots. They used a "nothing new" agenda and told the world there was nothing to worry about because it was the same old myth disease nobody was ever gonna solve.

Their peak was a foolish attachment to "The LC Moonshot" And boy, that turned out great, didn't it?

Give me a fucking break kids. JFC.

I guess in the end, I suppose it doesn't matter If Charlie McCone is a fraudulent little poser trying to be king of shit mountain. He was simply another clown online playing games like so many others. If he disappeared today there would just be another Chuck coming down the line.

Hell, just look around. It basically is just that. You know it, I. know it, everybody knows it. They just dont want to face the sad realty head on because it feel s easier to pretend that place is a "community"

Do I hate it?....Yes.

Did I try and make an honest impact with real conversation and community building? Yes.

But the simple truth is that nobody really seems to care about integrity in that world. Few people actually care about others the way they virtue signal online and particularly in that scene. And that weird corner of the internet that wanted to own the narrative on suffering is really just an echo chamber filled with lies and myth.

To me, The entire #LongCovid scene is a giant, grifting shits-how built on a pathetic chronic disease fantasies and filled with professional victims and frauds ready to exploit them.

I have nothing good to say about it because I am honest person and you'd have to lie to yourself to believe it's anything different.

I'll also admit that I probably never will have anything good to say ever again about it unless someone figures out how to bring back my dead friends from the grave and give me and my loved ones the 7 years back that have been wasted on frauds.

Fuck every single one of the useless self serving frauds who turned this into an opportunity for personal gain nd fuck anyone who worked against the only real opportunity we ever had to change the course of history.

Thanks for reminding me about Charlie McCone, this was cathartic and if you made it this far, I hope you enjoyed it.

If you didn't enjoy it, fuck you. You're part of the problem.

[࿐࿐Alba ࿐ @AlbaDocherty]

Yes, Charlie McCone is @patientled @PlzSolveCFS's pathetic little runner.

These @lcmoonshot astroturfs insisted that they knew better than world renown Harvard health economist Dr David Cutler (and better than the Ryan White Act) and ran an org-backed harassment and diversion campaign to make sure that no legitimate Long Covid legislation or funding ask had a chance in hell.

Fucking saboteurs, all of them, including the idiot brigade who supported them.

[Delphine Tramell @DelphineTramell]

@lcbarbarian Remember this? Half the LC community thought this was their guy for advocacy while he organized appalling, duplicitous behind-the-scenes campaigns harassing anyone who dared to ask for focus on airborne SARS-CoV-2. Look at where we’re at now. Ppl should be embarrassed.

[Dara in Chains @DarainChains]

Sabotage vs. Medical Abandonment 🪳

#LongCOVID isn't an unexplained fatigue syndrome!!

It's active biological sabotage 🧬.

The virus uses its ORF3a protein to lock onto host LDL receptors, draining circulating cholesterol to build viral factories while depleting Vitamin D precursors ☀️.

Our blood-brain barrier is open and damaged 🧠, microvessels are inflamed 🩺, and metabolic pathways are being hijacked.

👉"Go home and rot" doesn't fix active viral lipid theft.

💥We demand objective diagnostic protocols! 🔬

#LongCovid #MedicalAbandonment #ActivePathology

[࿐࿐Alba ࿐ @AlbaDocherty]

@DebHolloway It’s not a coincidence that their adherents never bother to fact check what they’re told, vet a study, or consider the self-interested dogshit these ppl pump out instead of conducting actually relevant, biomedical research.

Rank stupidity.

[Deborah Holloway 😷 🇺🇦🇨🇦 @DebHolloway]

"400M pwLC & generations of #LongCovidKids categorically do not need your self-interested, so-called solidarity. WE NEED TARGETED TREATMENTS SO WE CAN LIVE."

[AyAy ☭ @heysugardumplin]

Interesting that so many celebrities suddenly seem to be revealing how they’ve been battling with debilitating health conditions behind the scenes over the last few years no?

[࿐࿐Alba ࿐ @AlbaDocherty]

Setting aside the typical and ridiculous mecfs hagiography for a moment...

Regarding @LongCovidAdvoc's cherry-picked, misleading examples of how so-called mecfs research has helped LONG COVID:

1. Keller 2014 had only 22 patients and no control group. Whereas an independent, NIH-funded controlled study of 58 mecfs patients and 25 non-mecfs sedentary controls found no change in peak VO2 between days in either cohort (Mancini 2026). Todd Davenport's 2020 Workwell study showed non-mecfs sedentary controls dropping on day 2 by about as much as mecfs patients, which, like Mancini, neatly destroys the claim that the day-2 CPET drop is unique to mecfs. In fact, none of the measures changed significantly from day 1 to day 2, in mecfs or controls, at peak or at threshold.

2. Randomized trials find exercise or activity coaching improved fitness and symptoms in ppl with Long Covid (REGAIN 2024, EXER-COVID 2025). In Diciolla 2026, DSQ-defined PEM fell from 96% to 60% and DSQ “MECFS” from 76% to 4%, with no exercise-related adverse events. There are several other trials that also found that exercise helped ppl with Long Covid.

3. Orthostatic intolerance is measurable in anyone, and more than one study has shown that bed rest can induce it even in healthy ppl.

