Posts
Comments
Medicine has zero understanding how to cure almost everything it deals with. It has some treatments that might hold a condition back but more often than not its all at a surface level of the blood work that is abnormal and a drug that fixes that in some way. Side effects are all the consequences of treating the symptom with little to no understanding of the real problem. Medicine probably doesn't understand any of the conditions it treats.
Worse than that in research most work is not trying to understand a disease. Most of the research is just trying to work out how to control some treatable measurement to take away the "problem". Medicine has about a 1000 years to go before it genuinely starts really curing people based on how its progressing.
The amount of people suffering has gone up substantially in the ONS (UK) report. December 2021 it was 1.2 million[1] and now its 2.2 million [2]. The ONS also captures data about sufferers a year ago and when we compare this stat there has been no recovery either at the 1 year mark. 75% of sufferers are affected day to day so its not just a cough for the majority its impacting peoples lives often very severely.
Scientifically speaking we aren't a lot closer to a treatment. There are a lot of trials this year which should get results mostly by early 2024 but most IMO wont be useful as they failed for ME/CFS. The most important finding last year I believe is Bhupesh Prusty finding HHV6 and EBV in the brains and brain stem of ME/CFS sufferers and none in controls. The same finding has been seen in autopsies of Long Covid sufferers too finding active Covid19 virus in various places in the body. This is likely the cause but treating it is going to be tough since the virus is in a mode where it hides in the cells in a post acute phase of infection.
So some progress has been made, the severity of symptoms have been tracked and validated and a lot of physical problems have been found in various research. But the root cause isn't a sure thing yet and there are no treatments yet. It has not really stopped impacting people.
[1] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/prevalenceofongoingsymptomsfollowingcoronaviruscovid19infectionintheuk/2december2021
[2] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/prevalenceofongoingsymptomsfollowingcoronaviruscovid19infectionintheuk/5january2023