Reduced brain blood flow when upright isn’t unique to mecfs, and it certainly wasn’t discovered by any mecfs researcher. It’s been studied for over 70 years in non-mecfs populations. The earliest neck-ultrasound study was Sato and Ogoh 2012, which found blood flow dropped during upright tilt IN HEALTHY PEOPLE.

4. The 2009 Jason study you cite sorted patients into groups after the fact, based on their own ratings of their energy. The parent trial had no pacing arm, every measure was self-report, and the groups differed at baseline. Even the authors admit out loud that their cutoff is arbitrary, lol. The whole thing is a subjective, manipulated, highly biased clown show...as usual for Leonard Jason.

5. Naviaux 2016 was disgraced in PNAS for its dubious statistical methods and re physical-activity confounding. It has no independent peer-reviewed replication, and the editor’s conflict of interest was disclosed in a later erratum. A systematic review found MECFS metabolomics results inconsistent. OUCH.

"Not all people with Long Covid meet ME criteria" no kidding. NIH RECOVER and lifelong mecfs researchers @BatemanHorne @PlzSolveCFS can't barely get 4.5% of pwLC to meet a fake mecfs dx without rigging the study by GUTTING the mecfs criteria.

400M pwLC & generations of #LongCovidKids categorically do not need your self-interested, so-called solidarity. WE NEED TARGETED TREATMENTS SO WE CAN LIVE. The past seven years have proved beyond any doubt that every single one of you is absolutely incapable of moving that effort forward in the slightest. Nothing but disinformation and damage.

Imagine coming in here and trying to grandstand about that.

[࿐࿐Alba ࿐ @AlbaDocherty]

Setting aside the typical and ridiculous mecfs hagiography for a moment...

Regarding @LongCovidAdvoc's cherry-picked, misleading examples of how so-called mecfs research has helped LONG COVID:

1. Keller 2014 had only 22 patients and no control group. Whereas an independent, NIH-funded controlled study of 58 mecfs patients and 25 non-mecfs sedentary controls found no change in peak VO2 between days in either cohort (Mancini 2026). Todd Davenport's 2020 Workwell study showed non-mecfs sedentary controls dropping on day 2 by about as much as mecfs patients, which, like Mancini, neatly destroys the claim that the day-2 CPET drop is unique to mecfs. In fact, none of the measures changed significantly from day 1 to day 2, in mecfs or controls, at peak or at threshold.

2. Randomized trials find exercise or activity coaching improved fitness and symptoms in ppl with Long Covid (REGAIN 2024, EXER-COVID 2025). In Diciolla 2026, DSQ-defined PEM fell from 96% to 60% and DSQ “MECFS” from 76% to 4%, with no exercise-related adverse events. There are several other trials that also found that exercise helped ppl with Long Covid.

3. Orthostatic intolerance is measurable in anyone, and more than one study has shown that bed rest can induce it even in healthy ppl.

Reduced brain blood flow when upright isn’t unique to mecfs, and it certainly wasn’t discovered by any mecfs researcher. It’s been studied for over 70 years in non-mecfs populations. The earliest neck-ultrasound study was Sato and Ogoh 2012, which found blood flow dropped during upright tilt IN HEALTHY PEOPLE.

4. The 2009 Jason study you cite sorted patients into groups after the fact, based on their own ratings of their energy. The parent trial had no pacing arm, every measure was self-report, and the groups differed at baseline. Even the authors admit out loud that their cutoff is arbitrary, lol. The whole thing is a subjective, manipulated, highly biased clown show...as usual for Leonard Jason.

5. Naviaux 2016 was disgraced in PNAS for its dubious statistical methods and re physical-activity confounding. It has no independent peer-reviewed replication, and the editor’s conflict of interest was disclosed in a later erratum. A systematic review found MECFS metabolomics results inconsistent. OUCH.

"Not all people with Long Covid meet ME criteria" no kidding. NIH RECOVER and lifelong mecfs researchers @BatemanHorne @PlzSolveCFS can't barely get 4.5% of pwLC to meet a fake mecfs dx without rigging the study by GUTTING the mecfs criteria.

400M pwLC & generations of #LongCovidKids categorically do not need your self-interested, so-called solidarity. WE NEED TARGETED TREATMENTS SO WE CAN LIVE. The past seven years have proved beyond any doubt that every single one of you is absolutely incapable of moving that effort forward in the slightest. Nothing but disinformation and damage.

Imagine coming in here and trying to grandstand about that.

[Dara in Chains @DarainChains]

@PeteUK7 I already know how to do hospice and palliative care.

[࿐࿐Alba ࿐ @AlbaDocherty]

@ktho641521 💯 those boys @TheWHN seem to have quite the penchant for unhinged, uncredentialed strivers.

[࿐࿐Alba ࿐ @AlbaDocherty]

Not again with this amoral freak who made endless block lists, demanded ppl's govt IDs, & created a whole website dedicated to her bullying psychosis

Yet another IRL-loser pretending to be something she isn't while harassing pwLC and disabled ppl online
https://t.co/rphaTXwgo1

[࿐࿐Alba ࿐ @AlbaDocherty]

@DelphineTramell @lcbarbarian People died, and people are going to keep dying.

But hey, these flat-earthers are getting their fifteen minutes, that's all that matters.

[Daniel Brittain Dugger @dbdugger]

Where would kids be were it not for all of the interventions those with ME/CFS have provided? ALIVE. LMAO!
Anktiva May Help Shrink HIV Viral Reservoir
https://t.co/HcChizMCgZ